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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14168 ***
+
+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.
+
+And _this_ was to have been his Beatrice, his vision! As Elsie she was to
+have gone into the furnace of his art, and she was to have come out the
+Woman all men desire! Her thoughts were to have been culled from his own
+finest, her form from his dearest dreams, and her setting wherever he
+could find one fit for her worth. He had brooded long before making the
+attempt; then one day he had felt her stir within him as a mother feels
+a quickening, and he had begun to write; and so he had added chapter to
+chapter....
+
+And those fifteen sodden chapters were what he had produced!
+
+Again he sat, softly moving his finger....
+
+Then he bestirred himself.
+
+She must go, all fifteen chapters of her. That was settled. For what was
+to take her place his mind was a blank; but one thing at a time; a man
+is not excused from taking the wrong course because the right one is not
+immediately revealed to him. Better would come if it was to come;
+in the meantime--
+
+He rose, fetched the fifteen chapters, and read them over before he
+should drop them into the fire.
+
+But instead of putting them into the fire he let them fall from his hand.
+He became conscious of the dripping of the tap again. It had a tinkling
+gamut of four or five notes, on which it rang irregular changes, and it
+was foolishly sweet and dulcimer-like. In his mind Oleron could see the
+gathering of each drop, its little tremble on the lip of the tap, and the
+tiny percussion of its fall, "Plink--plunk," minimised almost to
+inaudibility. Following the lowest note there seemed to be a brief
+phrase, irregularly repeated; and presently Oleron found himself waiting
+for the recurrence of this phrase. It was quite pretty....
+
+But it did not conduce to wakefulness, and Oleron dozed over his fire.
+
+When he awoke again the fire had burned low and the flames of the candles
+were licking the rims of the Sheffield sticks. Sluggishly he rose,
+yawned, went his nightly round of door-locks and window-fastenings, and
+passed into his bedroom. Soon he slept soundly.
+
+But a curious little sequel followed on the morrow. Mrs. Barrett usually
+tapped, not at his door, but at the wooden wall beyond which lay Oleron's
+bed; and then Oleron rose, put on his dressing-gown, and admitted her. He
+was not conscious that as he did so that morning he hummed an air; but
+Mrs. Barrett lingered with her hand on the door-knob and her face a
+little averted and smiling.
+
+"De-ar me!" her soft falsetto rose. "But that will be a very o-ald tune,
+Mr. Oleron! I will not have heard it this for-ty years!"
+
+"What tune?" Oleron asked.
+
+"The tune, indeed, that you was humming, sir."
+
+Oleron had his thumb in the flap of a letter. It remained there.
+
+"_I_ was humming?... Sing it, Mrs. Barrett."
+
+Mrs. Barrett prut-prutted.
+
+"I have no voice for singing, Mr. Oleron; it was Ann Pugh was the singer
+of our family; but the tune will be very o-ald, and it is called 'The
+Beckoning Fair One.'"
+
+"Try to sing it," said Oleron, his thumb still in the envelope; and Mrs.
+Barrett, with much dimpling and confusion, hummed the air.
+
+"They do say it was sung to a harp, Mr. Oleron, and it will be very
+o-ald," she concluded.
+
+"And _I_ was singing that?"
+
+"Indeed you wass. I would not be likely to tell you lies."
+
+With a "Very well--let me have breakfast," Oleron opened his letter; but
+the trifling circumstance struck him as more odd than he would have
+admitted to himself. The phrase he had hummed had been that which he had
+associated with the falling from the tap on the evening before.
+
+
+V
+
+Even more curious than that the commonplace dripping of an ordinary
+water-tap should have tallied so closely with an actually existing air
+was another result it had, namely, that it awakened, or seemed to awaken,
+in Oleron an abnormal sensitiveness to other noises of the old house. It
+has been remarked that silence obtains its fullest and most impressive
+quality when it is broken by some minute sound; and, truth to tell, the
+place was never still. Perhaps the mildness of the spring air operated on
+its torpid old timbers; perhaps Oleron's fires caused it to stretch its
+old anatomy; and certainly a whole world of insect life bored and
+burrowed in its baulks and joists. At any rate, Oleron had only to sit
+quiet in his chair and to wait for a minute or two in order to become
+aware of such a change in the auditory scale as comes upon a man who,
+conceiving the midsummer woods to be motionless and still, all at once
+finds his ear sharpened to the crepitation of a myriad insects.
+
+And he smiled to think of man's arbitrary distinction between that which
+has life and that which has not. Here, quite apart from such recognisable
+sounds as the scampering of mice, the falling of plaster behind his
+panelling, and the popping of purses or coffins from his fire, was a
+whole house talking to him had he but known its language. Beams settled
+with a tired sigh into their old mortices; creatures ticked in the walls;
+joints cracked, boards complained; with no palpable stirring of the air
+window-sashes changed their positions with a soft knock in their frames.
+And whether the place had life in this sense or not, it had at all events
+a winsome personality. It needed but an hour of musing for Oleron to
+conceive the idea that, as his own body stood in friendly relation to his
+soul, so, by an extension and an attenuation, his habitation might
+fantastically be supposed to stand in some relation to himself. He even
+amused himself with the far-fetched fancy that he might so identify
+himself with the place that some future tenant, taking possession, might
+regard it as in a sense haunted. It would be rather a joke if he, a
+perfectly harmless author, with nothing on his mind worse than a novel he
+had discovered he must begin again, should turn out to be laying the
+foundation of a future ghost!...
+
+In proportion, however, as he felt this growing attachment to the fabric
+of his abode, Elsie Bengough, from being merely unattracted, began to
+show a dislike of the place that was more and more marked. And she did
+not scruple to speak of her aversion.
+
+"It doesn't belong to to-day at all, and for you especially it's bad,"
+she said with decision. "You're only too ready to let go your hold on
+actual things and to slip into apathy; _you_ ought to be in a place
+with concrete floors and a patent gas-meter and a tradesmen's lift. And
+it would do you all the good in the world if you had a job that made you
+scramble and rub elbows with your fellow-men. Now, if I could get you a
+job, for, say, two or three days a week, one that would allow you heaps
+of time for your proper work--would you take it?"
+
+Somehow, Oleron resented a little being diagnosed like this. He thanked
+Miss Bengough, but without a smile.
+
+"Thank you, but I don't think so. After all each of us has his own life
+to live," he could not refrain from adding.
+
+"His own life to live!... How long is it since you were out, Paul?"
+
+"About two hours."
+
+"I don't mean to buy stamps or to post a letter. How long is it since you
+had anything like a stretch?"
+
+"Oh, some little time perhaps. I don't know."
+
+"Since I was here last?"
+
+"I haven't been out much."
+
+"And has _Romilly_ progressed much better for your being cooped up?"
+
+"I think she has. I'm laying the foundations of her. I shall begin the
+actual writing presently."
+
+It seemed as if Miss Bengough had forgotten their tussle about the first
+_Romilly_. She frowned, turned half away, and then quickly turned again.
+
+"Ah!... So you've still got that ridiculous idea in your head?"
+
+"If you mean," said Oleron slowly, "that I've discarded the old
+_Romilly_, and am at work on a new one, you're right. I have still got
+that idea in my head."
+
+Something uncordial in his tone struck her; but she was a fighter. His
+own absurd sensitiveness hardened her. She gave a "Pshaw!" of impatience.
+
+"Where is the old one?" she demanded abruptly.
+
+"Why?" asked Oleron.
+
+"I want to see it. I want to show some of it to you. I want, if you're
+not wool-gathering entirely, to bring you back to your senses."
+
+This time it was he who turned his back. But when he turned round again
+he spoke more gently.
+
+"It's no good, Elsie. I'm responsible for the way I go, and you must
+allow me to go it--even if it should seem wrong to you. Believe me, I
+am giving thought to it.... The manuscript? I was on the point of burning
+it, but I didn't. It's in that window-seat, if you must see it."
+
+Miss Bengough crossed quickly to the window-seat, and lifted the lid.
+Suddenly she gave a little exclamation, and put the back of her hand
+to her mouth. She spoke over her shoulder:
+
+"You ought to knock those nails in, Paul," she said.
+
+He strode to her side.
+
+"What? What is it? What's the matter?" he asked. "I did knock them
+in--or, rather, pulled them out."
+
+"You left enough to scratch with," she replied, showing her hand. From
+the upper wrist to the knuckle of the little finger a welling red wound
+showed.
+
+"Good--Gracious!" Oleron ejaculated.... "Here, come to the bathroom and
+bathe it quickly--"
+
+He hurried her to the bathroom, turned on warm water, and bathed and
+cleansed the bad gash. Then, still holding the hand, he turned cold water
+on it, uttering broken phrases of astonishment and concern.
+
+"Good Lord, how did that happen! As far as I knew I'd ... is this water
+too cold? Does that hurt? I can't imagine how on earth ... there; that'll
+do--"
+
+"No--one moment longer--I can bear it," she murmured, her eyes closed....
+
+Presently he led her back to the sitting-room and bound the hand in one
+of his handkerchiefs; but his face did not lose its expression of
+perplexity. He had spent half a day in opening and making serviceable the
+three window-boxes, and he could not conceive how he had come to leave an
+inch and a half of rusty nail standing in the wood. He himself had opened
+the lids of each of them a dozen times and had not noticed any nail; but
+there it was....
+
+"It shall come out now, at all events," he muttered, as he went for a
+pair of pincers. And he made no mistake about it that time.
+
+Elsie Bengough had sunk into a chair, and her face was rather white; but
+in her hand was the manuscript of _Romilly_. She had not finished with
+_Romilly_ yet. Presently she returned to the charge.
+
+"Oh, Paul, it will be the greatest mistake you ever, _ever_ made if you
+do not publish this!" she said.
+
+He hung his head, genuinely distressed. He couldn't get that incident of
+the nail out of his head, and _Romilly_ occupied a second place in his
+thoughts for the moment. But still she insisted; and when presently he
+spoke it was almost as if he asked her pardon for something.
+
+"What can I say, Elsie? I can only hope that when you see the new
+version, you'll see how right I am. And if in spite of all you _don't_
+like her, well ..." he made a hopeless gesture. "Don't you see that I
+_must_ be guided by my own lights?"
+
+She was silent.
+
+"Come, Elsie," he said gently. "We've got along well so far; don't let us
+split on this."
+
+The last words had hardly passed his lips before he regretted them. She
+had been nursing her injured hand, with her eyes once more closed; but
+her lips and lids quivered simultaneously. Her voice shook as she spoke.
+
+"I can't help saying it, Paul, but you are so greatly changed."
+
+"Hush, Elsie," he murmured soothingly; "you've had a shock; rest for a
+while. How could I change?"
+
+"I don't know, but you are. You've not been yourself ever since you came
+here. I wish you'd never seen the place. It's stopped your work, it's
+making you into a person I hardly know, and it's made me horribly anxious
+about you.... Oh, how my hand is beginning to throb!"
+
+"Poor child!" he murmured. "Will you let me take you to a doctor and have
+it properly dressed?"
+
+"No--I shall be all right presently--I'll keep it raised----"
+
+She put her elbow on the back of her chair, and the bandaged hand rested
+lightly on his shoulder.
+
+At that touch an entirely new anxiety stirred suddenly within him.
+Hundreds of times previously, on their jaunts and excursions, she had
+slipped her hand within his arm as she might have slipped it into the arm
+of a brother, and he had accepted the little affectionate gesture as a
+brother might have accepted it. But now, for the first time, there rushed
+into his mind a hundred startling questions. Her eyes were still closed,
+and her head had fallen pathetically back; and there was a lost and
+ineffable smile on her parted lips. The truth broke in upon him. Good
+God!... And he had never divined it!
+
+And stranger than all was that, now that he did see that she was lost in
+love of him, there came to him, not sorrow and humility and abasement,
+but something else that he struggled in vain against--something entirely
+strange and new, that, had he analysed it, he would have found to be
+petulance and irritation and resentment and ungentleness. The sudden
+selfish prompting mastered him before he was aware. He all but gave it
+words. What was she doing there at all? Why was she not getting on with
+her own work? Why was she here interfering with his? Who had given her
+this guardianship over him that lately she had put forward so
+assertively?--"Changed?" It was she, not himself, who had changed....
+
+But by the time she had opened her eyes again he had overcome his
+resentment sufficiently to speak gently, albeit with reserve.
+
+"I wish you would let me take you to a doctor."
+
+She rose.
+
+"No, thank you, Paul," she said. "I'll go now. If I need a dressing I'll
+get one; take the other hand, please. Good-bye--"
+
+He did not attempt to detain her. He walked with her to the foot of the
+stairs. Half-way along the narrow alley she turned.
+
+"It would be a long way to come if you happened not to be in," she said;
+"I'll send you a postcard the next time."
+
+At the gate she turned again.
+
+"Leave here, Paul," she said, with a mournful look. "Everything's wrong
+with this house."
+
+Then she was gone.
+
+Oleron returned to his room. He crossed straight to the window-box. He
+opened the lid and stood long looking at it. Then he closed it again and
+turned away.
+
+"That's rather frightening," he muttered. "It's simply not possible that
+I should not have removed that nail...."
+
+
+VI
+
+Oleron knew very well what Elsie had meant when she had said that her
+next visit would be preceded by a postcard. She, too, had realised that
+at last, at last he knew--knew, and didn't want her. It gave him a
+miserable, pitiful pang, therefore, when she came again within a week,
+knocking at the door unannounced. She spoke from the landing; she did not
+intend to stay, she said; and he had to press her before she would so
+much as enter.
+
+Her excuse for calling was that she had heard of an inquiry for short
+stories that he might be wise to follow up. He thanked her. Then, her
+business over, she seemed anxious to get away again. Oleron did not seek
+to detain her; even he saw through the pretext of the stories; and he
+accompanied her down the stairs.
+
+But Elsie Bengough had no luck whatever in that house. A second accident
+befell her. Half-way down the staircase there was the sharp sound of
+splintering wood, and she checked a loud cry. Oleron knew the woodwork to
+be old, but he himself had ascended and descended frequently enough
+without mishap....
+
+Elsie had put her foot through one of the stairs.
+
+He sprang to her side in alarm.
+
+"Oh, I say! My poor girl!"
+
+She laughed hysterically.
+
+"It's my weight--I know I'm getting fat--"
+
+"Keep still--let me clear these splinters away," he muttered between his
+teeth.
+
+She continued to laugh and sob that it was her weight--she was getting
+fat--
+
+He thrust downwards at the broken boards. The extrication was no easy
+matter, and her torn boot showed him how badly the foot and ankle
+within it must be abraded.
+
+"Good God--good God!" he muttered over and over again.
+
+"I shall be too heavy for anything soon," she sobbed and laughed.
+
+But she refused to reascend and to examine her hurt.
+
+"No, let me go quickly--let me go quickly," she repeated.
+
+"But it's a frightful gash!"
+
+"No--not so bad--let me get away quickly--I'm--I'm not wanted."
+
+At her words, that she was not wanted, his head dropped as if she had
+given him a buffet.
+
+"Elsie!" he choked, brokenly and shocked.
+
+But she too made a quick gesture, as if she put something violently
+aside.
+
+"Oh, Paul, not _that_--not _you_--of course I do mean that too in a
+sense--oh, you know what I mean!... But if the other can't be, spare
+me this now! I--I wouldn't have come, but--but--oh, I did, I _did_ try to
+keep away!"
+
+It was intolerable, heartbreaking; but what could he do--what could he
+say? He did not love her...
+
+"Let me go--I'm not wanted--let me take away what's left of me--"
+
+"Dear Elsie--you are very dear to me--"
+
+But again she made the gesture, as of putting something violently aside.
+
+"No, not that--not anything less--don't offer me anything less--leave me
+a little pride--"
+
+"Let me get my hat and coat--let me take you to a doctor," he muttered.
+
+But she refused. She refused even the support of his arm. She gave
+another unsteady laugh.
+
+"I'm sorry I broke your stairs, Paul.... You will go and see about the
+short stories, won't you?"
+
+He groaned.
+
+"Then if you won't see a doctor, will you go across the square and let
+Mrs. Barrett look at you? Look, there's Barrett passing now--"
+
+The long-nosed Barrett was looking curiously down the alley, but as
+Oleron was about to call him he made off without a word. Elsie seemed
+anxious for nothing so much as to be clear of the place, and finally
+promised to go straight to a doctor, but insisted on going alone.
+
+"Good-bye," she said.
+
+And Oleron watched her until she was past the hatchet-like "To Let"
+boards, as if he feared that even they might fall upon her and maim her.
+
+That night Oleron did not dine. He had far too much on his mind. He
+walked from room to room of his flat, as if he could have walked away
+from Elsie Bengough's haunting cry that still rang in his ears. "I'm
+not wanted--don't offer me anything less--let me take away what's left
+of me--"
+
+Oh, if he could only have persuaded himself that he loved her!
+
+He walked until twilight fell, then, without lighting candles, he stirred
+up the fire and flung himself into a chair.
+
+Poor, poor Elsie!...
+
+But even while his heart ached for her, it was out of the question.
+If only he had known! If only he had used common observation! But
+those walks, those sisterly takings of the arm--what a fool he had
+been!... Well, it was too late now. It was she, not he, who must now
+act--act by keeping away. He would help her all he could. He himself
+would not sit in her presence. If she came, he would hurry her out again
+as fast as he could.... Poor, poor Elsie!
+
+His room grew dark; the fire burned dead; and he continued to sit,
+wincing from time to time as a fresh tortured phrase rang again in his
+ears.
+
+Then suddenly, he knew not why, he found himself anxious for her in a new
+sense--uneasy about her personal safety. A horrible fancy that even then
+she might be looking over an embankment down into dark water, that she
+might even now be glancing up at the hook on the door, took him. Women
+had been known to do those things.... Then there would be an inquest, and
+he himself would be called upon to identify her, and would be asked how
+she had come by an ill-healed wound on the hand and a bad abrasion of the
+ankle. Barrett would say that he had seen her leaving his house....
+
+Then he recognised that his thoughts were morbid. By an effort of will he
+put them aside, and sat for a while listening to the faint creakings
+and tickings and rappings within his panelling.... If only he could have
+married her!... But he couldn't. Her face had risen before him again
+as he had seen it on the stairs, drawn with pain and ugly and swollen
+with tears. Ugly--yes, positively blubbered; if tears were women's
+weapons, as they were said to be, such tears were weapons turned against
+themselves ... suicide again....
+
+Then all at once he found himself attentively considering her two
+accidents.
+
+Extraordinary they had been, both of them. He _could not_ have left that
+old nail standing in the wood; why, he had fetched tools specially from
+the kitchen; and he was convinced that that step that had broken beneath
+her weight had been as sound as the others. It was inexplicable. If these
+things could happen, anything could happen. There was not a beam nor a
+jamb in the place that might not fall without warning, not a plank that
+might not crash inwards, not a nail that might not become a dagger. The
+whole place was full of life even now; as he sat there in the dark he
+heard its crowds of noises as if the house had been one great
+microphone....
+
+Only half conscious that he did so, he had been sitting for some time
+identifying these noises, attributing to each crack or creak or knock its
+material cause; but there was one noise which, again not fully conscious
+of the omission, he had not sought to account for. It had last come some
+minutes ago; it came again now--a sort of soft sweeping rustle that
+seemed to hold an almost inaudibly minute crackling. For half a minute or
+so it had Oleron's attention; then his heavy thoughts were of Elsie
+Bengough again.
+
+He was nearer to loving her in that moment than he had ever been. He
+thought how to some men their loved ones were but the dearer for those
+poor mortal blemishes that tell us we are but sojourners on earth, with a
+common fate not far distant that makes it hardly worth while to do
+anything but love for the time remaining. Strangling sobs, blearing
+tears, bodies buffeted by sickness, hearts and mind callous and hard with
+the rubs of the world--how little love there would be were these things a
+barrier to love! In that sense he did love Elsie Bengough. What her
+happiness had never moved in him her sorrow almost awoke....
+
+Suddenly his meditation went. His ear had once more become conscious
+of that soft and repeated noise--the long sweep with the almost
+inaudible crackle in it. Again and again it came, with a curious
+insistence and urgency. It quickened a little as he became increasingly
+attentive ... it seemed to Oleron that it grew louder....
+
+All at once he started bolt upright in his chair, tense and listening.
+The silky rustle came again; he was trying to attach it to something....
+
+The next moment he had leapt to his feet, unnerved and terrified. His
+chair hung poised for a moment, and then went over, setting the
+fire-irons clattering as it fell. There was only one noise in the world
+like that which had caused him to spring thus to his feet....
+
+The next time it came Oleron felt behind him at the empty air with his
+hand, and backed slowly until he found himself against the wall.
+
+"God in Heaven!" The ejaculation broke from Oleron's lips. The sound had
+ceased.
+
+The next moment he had given a high cry.
+
+"What is it? What's there? _Who's_ there?"
+
+A sound of scuttling caused his knees to bend under him for a moment; but
+that, he knew, was a mouse. That was not something that his stomach
+turned sick and his mind reeled to entertain. That other sound, the like
+of which was not in the world, had now entirely ceased; and again he
+called....
+
+He called and continued to call; and then another terror, a terror of the
+sound of his own voice, seized him. He did not dare to call again. His
+shaking hand went to his pocket for a match, but found none. He thought
+there might be matches on the mantelpiece--
+
+He worked his way to the mantelpiece round a little recess, without for a
+moment leaving the wall. Then his hand encountered the mantelpiece, and
+groped along it. A box of matches fell to the hearth. He could just see
+them in the firelight, but his hand could not pick them up until he had
+cornered them inside the fender.
+
+Then he rose and struck a light.
+
+The room was as usual. He struck a second match. A candle stood on the
+table. He lighted it, and the flame sank for a moment and then burned up
+clear. Again he looked round.
+
+There was nothing.
+
+There was nothing; but there had been something, and might still be
+something. Formerly, Oleron had smiled at the fantastic thought that,
+by a merging and interplay of identities between himself and his
+beautiful room, he might be preparing a ghost for the future; it had not
+occurred to him _that there might have been a similar merging and
+coalescence in the past_. Yet with this staggering impossibility he was
+now face to face. Something did persist in the house; it had a tenant
+other than himself; and that tenant, whatsoever or whosoever, had
+appalled Oleron's soul by producing the sound of a woman brushing her
+hair.
+
+
+VII
+
+Without quite knowing how he came to be there Oleron found himself
+striding over the loose board he had temporarily placed on the step
+broken by Miss Bengough. He was hatless, and descending the stairs. Not
+until later did there return to him a hazy memory that he had left the
+candle burning on the table, had opened the door no wider than was
+necessary to allow the passage of his body, and had sidled out, closing
+the door softly behind him. At the foot of the stairs another shock
+awaited him. Something dashed with a flurry up from the disused cellars
+and disappeared out of the door. It was only a cat, but Oleron gave a
+childish sob.
+
+He passed out of the gate, and stood for a moment under the "To Let"
+boards, plucking foolishly at his lip and looking up at the glimmer
+of light behind one of his red blinds. Then, still looking over his
+shoulder, he moved stumblingly up the square. There was a small
+public-house round the corner; Oleron had never entered it; but he
+entered it now, and put down a shilling that missed the counter by
+inches.
+
+"B--b--bran--brandy," he said, and then stooped to look for the shilling.
+
+He had the little sawdusted bar to himself; what company there
+was--carters and labourers and the small tradesmen of the
+neighbourhood--was gathered in the farther compartment, beyond the space
+where the white-haired landlady moved among her taps and bottles. Oleron
+sat down on a hardwood settee with a perforated seat, drank half his
+brandy, and then, thinking he might as well drink it as spill it,
+finished it.
+
+Then he fell to wondering which of the men whose voices he heard across
+the public-house would undertake the removal of his effects on the
+morrow.
+
+In the meantime he ordered more brandy.
+
+For he did not intend to go back to that room where he had left the
+candle burning. Oh no! He couldn't have faced even the entry and the
+staircase with the broken step--certainly not that pith-white,
+fascinating room. He would go back for the present to his old
+arrangement, of workroom and separate sleeping-quarters; he would
+go to his old landlady at once--presently--when he had finished his
+brandy--and see if she could put him up for the night. His glass was
+empty now....
+
+He rose, had it refilled, and sat down again.
+
+And if anybody asked his reason for removing again? Oh, he had reason
+enough--reason enough! Nails that put themselves back into wood again
+and gashed people's hands, steps that broke when you trod on them, and
+women who came into a man's place and brushed their hair in the dark,
+were reasons enough! He was querulous and injured about it all. He had
+taken the place for himself, not for invisible women to brush their
+hair in; that lawyer fellow in Lincoln's Inn should be told so, too,
+before many hours were out; it was outrageous, letting people in for
+agreements like that!
+
+A cut-glass partition divided the compartment where Oleron sat from the
+space where the white-haired landlady moved; but it stopped seven or
+eight inches above the level of the counter. There was no partition at
+the farther bar. Presently Oleron, raising his eyes, saw that faces were
+watching him through the aperture. The faces disappeared when he looked
+at them.
+
+He moved to a corner where he could not be seen from the other bar; but
+this brought him into line with the white-haired landlady.
+
+She knew him by sight--had doubtless seen him passing and repassing; and
+presently she made a remark on the weather. Oleron did not know what he
+replied, but it sufficed to call forth the further remark that the winter
+had been a bad one for influenza, but that the spring weather seemed to
+be coming at last.... Even this slight contact with the commonplace
+steadied Oleron a little; an idle, nascent wonder whether the landlady
+brushed her hair every night, and, if so, whether it gave out those
+little electric cracklings, was shut down with a snap; and Oleron was
+better....
+
+With his next glass of brandy he was all for going back to his flat. Not
+go back? Indeed, he would go back! They should very soon see whether he
+was to be turned out of his place like that! He began to wonder why he
+was doing the rather unusual thing he was doing at that moment, unusual
+for him--sitting hatless, drinking brandy, in a public-house. Suppose he
+were to tell the white-haired landlady all about it--to tell her that a
+caller had scratched her hand on a nail, had later had the bad luck to
+put her foot through a rotten stair, and that he himself, in an old house
+full of squeaks and creaks and whispers, had heard a minute noise and had
+bolted from it in fright--what would she think of him? That he was mad,
+of course.... Pshaw! The real truth of the matter was that he hadn't been
+doing enough work to occupy him. He had been dreaming his days away,
+filling his head with a lot of moonshine about a new _Romilly_ (as if the
+old one was not good enough), and now he was surprised that the devil
+should enter an empty head!
+
+Yes, he would go back. He would take a walk in the air first--he hadn't
+walked enough lately--and then he would take himself in hand, settle
+the hash of that sixteenth chapter of _Romilly_ (fancy, he had actually
+been fool enough to think of destroying fifteen chapters!) and
+thenceforward he would remember that he had obligations to his fellow-men
+and work to do in the world. There was the matter in a nutshell.
+
+He finished his brandy and went out.
+
+He had walked for some time before any other bearing of the matter than
+that on himself occurred to him. At first, the fresh air had increased
+the heady effect of the brandy he had drunk; but afterwards his mind grew
+clearer than it had been since morning. And the clearer it grew, the less
+final did his boastful self-assurances become, and the firmer his
+conviction that, when all explanations had been made, there remained
+something that could not be explained. His hysteria of an hour before had
+passed; he grew steadily calmer; but the disquieting conviction remained.
+A deep fear took possession of him. It was a fear for Elsie.
+
+For something in his place was inimical to her safety. Of themselves, her
+two accidents might not have persuaded him of this; but she herself had
+said it. "_I'm not wanted here_..." And she had declared that there was
+something wrong with the place. She had seen it before he had. Well and
+good. One thing stood out clearly: namely, that if this was so, she must
+be kept away for quite another reason than that which had so confounded
+and humiliated Oleron. Luckily she had expressed her intention of staying
+away; she must be held to that intention. He must see to it.
+
+And he must see to it all the more that he now saw his first impulse,
+never to set foot in the place again, was absurd. People did not do that
+kind of thing. With Elsie made secure, he could not with any respect to
+himself suffer himself to be turned out by a shadow, nor even by a danger
+merely because it was a danger. He had to live somewhere, and he would
+live there. He must return.
+
+He mastered the faint chill of fear that came with the decision, and
+turned in his walk abruptly. Should fear grow on him again he would,
+perhaps, take one more glass of brandy....
+
+But by the time he reached the short street that led to the square he was
+too late for more brandy. The little public-house was still lighted, but
+closed, and one or two men were standing talking on the kerb. Oleron
+noticed that a sudden silence fell on them as he passed, and he noticed
+further that the long-nosed Barrett, whom he passed a little lower down,
+did not return his good-night. He turned in at the broken gate, hesitated
+merely an instant in the alley, and then mounted his stairs again.
+
+Only an inch of candle remained in the Sheffield stick, and Oleron did
+not light another one. Deliberately he forced himself to take it up and
+to make the tour of his five rooms before retiring. It was as he returned
+from the kitchen across his little hall that he noticed that a letter lay
+on the floor. He carried it into his sitting-room, and glanced at the
+envelope before opening it.
+
+It was unstamped, and had been put into the door by hand. Its handwriting
+was clumsy, and it ran from beginning to end without comma or period.
+Oleron read the first line, turned to the signature, and then finished
+the letter.
+
+It was from the man Barrett, and it informed Oleron that he, Barrett,
+would be obliged if Mr. Oleron would make other arrangements for the
+preparing of his breakfasts and the cleaning-out of his place. The sting
+lay in the tail, that is to say, the postscript. This consisted of a text
+of Scripture. It embodied an allusion that could only be to Elsie
+Bengough....
+
+A seldom-seen frown had cut deeply into Oleron's brow. So! That was it!
+Very well; they would see about that on the morrow.... For the rest, this
+seemed merely another reason why Elsie should keep away....
+
+Then his suppressed rage broke out....
+
+The foul-minded lot! The devil himself could not have given a leer at
+anything that had ever passed between Paul Oleron and Elsie Bengough,
+yet this nosing rascal must be prying and talking!...
+
+Oleron crumpled the paper up, held it in the candle flame, and then
+ground the ashes under his heel.
+
+One useful purpose, however, the letter had served: it had created in
+Oleron a wrathful blaze that effectually banished pale shadows.
+Nevertheless, one other puzzling circumstance was to close the day. As he
+undressed, he chanced to glance at his bed. The coverlets bore an impress
+as if somebody had lain on them. Oleron could not remember that he
+himself had lain down during the day--off-hand, he would have said that
+certainly he had not; but after all he could not be positive. His
+indignation for Elsie, acting possibly with the residue of the brandy in
+him, excluded all other considerations; and he put out his candle, lay
+down, and passed immediately into a deep and dreamless sleep, which, in
+the absence of Mrs. Barrett's morning call, lasted almost once round the
+clock.
+
+
+VIII
+
+To the man who pays heed to that voice within him which warns him that
+twilight and danger are settling over his soul, terror is apt to appear
+an absolute thing, against which his heart must be safeguarded in a twink
+unless there is to take place an alteration in the whole range and scale
+of his nature. Mercifully, he has never far to look for safeguards. Of
+the immediate and small and common and momentary things of life, of
+usages and observances and modes and conventions, he builds up
+fortifications against the powers of darkness. He is even content that,
+not terror only, but joy also, should for working purposes be placed in
+the category of the absolute things; and the last treason he will commit
+will be that breaking down of terms and limits that strikes, not at one
+man, but at the welfare of the souls of all.
+
+In his own person, Oleron began to commit this treason. He began to
+commit it by admitting the inexplicable and horrible to an increasing
+familiarity. He did it insensibly, unconsciously, by a neglect of the
+things that he now regarded it as an impertinence in Elsie Bengough to
+have prescribed. Two months before, the words "a haunted house," applied
+to his lovely bemusing dwelling, would have chilled his marrow; now,
+his scale of sensation becoming depressed, he could ask "Haunted by
+what?" and remain unconscious that horror, when it can be proved to be
+relative, by so much loses its proper quality. He was setting aside the
+landmarks. Mists and confusion had begun to enwrap him.
+
+And he was conscious of nothing so much as of a voracious
+inquisitiveness. He wanted _to know_. He was resolved to know. Nothing
+but the knowledge would satisfy him; and craftily he cast about for means
+whereby he might attain it.
+
+He might have spared his craft. The matter was the easiest imaginable. As
+in time past he had known, in his writing, moments when his thoughts
+had seemed to rise of themselves and to embody themselves in words not to
+be altered afterwards, so now the questions he put himself seemed to be
+answered even in the moment of their asking. There was exhilaration in
+the swift, easy processes. He had known no so such joy in his own power
+since the days when his writing had been a daily freshness and a delight
+to him. It was almost as if the course he must pursue was being dictated
+to him.
+
+And the first thing he must do, of course, was to define the problem. He
+defined it in terms of mathematics. Granted that he had not the place to
+himself; granted that the old house had inexpressibly caught and engaged
+his spirit; granted that, by virtue of the common denominator of the
+place, this unknown co-tenant stood in some relation to himself: what
+next? Clearly, the nature of the other numerator must be ascertained.
+
+And how? Ordinarily this would not have seemed simple, but to Oleron it
+was now pellucidly clear. The key, _of course_, lay in his half-written
+novel--or rather, in both _Romillys_, the old and the proposed new one.
+
+A little while before Oleron would have thought himself mad to have
+embraced such an opinion; now he accepted the dizzying hypothesis without
+a quiver.
+
+He began to examine the first and second _Romillys_.
+
+From the moment of his doing so the thing advanced by leaps and bounds.
+Swiftly he reviewed the history of the _Romilly_ of the fifteen chapters.
+He remembered clearly now that he had found her insufficient on the very
+first morning on which he had sat down to work in his new place. Other
+instances of his aversion leaped up to confirm his obscure investigation.
+There had come the night when he had hardly forborne to throw the whole
+thing into the fire; and the next morning he had begun the planning of
+the new _Romilly_. It had been on that morning that Mrs. Barrett,
+overhearing him humming a brief phrase that the dripping of a tap the
+night before had suggested, had informed him that he was singing some air
+he had never in his life heard before, called "The Beckoning Fair
+One."...
+
+The Beckoning Fair One!...
+
+With scarcely a pause in thought he continued:
+
+The first _Romilly_ having been definitely thrown over, the second had
+instantly fastened herself upon him, clamouring for birth in his brain.
+He even fancied now, looking back, that there had been something like
+passion, hate almost, in the supplanting, and that more than once a stray
+thought given to his discarded creation had--(it was astonishing how
+credible Oleron found the almost unthinkable idea)--had offended the
+supplanter.
+
+Yet that a malignancy almost homicidal should be extended to his
+fiction's poor mortal prototype....
+
+In spite of his inuring to a scale in which the horrible was now a thing
+to be fingered and turned this way and that, a "Good God!" broke from
+Oleron.
+
+This intrusion of the first _Romilly's_ prototype into his thought
+again was a factor that for the moment brought his inquiry into the
+nature of his problem to a termination; the mere thought of Elsie was
+fatal to anything abstract. For another thing, he could not yet think of
+that letter of Barrett's, nor of a little scene that had followed it,
+without a mounting of colour and a quick contraction of the brow. For,
+wisely or not, he had had that argument out at once. Striding across the
+square on the following morning, he had bearded Barrett on his own
+doorstep. Coming back again a few minutes later, he had been strongly of
+opinion that he had only made matters worse. The man had been vagueness
+itself. He had not been to be either challenged or browbeaten into
+anything more definite than a muttered farrago in which the words
+"Certain things ... Mrs. Barrett ... respectable house ... if the cap
+fits ... proceedings that shall be nameless," had been constantly
+repeated.
+
+"Not that I make any charge--" he had concluded.
+
+"Charge!" Oleron had cried.
+
+"I 'ave my idears of things, as I don't doubt you 'ave yours--"
+
+"Ideas--mine!" Oleron had cried wrathfully, immediately dropping his
+voice as heads had appeared at windows of the square. "Look you here, my
+man; you've an unwholesome mind, which probably you can't help, but a
+tongue which you can help, and shall! If there is a breath of this
+repeated ..."
+
+"I'll not be talked to on my own doorstep like this by anybody,..."
+Barrett had blustered....
+
+"You shall, and I'm doing it ..."
+
+"Don't you forget there's a Gawd above all, Who 'as said..."
+
+"You're a low scandalmonger!..."
+
+And so forth, continuing badly what was already badly begun. Oleron had
+returned wrathfully to his own house, and thenceforward, looking out
+of his windows, had seen Barrett's face at odd times, lifting blinds or
+peering round curtains, as if he sought to put himself in possession of
+Heaven knew what evidence, in case it should be required of him.
+
+The unfortunate occurrence made certain minor differences in Oleron's
+domestic arrangements. Barrett's tongue, he gathered, had already been
+busy; he was looked at askance by the dwellers of the square; and he
+judged it better, until he should be able to obtain other help, to make
+his purchases of provisions a little farther afield rather than at the
+small shops of the immediate neighbourhood. For the rest, housekeeping
+was no new thing to him, and he would resume his old bachelor habits....
+
+Besides, he was deep in certain rather abstruse investigations, in which
+it was better that he should not be disturbed.
+
+He was looking out of his window one midday rather tired, not very well,
+and glad that it was not very likely he would have to stir out of doors,
+when he saw Elsie Bengough crossing the square towards his house. The
+weather had broken; it was a raw and gusty day; and she had to force
+her way against the wind that set her ample skirts bellying about her
+opulent figure and her veil spinning and streaming behind her.
+
+Oleron acted swiftly and instinctively. Seizing his hat, he sprang to the
+door and descended the stairs at a run. A sort of panic had seized him.
+She must be prevented from setting foot in the place. As he ran along the
+alley he was conscious that his eyes went up to the eaves as if something
+drew them. He did not know that a slate might not accidentally fall....
+
+He met her at the gate, and spoke with curious volubleness.
+
+"This is really too bad, Elsie! Just as I'm urgently called away! I'm
+afraid it can't be helped though, and that you'll have to think me an
+inhospitable beast." He poured it out just as it came into his head.
+
+She asked if he was going to town.
+
+"Yes, yes--to town," he replied. "I've got to call on--on Chambers. You
+know Chambers, don't you? No, I remember you don't; a big man you once
+saw me with.... I ought to have gone yesterday, and--" this he felt to be
+a brilliant effort--"and he's going out of town this afternoon. To
+Brighton. I had a letter from him this morning."
+
+He took her arm and led her up the square. She had to remind him that his
+way to town lay in the other direction.
+
+"Of course--how stupid of me!" he said, with a little loud laugh. "I'm so
+used to going the other way with you--of course; it's the other way to
+the bus. Will you come along with me? I am so awfully sorry it's happened
+like this...."
+
+They took the street to the bus terminus.
+
+This time Elsie bore no signs of having gone through interior struggles.
+If she detected anything unusual in his manner she made no comment, and
+he, seeing her calm, began to talk less recklessly through silences. By
+the time they reached the bus terminus, nobody, seeing the pallid-faced
+man without an overcoat and the large ample-skirted girl at his side,
+would have supposed that one of them was ready to sink on his knees for
+thankfulness that he had, as he believed, saved the other from a wildly
+unthinkable danger.
+
+They mounted to the top of the bus, Oleron protesting that he should not
+miss his overcoat, and that he found the day, if anything, rather
+oppressively hot. They sat down on a front seat.
+
+Now that this meeting was forced upon him, he had something else to say
+that would make demands upon his tact. It had been on his mind for some
+time, and was, indeed, peculiarly difficult to put. He revolved it for
+some minutes, and then, remembering the success of his story of a sudden
+call to town, cut the knot of his difficulty with another lie.
+
+"I'm thinking of going away for a little while, Elsie," he said.
+
+She merely said, "Oh?"
+
+"Somewhere for a change. I need a change. I think I shall go to-morrow,
+or the day after. Yes, to-morrow, I think."
+
+"Yes," she replied.
+
+"I don't quite know how long I shall be," he continued. "I shall have to
+let you know when I am back."
+
+"Yes, let me know," she replied in an even tone.
+
+The tone was, for her, suspiciously even. He was a little uneasy.
+
+"You don't ask me where I'm going," he said, with a little cumbrous
+effort to rally her.
+
+She was looking straight before her, past the bus-driver.
+
+"I know," she said.
+
+He was startled. "How, you know?"
+
+"You're not going anywhere," she replied.
+
+He found not a word to say. It was a minute or so before she continued,
+in the same controlled voice she had employed from the start.
+
+"You're not going anywhere. You weren't going out this morning. You only
+came out because I appeared; don't behave as if we were strangers, Paul."
+
+A flush of pink had mounted to his cheeks. He noticed that the wind had
+given her the pink of early rhubarb. Still he found nothing to say.
+
+"Of course, you ought to go away," she continued. "I don't know whether
+you look at yourself often in the glass, but you're rather noticeable.
+Several people have turned to look at you this morning. So, of course,
+you ought to go away. But you won't, and I know why."
+
+He shivered, coughed a little, and then broke silence.
+
+"Then if you know, there's no use in continuing this discussion," he said
+curtly.
+
+"Not for me, perhaps, but there is for you," she replied. "Shall I tell
+you what I know?"
+
+"No," he said in a voice slightly raised.
+
+"No?" she asked, her round eyes earnestly on him.
+
+"No."
+
+Again he was getting out of patience with her; again he was conscious of
+the strain. Her devotion and fidelity and love plagued him; she was only
+humiliating both herself and him. It would have been bad enough had he
+ever, by word or deed, given her cause for thus fastening herself on
+him ... but there; that was the worst of that kind of life for a woman.
+Women such as she, business women, in and out of offices all the time,
+always, whether they realised it or not, made comradeship a cover for
+something else. They accepted the unconventional status, came and
+went freely, as men did, were honestly taken by men at their own
+valuation--and then it turned out to be the other thing after all, and
+they went and fell in love. No wonder there was gossip in shops and
+squares and public houses! In a sense the gossipers were in the right of
+it. Independent, yet not efficient; with some of womanhood's graces
+forgone, and yet with all the woman's hunger and need; half
+sophisticated, yet not wise; Oleron was tired of it all....
+
+And it was time he told her so.
+
+"I suppose," he said tremblingly, looking down between his knees, "I
+suppose the real trouble is in the life women who earn their own living
+are obliged to lead."
+
+He could not tell in what sense she took the lame generality; she merely
+replied, "I suppose so."
+
+"It can't be helped," he continued, "but you do sacrifice a good deal."
+
+She agreed: a good deal; and then she added after a moment, "What, for
+instance?"
+
+"You may or may not be gradually attaining a new status, but you're in a
+false position to-day."
+
+It was very likely, she said; she hadn't thought of it much in that
+light--
+
+"And," he continued desperately, "you're bound to suffer. Your most
+innocent acts are misunderstood; motives you never dreamed of are
+attributed to you; and in the end it comes to--" he hesitated a moment
+and then took the plunge, "--to the sidelong look and the leer."
+
+She took his meaning with perfect ease. She merely shivered a little as
+she pronounced the name.
+
+"Barrett?"
+
+His silence told her the rest.
+
+Anything further that was to be said must come from her. It came as the
+bus stopped at a stage and fresh passengers mounted the stairs.
+
+"You'd better get down here and go back, Paul," she said. "I understand
+perfectly--perfectly. It isn't Barrett. You'd be able to deal with
+Barrett. It's merely convenient for you to say it's Barrett. I know what
+it is ... but you said I wasn't to tell you that. Very well. But before
+you go let me tell you why I came up this morning."
+
+In a dull tone he asked her why. Again she looked straight before her as
+she replied:
+
+"I came to force your hand. Things couldn't go on as they have been
+going, you know; and now that's all over."
+
+"All over," he repeated stupidly.
+
+"All over. I want you now to consider yourself, as far as I'm concerned,
+perfectly free. I make only one reservation."
+
+He hardly had the spirit to ask her what that was.
+
+"If _I_ merely need _you_," she said, "please don't give that a thought;
+that's nothing; I shan't come near for that. But," she dropped her voice,
+"if _you're_ in need of _me_, Paul--I shall know if you are, _and you
+will be_--then I shall come at no matter what cost. You understand that?"
+
+He could only groan.
+
+"So that's understood," she concluded. "And I think that's all. Now go
+back. I should advise you to walk back, for you're shivering--good-bye--"
+
+She gave him a cold hand, and he descended. He turned on the edge of the
+kerb as the bus started again. For the first time in all the years he had
+known her she parted from him with no smile and no wave of her long arm.
+
+
+IX
+
+He stood on the kerb plunged in misery, looking after her as long as she
+remained in sight; but almost instantly with her disappearance he felt
+the heaviness lift a little from his spirit. She had given him his
+liberty; true, there was a sense in which he had never parted with it,
+but now was no time for splitting hairs; he was free to act, and all was
+clear ahead. Swiftly the sense of lightness grew on him: it became a
+positive rejoicing in his liberty; and before he was halfway home he had
+decided what must be done next.
+
+The vicar of the parish in which his dwelling was situated lived within
+ten minutes of the square. To his house Oleron turned his steps. It was
+necessary that he should have all the information he could get about this
+old house with the insurance marks and the sloping "To Let" boards, and
+the vicar was the person most likely to be able to furnish it. This last
+preliminary out of the way, and--aha! Oleron chuckled--things might be
+expected to happen!
+
+But he gained less information than he had hoped for. The house, the
+vicar said, was old--but there needed no vicar to tell Oleron that; it
+was reputed (Oleron pricked up his ears) to be haunted--but there were
+few old houses about which some such rumour did not circulate among the
+ignorant; and the deplorable lack of Faith of the modern world, the vicar
+thought, did not tend to dissipate these superstitions. For the rest,
+his manner was the soothing manner of one who prefers not to make
+statements without knowing how they will be taken by his hearer. Oleron
+smiled as he perceived this.
+
+"You may leave my nerves out of the question," he said. "How long has the
+place been empty?"
+
+"A dozen years, I should say," the vicar replied.
+
+"And the last tenant--did you know him--or her?" Oleron was conscious of
+a tingling of his nerves as he offered the vicar the alternative of sex.
+
+"Him," said the vicar. "A man. If I remember rightly, his name was
+Madley; an artist. He was a great recluse; seldom went out of the place,
+and--" the vicar hesitated and then broke into a little gush of candour
+"--and since you appear to have come for this information, and since it
+is better that the truth should be told than that garbled versions should
+get about, I don't mind saying that this man Madley died there, under
+somewhat unusual circumstances. It was ascertained at the post-mortem
+that there was not a particle of food in his stomach, although he was
+found to be not without money. And his frame was simply worn out. Suicide
+was spoken of, but you'll agree with me that deliberate starvation is, to
+say the least, an uncommon form of suicide. An open verdict was
+returned."
+
+"Ah!" said Oleron.... "Does there happen to be any comprehensive history
+of this parish?"
+
+"No; partial ones only. I myself am not guiltless of having made a number
+of notes on its purely ecclesiastical history, its registers and so
+forth, which I shall be happy to show you if you would care to see them;
+but it is a large parish, I have only one curate, and my leisure, as you
+will readily understand ..."
+
+The extent of the parish and the scantiness of the vicar's leisure
+occupied the remainder of the interview, and Oleron thanked the vicar,
+took his leave, and walked slowly home.
+
+He walked slowly for a reason, twice turning away from the house within a
+stone's-throw of the gate and taking another turn of twenty minutes or
+so. He had a very ticklish piece of work now before him; it required the
+greatest mental concentration; it was nothing less than to bring his
+mind, if he might, into such a state of unpreoccupation and receptivity
+that he should see the place as he had seen it on that morning when,
+his removal accomplished, he had sat down to begin the sixteenth chapter
+of the first _Romilly_.
+
+For, could he recapture that first impression, he now hoped for far more
+from it. Formerly, he had carried no end of mental lumber. Before the
+influence of the place had been able to find him out at all, it had had
+the inertia of those dreary chapters to overcome. No results had shown.
+The process had been one of slow saturation, charging, filling up to a
+brim. But now he was light, unburdened, rid at last both of that
+_Romilly_ and of her prototype. Now for the new unknown, coy, jealous,
+bewitching, Beckoning Fair!...
+
+At half-past two of the afternoon he put his key into the Yale lock,
+entered, and closed the door behind him....
+
+His fantastic attempt was instantly and astonishingly successful. He
+could have shouted with triumph as he entered the room; it was as if he
+had _escaped_ into it. Once more, as in the days when his writing had had
+a daily freshness and wonder and promise for him, he was conscious of
+that new ease and mastery and exhilaration and release. The air of the
+place seemed to hold more oxygen; as if his own specific gravity had
+changed, his very tread seemed less ponderable. The flowers in the bowls,
+the fair proportions of the meadowsweet-coloured panels and mouldings,
+the polished floor, and the lofty and faintly starred ceiling, fairly
+laughed their welcome. Oleron actually laughed back, and spoke aloud.
+
+"Oh, you're pretty, pretty!" he flattered it.
+
+Then he lay down on his couch.
+
+He spent that afternoon as a convalescent who expected a dear visitor
+might have spent it--in a delicious vacancy, smiling now and then as
+if in his sleep, and ever lifting drowsy and contented eyes to his
+alluring surroundings. He lay thus until darkness came, and, with
+darkness, the nocturnal noises of the old house....
+
+But if he waited for any specific happening, he waited in vain.
+
+He waited similarly in vain on the morrow, maintaining, though with less
+ease, that sensitised-plate-like condition of his mind. Nothing occurred
+to give it an impression. Whatever it was which he so patiently wooed, it
+seemed to be both shy and exacting.
+
+Then on the third day he thought he understood. A look of gentle drollery
+and cunning came into his eyes, and he chuckled.
+
+"Oho, oho!... Well, if the wind sits in _that_ quarter we must see what
+else there is to be done. What is there, now?... No, I won't send for
+Elsie; we don't need a wheel to break the butterfly on; we won't go to
+those lengths, my butterfly...."
+
+He was standing musing, thumbing his lean jaw, looking aslant; suddenly
+he crossed to his hall, took down his hat, and went out.
+
+"My lady is coquettish, is she? Well, we'll see what a little neglect
+will do," he chuckled as he went down the stairs.
+
+He sought a railway station, got into a train, and spent the rest of the
+day in the country. Oh, yes: Oleron thought _he_ was the man to deal with
+Fair Ones who beckoned, and invited, and then took refuge in shyness and
+hanging back!
+
+He did not return until after eleven that night.
+
+"_Now_, my Fair Beckoner!" he murmured as he walked along the alley and
+felt in his pocket for his keys....
+
+Inside his flat, he was perfectly composed, perfectly deliberate,
+exceedingly careful not to give himself away. As if to intimate that he
+intended to retire immediately, he lighted only a single candle; and as
+he set out with it on his nightly round he affected to yawn. He went
+first into his kitchen. There was a full moon, and a lozenge of
+moonlight, almost peacock-blue by contrast with his candle-frame, lay on
+the floor. The window was uncurtained, and he could see the reflection of
+the candle, and, faintly, that of his own face, as he moved about. The
+door of the powder-closet stood a little ajar, and he closed it before
+sitting down to remove his boots on the chair with the cushion made of
+the folded harp-bag. From the kitchen he passed to the bathroom. There,
+another slant of blue moonlight cut the windowsill and lay across the
+pipes on the wall. He visited his seldom-used study, and stood for a
+moment gazing at the silvered roofs across the square. Then, walking
+straight through his sitting-room, his stockinged feet making no noise,
+he entered his bedroom and put the candle on the chest of drawers. His
+face all this time wore no expression save that of tiredness. He had
+never been wilier nor more alert.
+
+His small bedroom fireplace was opposite the chest of drawers on which
+the mirror stood, and his bed and the window occupied the remaining
+sides of the room. Oleron drew down his blind, took off his coat, and
+then stooped to get his slippers from under the bed.
+
+He could have given no reason for the conviction, but that the
+manifestation that for two days had been withheld was close at hand he
+never for an instant doubted. Nor, though he could not form the faintest
+guess of the shape it might take, did he experience fear. Startling or
+surprising it might be; he was prepared for that; but that was all; his
+scale of sensation had become depressed. His hand moved this way and that
+under the bed in search of his slippers....
+
+But for all his caution and method and preparedness, his heart all at
+once gave a leap and a pause that was almost horrid. His hand had found
+the slippers, but he was still on his knees; save for this circumstance
+he would have fallen. The bed was a low one; the groping for the slippers
+accounted for the turn of his head to one side; and he was careful to
+keep the attitude until he had partly recovered his self-possession. When
+presently he rose there was a drop of blood on his lower lip where he had
+caught at it with his teeth, and his watch had jerked out of the pocket
+of his waistcoat and was dangling at the end of its short leather
+guard....
+
+Then, before the watch had ceased its little oscillation, he was himself
+again.
+
+In the middle of his mantelpiece there stood a picture, a portrait of his
+grandmother; he placed himself before this picture, so that he could see
+in the glass of it the steady flame of the candle that burned behind him
+on the chest of drawers. He could see also in the picture-glass the
+little glancings of light from the bevels and facets of the objects about
+the mirror and candle. But he could see more. These twinklings and
+reflections and re-reflections did not change their position; but there
+was one gleam that had motion. It was fainter than the rest, and it moved
+up and down through the air. It was the reflection of the candle on
+Oleron's black vulcanite comb, and each of its downward movements was
+accompanied by a silky and crackling rustle.
+
+Oleron, watching what went on in the glass of his grandmother's portrait,
+continued to play his part. He felt for his dangling watch and began
+slowly to wind it up. Then, for a moment ceasing to watch, he began to
+empty his trousers pockets and to place methodically in a little row on
+the mantelpiece the pennies and halfpennies he took from them. The
+sweeping, minutely electric noise filled the whole bedroom, and had
+Oleron altered his point of observation he could have brought the dim
+gleam of the moving comb so into position that it would almost have
+outlined his grandmother's head.
+
+Any other head of which it might have been following the outline was
+invisible.
+
+Oleron finished the emptying of his pockets; then, under cover of another
+simulated yawn, not so much summoning his resolution as overmastered by
+an exhorbitant curiosity, he swung suddenly round. That which was being
+combed was still not to be seen, but the comb did not stop. It had
+altered its angle a little, and had moved a little to the left. It was
+passing, in fairly regular sweeps, from a point rather more than five
+feet from the ground, in a direction roughly vertical, to another point a
+few inches below the level of the chest of drawers.
+
+Oleron continued to act to admiration. He walked to his little washstand
+in the corner, poured out water, and began to wash his hands. He removed
+his waistcoat, and continued his preparations for bed. The combing did
+not cease, and he stood for a moment in thought. Again his eyes twinkled.
+The next was very cunning--
+
+"Hm!... _I think I'll read for a quarter of an hour_," he said aloud....
+
+He passed out of the room.
+
+He was away a couple of minutes; when he returned again the room was
+suddenly quiet. He glanced at the chest of drawers; the comb lay still,
+between the collar he had removed and a pair of gloves. Without
+hesitation Oleron put out his hand and picked it up. It was an ordinary
+eighteenpenny comb, taken from a card in a chemist's shop, of a substance
+of a definite specific gravity, and no more capable of rebellion against
+the Laws by which it existed than are the worlds that keep their orbits
+through the void. Oleron put it down again; then he glanced at the bundle
+of papers he held in his hand. What he had gone to fetch had been the
+fifteen chapters of the original _Romilly_.
+
+"Hm!" he muttered as he threw the manuscript into a chair.... "As I
+thought.... She's just blindly, ragingly, murderously jealous."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the night after that, and on the following night, and for many nights
+and days, so many that he began to be uncertain about the count of them,
+Oleron, courting, cajoling, neglecting, threatening, beseeching, eaten
+out with unappeased curiosity and regardless that his life was becoming
+one consuming passion and desire, continued his search for the unknown
+co-numerator of his abode.
+
+
+X
+
+As time went on, it came to pass that few except the postman mounted
+Oleron's stairs; and since men who do not write letters receive few, even
+the postman's tread became so infrequent that it was not heard more than
+once or twice a week. There came a letter from Oleron's publishers,
+asking when they might expect to receive the manuscript of his new book;
+he delayed for some days to answer it, and finally forgot it. A second
+letter came, which also he failed to answer. He received no third.
+
+The weather grew bright and warm. The privet bushes among the
+chopper-like notice-boards flowered, and in the streets where Oleron did
+his shopping the baskets of flower-women lined the kerbs. Oleron
+purchased flowers daily; his room clamoured for flowers, fresh and
+continually renewed; and Oleron did not stint its demands. Nevertheless,
+the necessity for going out to buy them began to irk him more and more,
+and it was with a greater and ever greater sense of relief that he
+returned home again. He began to be conscious that again his scale of
+sensation had suffered a subtle change--a change that was not restoration
+to its former capacity, but an extension and enlarging that once more
+included terror. It admitted it in an entirely new form. _Lux orco,
+tenebrae Jovi_. The name of this terror was agoraphobia. Oleron had begun
+to dread air and space and the horror that might pounce upon the
+unguarded back.
+
+Presently he so contrived it that his food and flowers were delivered
+daily at his door. He rubbed his hands when he had hit upon this
+expedient. That was better! Now he could please himself whether he went
+out or not....
+
+Quickly he was confirmed in his choice. It became his pleasure to remain
+immured.
+
+But he was not happy--or, if he was, his happiness took an extraordinary
+turn. He fretted discontentedly, could sometimes have wept for mere
+weakness and misery; and yet he was dimly conscious that he would not
+have exchanged his sadness for all the noisy mirth of the world outside.
+And speaking of noise: noise, much noise, now caused him the acutest
+discomfort. It was hardly more to be endured than that new-born fear that
+kept him, on the increasingly rare occasions when he did go out, sidling
+close to walls and feeling friendly railings with his hand. He moved from
+room to room softly and in slippers, and sometimes stood for many seconds
+closing a door so gently that not a sound broke the stillness that was in
+itself a delight. Sunday now became an intolerable day to him, for, since
+the coming of the fine weather, there had begun to assemble in the square
+under his windows each Sunday morning certain members of the sect to
+which the long-nosed Barrett adhered. These came with a great drum and
+large brass-bellied instruments; men and women uplifted anguished voices,
+struggling with their God; and Barrett himself, with upraised face and
+closed eyes and working brows, prayed that the sound of his voice might
+penetrate the ears of all unbelievers--as it certainly did Oleron's. One
+day, in the middle of one of these rhapsodies, Oleron sprang to his blind
+and pulled it down, and heard as he did so his own name made the subject
+of a fresh torrent of outpouring.
+
+And sometimes, but not as expecting a reply, Oleron stood still and
+called softly. Once or twice he called "Romilly!" and then waited; but
+more often his whispering did not take the shape of a name.
+
+There was one spot in particular of his abode that he began to haunt with
+increasing persistency. This was just within the opening of his bedroom
+door. He had discovered one day that by opening every door in his place
+(always excepting the outer one, which he only opened unwillingly) and by
+placing himself on this particular spot, he could actually see to a
+greater or less extent into each of his five rooms without changing his
+position. He could see the whole of his sitting-room, all of his bedroom
+except the part hidden by the open door, and glimpses of his kitchen,
+bathroom, and of his rarely used study. He was often in this place,
+breathless and with his finger on his lip. One day, as he stood there, he
+suddenly found himself wondering whether this Madley, of whom the vicar
+had spoken, had ever discovered the strategic importance of the bedroom
+entry.
+
+Light, moreover, now caused him greater disquietude than did darkness.
+Direct sunlight, of which, as the sun passed daily round the house, each
+of his rooms had now its share, was like a flame in his brain; and even
+diffused light was a dull and numbing ache. He began, at successive hours
+of the day, one after another, to lower his crimson blinds. He made short
+and daring excursions in order to do this; but he was ever careful to
+leave his retreat open, in case he should have sudden need of it.
+Presently this lowering of the blinds had become a daily methodical
+exercise, and his rooms, when he had been his round, had the blood-red
+half-light of a photographer's darkroom.
+
+One day, as he drew down the blind of his little study and backed in good
+order out of the room again, he broke into a soft laugh.
+
+"_That_ bilks Mr. Barrett!" he said; and the baffling of Barrett
+continued to afford him mirth for an hour.
+
+But on another day, soon after, he had a fright that left him trembling
+also for an hour. He had seized the cord to darken the window over the
+seat in which he had found the harp-bag, and was standing with his back
+well protected in the embrasure, when he thought he saw the tail of a
+black-and-white check skirt disappear round the corner of the house. He
+could not be sure--had he run to the window of the other wall, which was
+blinded, the skirt must have been already past--but he was _almost_ sure
+that it was Elsie. He listened in an agony of suspense for her tread on
+the stairs....
+
+But no tread came, and after three or four minutes he drew a long breath
+of relief.
+
+"By Jove, but that would have compromised me horribly!" he muttered....
+
+And he continued to mutter from time to time, "Horribly
+compromising ... _no_ woman would stand that ... not _any_ kind of
+woman ... oh, compromising in the extreme!"
+
+Yet he was not happy. He could not have assigned the cause of the fits of
+quiet weeping which took him sometimes; they came and went, like the
+fitful illumination of the clouds that travelled over the square; and
+perhaps, after all, if he was not happy, he was not unhappy. Before
+he could be unhappy something must have been withdrawn, and nothing had
+yet been withdrawn from him, for nothing had been granted. He was waiting
+for that granting, in that flower-laden, frightfully enticing apartment
+of his, with the pith-white walls tinged and subdued by the crimson
+blinds to a blood-like gloom.
+
+He paid no heed to it that his stock of money was running perilously low,
+nor that he had ceased to work. Ceased to work? He had not ceased to
+work. They knew very little about it who supposed that Oleron had ceased
+to work! He was in truth only now beginning to work. He was preparing
+such a work ... such a work ... such a Mistress was a-making in the
+gestation of his Art ... let him but get this period of probation and
+poignant waiting over and men should see.... How _should_ men know her,
+this Fair One of Oleron's, until Oleron himself knew her? Lovely radiant
+creations are not thrown off like How-d'ye-do's. The men to whom it is
+committed to father them must weep wretched tears, as Oleron did, must
+swell with vain presumptuous hopes, as Oleron did, must pursue, as Oleron
+pursued, the capricious, fair, mocking, slippery, eager Spirit that, ever
+eluding, ever sees to it that the chase does not slacken. Let Oleron but
+hunt this Huntress a little longer... he would have her sparkling
+and panting in his arms yet.... Oh no: they were very far from the truth
+who supposed that Oleron had ceased to work!
+
+And if all else was falling away from Oleron, gladly he was letting it
+go. So do we all when our Fair Ones beckon. Quite at the beginning we
+wink, and promise ourselves that we will put Her Ladyship through her
+paces, neglect her for a day, turn her own jealous wiles against her,
+flout and ignore her when she comes wheedling; perhaps there lurks within
+us all the time a heartless sprite who is never fooled; but in the end
+all falls away. She beckons, beckons, and all goes....
+
+And so Oleron kept his strategic post within the frame of his bedroom
+door, and watched, and waited, and smiled, with his finger on his
+lips.... It was his duteous service, his worship, his troth-plighting,
+all that he had ever known of Love. And when he found himself, as he now
+and then did, hating the dead man Madley, and wishing that he had never
+lived, he felt that that, too, was an acceptable service....
+
+But, as he thus prepared himself, as it were, for a Marriage, and moped
+and chafed more and more that the Bride made no sign, he made a discovery
+that he ought to have made weeks before.
+
+It was through a thought of the dead Madley that he made it. Since that
+night when he had thought in his greenness that a little studied neglect
+would bring the lovely Beckoner to her knees, and had made use of her own
+jealousy to banish her, he had not set eyes on those fifteen discarded
+chapters of _Romilly_. He had thrown them back into the window-seat,
+forgotten their very existence. But his own jealousy of Madley put him in
+mind of hers of her jilted rival of flesh and blood, and he remembered
+them.... Fool that he had been! Had he, then, expected his Desire to
+manifest herself while there still existed the evidence of his divided
+allegiance? What, and she with a passion so fierce and centred that it
+had not hesitated at the destruction, twice attempted, of her rival? Fool
+that he had been!...
+
+But if _that_ was all the pledge and sacrifice she required she should
+have it--ah, yes, and quickly!
+
+He took the manuscript from the window-seat, and brought it to the fire.
+
+He kept his fire always burning now; the warmth brought out the last
+vestige of odour of the flowers with which his room was banked. He did
+not know what time it was; long since he had allowed his clock to run
+down--it had seemed a foolish measurer of time in regard to the
+stupendous things that were happening to Oleron; but he knew it was late.
+He took the _Romilly_ manuscript and knelt before the fire.
+
+But he had not finished removing the fastening that held the sheets
+together before he suddenly gave a start, turned his head over his
+shoulder, and listened intently. The sound he had heard had not been
+loud--it had been, indeed, no more than a tap, twice or thrice
+repeated--but it had filled Oleron with alarm. His face grew dark as
+it came again.
+
+He heard a voice outside on his landing.
+
+"Paul!... Paul!..."
+
+It was Elsie's voice.
+
+"Paul!... I know you're in... I want to see you...."
+
+He cursed her under his breath, but kept perfectly still. He did not
+intend to admit her.
+
+"Paul!... You're in trouble.... I believe you're in danger... at least
+come to the door!..."
+
+Oleron smothered a low laugh. It somehow amused him that she, in such
+danger herself, should talk to him of _his_ danger!... Well, if she was,
+serve her right; she knew, or said she knew, all about it....
+
+"Paul!... Paul!..."
+
+"_Paul!... Paul!_..." He mimicked her under his breath.
+
+"Oh, Paul, it's _horrible_!..."
+
+Horrible, was it? thought Oleron. Then let her get away....
+
+"I only want to help you, Paul.... I didn't promise not to come if you
+needed me...."
+
+He was impervious to the pitiful sob that interrupted the low cry. The
+devil take the woman! Should he shout to her to go away and not come
+back? No: let her call and knock and sob. She had a gift for sobbing; she
+mustn't think her sobs would move him. They irritated him, so that he set
+his teeth and shook his fist at her, but that was all. Let her sob.
+
+"_Paul!... Paul!_..."
+
+With his teeth hard set, he dropped the first page of _Romilly_ into the
+fire. Then he began to drop the rest in, sheet by sheet.
+
+For many minutes the calling behind his door continued; then suddenly it
+ceased. He heard the sound of feet slowly descending the stairs. He
+listened for the noise of a fall or a cry or the crash of a piece of the
+handrail of the upper landing; but none of these things came. She was
+spared. Apparently her rival suffered her to crawl abject and beaten
+away. Oleron heard the passing of her steps under his window; then she
+was gone.
+
+He dropped the last page into the fire, and then, with a low laugh rose.
+He looked fondly round his room.
+
+"Lucky to get away like that," he remarked. "She wouldn't have got away
+if I'd given her as much as a word or a look! What devils these women
+are!... But no; I oughtn't to say that; one of 'em showed
+forbearance...."
+
+Who showed forbearance? And what was forborne? Ah, Oleron
+knew!... Contempt, no doubt, had been at the bottom of it, but that
+didn't matter: the pestering creature had been allowed to go unharmed.
+Yes, she was lucky; Oleron hoped she knew it....
+
+And now, now, now for his reward!
+
+Oleron crossed the room. All his doors were open; his eyes shone as he
+placed himself within that of his bedroom.
+
+Fool that he had been, not to think of destroying the manuscript
+sooner!...
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+How, in a houseful of shadows, should he know his own Shadow? How, in a
+houseful of noises, distinguish the summons he felt to be at hand? Ah,
+trust him! He would know! The place was full of a jugglery of dim lights.
+The blind at his elbow that allowed the light of a street lamp to
+struggle vaguely through--the glimpse of greeny blue moonlight seen
+through the distant kitchen door--the sulky glow of the fire under the
+black ashes of the burnt manuscript--the glimmering of the tulips and the
+moon-daisies and narcissi in the bowls and jugs and jars--these did not
+so trick and bewilder his eyes that he would not know his Own! It was he,
+not she, who had been delaying the shadowy Bridal; he hung his head for a
+moment in mute acknowledgment; then he bent his eyes on the deceiving,
+puzzling gloom again. He would have called her name had he known it--but
+now he would not ask her to share even a name with the other....
+
+His own face, within the frame of the door, glimmered white as the
+narcissi in the darkness....
+
+A shadow, light as fleece, seemed to take shape in the kitchen (the time
+had been when Oleron would have said that a cloud had passed over the
+unseen moon). The low illumination on the blind at his elbow grew dimmer
+(the time had been when Oleron would have concluded that the lamplighter
+going his rounds had turned low the flame of the lamp). The fire settled,
+letting down the black and charred papers; a flower fell from a bowl,
+and lay indistinct upon the floor; all was still; and then a stray
+draught moved through the old house, passing before Oleron's face....
+
+Suddenly, inclining his head, he withdrew a little from the door-jamb.
+The wandering draught caused the door to move a little on its hinges.
+Oleron trembled violently, stood for a moment longer, and then, putting
+his hand out to the knob, softly drew the door to, sat down on the
+nearest chair, and waited, as a man might await the calling of his name
+that should summon him to some weighty, high and privy Audience....
+
+
+XI
+
+One knows not whether there can be human compassion for anemia of the
+soul. When the pitch of Life is dropped, and the spirit is so put over
+and reversed that that only is horrible which before was sweet and
+worldly and of the day, the human relation disappears. The sane soul
+turns appalled away, lest not merely itself, but sanity should suffer.
+We are not gods. We cannot drive out devils. We must see selfishly
+to it that devils do not enter into ourselves.
+
+And this we must do even though Love so transfuse us that we may well
+deem our nature to be half divine. We shall but speak of honour and duty
+in vain. The letter dropped within the dark door will lie unregarded, or,
+if regarded for a brief instant between two unspeakable lapses, left and
+forgotten again. The telegram will be undelivered, nor will the whistling
+messenger (wiselier guided than he knows to whistle) be conscious as he
+walks away of the drawn blind that is pushed aside an inch by a finger
+and then fearfully replaced again. No: let the miserable wrestle with his
+own shadows; let him, if indeed he be so mad, clip and strain and enfold
+and couch the succubus; but let him do so in a house into which not an
+air of Heaven penetrates, nor a bright finger of the sun pierces the
+filthy twilight. The lost must remain lost. Humanity has other business
+to attend to.
+
+For the handwriting of the two letters that Oleron, stealing noiselessly
+one June day into his kitchen to rid his sitting-room of an armful of
+fetid and decaying flowers, had seen on the floor within his door, had
+had no more meaning for him than if it had belonged to some dim and
+faraway dream. And at the beating of the telegraph-boy upon the door,
+within a few feet of the bed where he lay, he had gnashed his teeth and
+stopped his ears. He had pictured the lad standing there, just beyond his
+partition, among packets of provisions and bundles of dead and dying
+flowers. For his outer landing was littered with these. Oleron had feared
+to open his door to take them in. After a week, the errand lads had
+reported that there must be some mistake about the order, and had left no
+more. Inside, in the red twilight, the old flowers turned brown and fell
+and decayed where they lay.
+
+Gradually his power was draining away. The Abomination fastened on
+Oleron's power. The steady sapping sometimes left him for many hours
+of prostration gazing vacantly up at his red-tinged ceiling, idly
+suffering such fancies as came of themselves to have their way with him.
+Even the strongest of his memories had no more than a precarious hold
+upon his attention. Sometimes a flitting half-memory, of a novel to be
+written, a novel it was important that he should write, tantalised him
+for a space before vanishing again; and sometimes whole novels, perfect,
+splendid, established to endure, rose magically before him. And sometimes
+the memories were absurdly remote and trivial, of garrets he had
+inhabited and lodgings that had sheltered him, and so forth. Oleron had
+known a good deal about such things in his time, but all that was now
+past. He had at last found a place which he did not intend to leave until
+they fetched him out--a place that some might have thought a little on
+the green-sick side, that others might have considered to be a little too
+redolent of long-dead and morbid things for a living man to be mewed up
+in, but ah, so irresistible, with such an authority of its own, with such
+an associate of its own, and a place of such delights when once a man had
+ceased to struggle against its inexorable will! A novel? Somebody ought
+to write a novel about a place like that! There must be lots to write
+about in a place like that if one could but get to the bottom of it! It
+had probably already been painted, by a man called Madley who had lived
+there ... but Oleron had not known this Madley--had a strong feeling
+that he wouldn't have liked him--would rather he had lived somewhere
+else--really couldn't stand the fellow--hated him, Madley, in fact. (Aha!
+That was a joke!). He seriously doubted whether the man had led the life
+he ought; Oleron was in two minds sometimes whether he wouldn't tell that
+long-nosed guardian of the public morals across the way about him; but
+probably he knew, and had made his praying hullabaloos for him also.
+That was his line. Why, Oleron himself had had a dust-up with him about
+something or other ... some girl or other ... Elsie Bengough her name
+was, he remembered....
+
+Oleron had moments of deep uneasiness about this Elsie Bengough. Or
+rather, he was not so much uneasy about her as restless about the things
+she did. Chief of these was the way in which she persisted in thrusting
+herself into his thoughts; and, whenever he was quick enough, he sent her
+packing the moment she made her appearance there. The truth was that she
+was not merely a bore; she had always been that; it had now come to the
+pitch when her very presence in his fancy was inimical to the full
+enjoyment of certain experiences.... She had no tact; really ought to
+have known that people are not at home to the thoughts of everybody all
+the time; ought in mere politeness to have allowed him certain seasons
+quite to himself; and was monstrously ignorant of things if she did not
+know, as she appeared not to know, that there were certain special hours
+when a man's veins ran with fire and daring and power, in which ... well,
+in which he had a reasonable right to treat folk as he had treated that
+prying Barrett--to shut them out completely.... But no: up she popped,
+the thought of her, and ruined all. Bright towering fabrics, by the side
+of which even those perfect, magical novels of which he dreamed were dun
+and grey, vanished utterly at her intrusion. It was as if a fog should
+suddenly quench some fair-beaming star, as if at the threshold of some
+golden portal prepared for Oleron a pit should suddenly gape, as if a
+bat-like shadow should turn the growing dawn to mirk and darkness
+again.... Therefore, Oleron strove to stifle even the nascent thought
+of her.
+
+Nevertheless, there came an occasion on which this woman Bengough
+absolutely refused to be suppressed. Oleron could not have told exactly
+when this happened; he only knew by the glimmer of the street lamp on his
+blind that it was some time during the night, and that for some time she
+had not presented herself.
+
+He had no warning, none, of her coming; she just came--was there. Strive
+as he would, he could not shake off the thought of her nor the image of
+her face. She haunted him.
+
+But for her to come at that moment of all moments!... Really, it was past
+belief! How she could endure it, Oleron could not conceive! Actually, to
+look on, as it were, at the triumph of a Rival.... Good God! It was
+monstrous! tact--reticence--he had never credited her with an
+overwhelming amount of either: but he had never attributed mere--oh,
+there was no word for it! Monstrous--monstrous! Did she intend
+thenceforward.... Good God! To look on!...
+
+Oleron felt the blood rush up to the roots of his hair with anger against
+her.
+
+"Damnation take her!" he choked....
+
+But the next moment his heat and resentment had changed to a cold sweat
+of cowering fear. Panic-stricken, he strove to comprehend what he had
+done. For though he knew not what, he knew he had done something,
+something fatal, irreparable, blasting. Anger he had felt, but not _this_
+blaze of ire that suddenly flooded the twilight of his consciousness with
+a white infernal light. _That_ appalling flash was not his--not his
+_that_ open rift of bright and searing Hell--not his, not his! His had
+been the hand of a child, preparing a puny blow; but what was _this
+other_ horrific hand that was drawn back to strike in the same place? Had
+_he_ set that in motion? Had _he_ provided the spark that had touched off
+the whole accumulated power of that formidable and relentless place? He
+did not know. He only knew that that poor igniting particle in himself
+was blown out, that--Oh, impossible!--a clinging kiss (how else to
+express it?) had changed on his very lips to a gnashing and a removal,
+and that for very pity of the awful odds he must cry out to her against
+whom he had lately raged to guard herself ... guard herself....
+
+"_Look out!_" he shrieked aloud....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The revulsion was instant. As if a cold slow billow had broken over him,
+he came to to find that he was lying in his bed, that the mist and horror
+that had for so long enwrapped him had departed, that he was Paul Oleron,
+and that he was sick, naked, helpless, and unutterably abandoned and
+alone. His faculties, though weak, answered at last to his calls upon
+them; and he knew that it must have been a hideous nightmare that had
+left him sweating and shaking thus.
+
+Yes, he was himself, Paul Oleron, a tired novelist, already past the
+summit of his best work, and slipping downhill again empty-handed from it
+all. He had struck short in his life's aim. He had tried too much, had
+over-estimated his strength, and was a failure, a failure....
+
+It all came to him in the single word, enwrapped and complete; it needed
+no sequential thought; he was a failure. He had missed....
+
+And he had missed not one happiness, but two. He had missed the ease of
+this world, which men love, and he had missed also that other shining
+prize for which men forgo ease, the snatching and holding and triumphant
+bearing up aloft of which is the only justification of the mad adventurer
+who hazards the enterprise. And there was no second attempt. Fate has no
+morrow. Oleron's morrow must be to sit down to profitless, ill-done,
+unrequired work again, and so on the morrow after that, and the morrow
+after that, and as many morrows as there might be....
+
+He lay there, weakly yet sanely considering it....
+
+And since the whole attempt had failed, it was hardly worth while to
+consider whether a little might not be saved from the general wreck. No
+good would ever come of that half-finished novel. He had intended that it
+should appear in the autumn; was under contract that it should appear; no
+matter; it was better to pay forfeit to his publishers than to waste what
+days were left. He was spent; age was not far off; and paths of wisdom
+and sadness were the properest for the remainder of the journey....
+
+If only he had chosen the wife, the child the faithful friend at the
+fireside, and let them follow an _ignis fatuus_ that list!...
+
+In the meantime it began to puzzle him exceedingly what he should be so
+weak, that his room should smell so overpoweringly of decaying vegetable
+matter, and that his hand, chancing to stray to his face in the darkness,
+should encounter a beard.
+
+"Most extraordinary!" he began to mutter to himself. "Have I been ill? Am
+I ill now? And if so, why have they left me alone?... Extraordinary!..."
+
+He thought he heard a sound from the kitchen or bathroom. He rose a
+little on his pillow, and listened.... Ah! He was not alone, then! It
+certainly would have been extraordinary if they had left him ill and
+alone--Alone? Oh no. He would be looked after. He wouldn't be left, ill,
+to shift for himself. If everybody else had forsaken him, he could trust
+Elsie Bengough, the dearest chum he had, for that ... bless her faithful
+heart!
+
+But suddenly a short, stifled, spluttering cry rang sharply out:
+
+"_Paul!_"
+
+It came from the kitchen.
+
+And in the same moment it flashed upon Oleron, he knew not how, that two,
+three, five, he knew not how many minutes before, another sound, unmarked
+at the time but suddenly transfixing his attention now, had striven to
+reach his intelligence. This sound had been the slight touch of metal on
+metal--just such a sound as Oleron made when he put his key into the
+lock.
+
+"Hallo!... Who's that?" he called sharply from his bed.
+
+He had no answer.
+
+He called again. "Hallo!... Who's there?... Who is it?"
+
+This time he was sure he heard noises, soft and heavy, in the kitchen.
+
+"This is a queer thing altogether," he muttered. "By Jove, I'm as weak as
+a kitten too.... Hallo, there! Somebody called, didn't they?... Elsie! Is
+that you?..."
+
+Then he began to knock with his hand on the wall at the side of his bed.
+
+"Elsie!... Elsie!... You called, didn't you?... Please come here, whoever
+it is!..."
+
+There was a sound as of a closing door, and then silence. Oleron began to
+get rather alarmed.
+
+"It may be a nurse," he muttered; "Elsie'd have to get me a nurse, of
+course. She'd sit with me as long as she could spare the time, brave
+lass, and she'd get a nurse for the rest.... But it was awfully like her
+voice.... Elsie, or whoever it is!... I can't make this out at all. I
+must go and see what's the matter...."
+
+He put one leg out of bed. Feeling its feebleness, he reached with his
+hand for the additional support of the wall....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But before putting out the other leg he stopped and considered, picking
+at his new-found beard. He was suddenly wondering whether he _dared_ go
+into the kitchen. It was such a frightfully long way; no man knew what
+horror might not leap and huddle on his shoulders if he went so far;
+when a man has an overmastering impulse to get back into bed he ought to
+take heed of the warning and obey it. Besides, why should he go? What
+was there to go for? If it was that Bengough creature again, let her look
+after herself; Oleron was not going to have things cramp themselves on
+his defenceless back for the sake of such a spoilsport as _she_!... If
+she was in, let her let herself out again, and the sooner the better for
+her! Oleron simply couldn't be bothered. He had his work to do. On the
+morrow, he must set about the writing of a novel with a heroine so
+winsome, capricious, adorable, jealous, wicked, beautiful, inflaming, and
+altogether evil, that men should stand amazed. She was coming over him
+now; he knew by the alteration of the very air of the room when she was
+near him; and that soft thrill of bliss that had begun to stir in him
+never came unless she was beckoning, beckoning....
+
+He let go the wall and fell back into bed again as--oh, unthinkable!--the
+other half of that kiss that a gnash had interrupted was placed (how else
+convey it?) on his lips, robbing him of very breath....
+
+
+XII
+
+In the bright June sunlight a crowd filled the square, and looked up at
+the windows of the old house with the antique insurance marks in its
+walls of red brick and the agents' notice-boards hanging like wooden
+choppers over the paling. Two constables stood at the broken gate of the
+narrow entrance-alley, keeping folk back. The women kept to the outskirts
+of the throng, moving now and then as if to see the drawn red blinds of
+the old house from a new angle, and talking in whispers. The children
+were in the houses, behind closed doors.
+
+A long-nosed man had a little group about him, and he was telling some
+story over and over again; and another man, little and fat and wide-eyed,
+sought to capture the long-nosed man's audience with some relation in
+which a key figured.
+
+"... and it was revealed to me that there'd been something that very
+afternoon," the long-nosed man was saying. "I was standing there, where
+Constable Saunders is--or rather, I was passing about my business, when
+they came out. There was no deceiving me, oh, no deceiving _me! I_ saw
+her face...."
+
+"What was it like, Mr. Barrett?" a man asked.
+
+"It was like hers whom our Lord said to, 'Woman, doth any man accuse
+thee?'--white as paper, and no mistake! Don't tell _me_!... And so I
+walks straight across to Mrs. Barrett, and 'Jane,' I says, 'this must
+stop, and stop at once; we are commanded to avoid evil,' I says, 'and it
+must come to an end now; let him get help elsewhere.'
+
+"And she says to me, 'John,' she says, 'it's four-and-sixpence a
+week'--them was her words.
+
+"'Jane,' I says, 'if it was forty-six thousand pounds it should
+stop'... and from that day to this she hasn't set foot inside that gate."
+
+There was a short silence: then,
+
+"Did Mrs. Barrett ever..._ see_ anythink, like?" somebody vaguely
+inquired.
+
+Barrett turned austerely on the speaker.
+
+"What Mrs. Barrett saw and Mrs. Barrett didn't see shall not pass these
+lips; even as it is written, keep thy tongue from speaking evil," he
+said.
+
+Another man spoke.
+
+"He was pretty near canned up in the _Waggon and Horses_ that night,
+weren't he, Jim?"
+
+"Yes, 'e 'adn't 'alf copped it...."
+
+"Not standing treat much, neither; he was in the bar, all on his own...."
+
+"So 'e was; we talked about it...."
+
+The fat, scared-eyed man made another attempt.
+
+"She got the key off of me--she 'ad the number of it--she come into my
+shop of a Tuesday evening...."
+
+Nobody heeded him.
+
+"Shut your heads," a heavy labourer commented gruffly, "she hasn't been
+found yet. 'Ere's the inspectors; we shall know more in a bit."
+
+Two inspectors had come up and were talking to the constables who guarded
+the gate. The little fat man ran eagerly forward, saying that she had
+bought the key of him. "I remember the number, because of it's being
+three one's and three three's--111333!" he exclaimed excitedly.
+
+An inspector put him aside.
+
+"Nobody's been in?" he asked of one of the constables.
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Then you, Brackley, come with us; you, Smith, keep the gate. There's a
+squad on its way."
+
+The two inspectors and the constable passed down the alley and entered
+the house. They mounted the wide carved staircase.
+
+"This don't look as if he'd been out much lately," one of the inspectors
+muttered as he kicked aside a litter of dead leaves and paper that lay
+outside Oleron's door. "I don't think we need knock--break a pane,
+Brackley."
+
+The door had two glazed panels; there was a sound of shattered glass; and
+Brackley put his hand through the hole his elbow had made and drew back
+the latch.
+
+"Faugh!"... choked one of the inspectors as they entered. "Let some light
+and air in, quick. It stinks like a hearse--"
+
+The assembly out in the square saw the red blinds go up and the windows
+of the old house flung open.
+
+"That's better," said one of the inspectors, putting his head out of a
+window and drawing a deep breath.... "That seems to be the bedroom in
+there; will you go in, Simms, while I go over the rest?..."
+
+They had drawn up the bedroom blind also, and the waxy-white, emaciated
+man on the bed had made a blinker of his hand against the torturing
+flood of brightness. Nor could he believe that his hearing was not
+playing tricks with him, for there were two policemen in his room,
+bending over him and asking where "she" was. He shook his head.
+
+"This woman Bengough... goes by the name of Miss Elsie Bengough... d'ye
+hear? Where is she?... No good, Brackley; get him up; be careful with
+him; I'll just shove _my_ head out of the window, I think...."
+
+The other inspector had been through Oleron's study and had found
+nothing, and was now in the kitchen, kicking aside an ankle-deep mass of
+vegetable refuse that cumbered the floor. The kitchen window had no
+blind, and was over-shadowed by the blank end of the house across the
+alley. The kitchen appeared to be empty.
+
+But the inspector, kicking aside the dead flowers, noticed that a
+shuffling track that was not of his making had been swept to a cupboard
+in the corner. In the upper part of the door of the cupboard was a square
+panel that looked as if it slid on runners. The door itself was closed.
+
+The inspector advanced, put out his hand to the little knob, and slid the
+hatch along its groove.
+
+Then he took an involuntary step back again.
+
+Framed in the aperture, and falling forward a little before it jammed
+again in its frame, was something that resembled a large lumpy pudding,
+done up in a pudding-bag of faded browny red frieze.
+
+"Ah!" said the inspector.
+
+To close the hatch again he would have had to thrust that pudding back
+with his hand; and somehow he did not quite like the idea of touching
+it. Instead, he turned the handle of the cupboard itself. There was
+weight behind it, so much weight that, after opening the door three or
+four inches and peering inside, he had to put his shoulder to it in order
+to close it again. In closing it he left sticking out, a few inches from
+the floor, a triangle of black and white check skirt.
+
+He went into the small hall.
+
+"All right!" he called.
+
+They had got Oleron into his clothes. He still used his hands as
+blinkers, and his brain was very confused. A number of things were
+happening that he couldn't understand. He couldn't understand the
+extraordinary mess of dead flowers there seemed to be everywhere; he
+couldn't understand why there should be police officers in his room; he
+couldn't understand why one of these should be sent for a four-wheeler
+and a stretcher; and he couldn't understand what heavy article they
+seemed to be moving about in the kitchen--his kitchen....
+
+"What's the matter?" he muttered sleepily....
+
+Then he heard a murmur in the square, and the stopping of a four-wheeler
+outside. A police officer was at his elbow again, and Oleron wondered
+why, when he whispered something to him, he should run off a string of
+words--something about "used in evidence against you." They had lifted
+him to his feet, and were assisting him towards the door....
+
+No, Oleron couldn't understand it at all.
+
+They got him down the stairs and along the alley. Oleron was aware of
+confused angry shoutings; he gathered that a number of people wanted to
+lynch somebody or other. Then his attention became fixed on a little fat
+frightened-eyed man who appeared to be making a statement that an officer
+was taking down in a notebook.
+
+"I'd seen her with him ... they was often together ... she came into my
+shop and said it was for him ... I thought it was all right ... 111333
+the number was," the man was saying.
+
+The people seemed to be very angry; many police were keeping them back;
+but one of the inspectors had a voice that Oleron thought quite kind and
+friendly. He was telling somebody to get somebody else into the cab
+before something or other was brought out; and Oleron noticed that a
+four-wheeler was drawn up at the gate. It appeared that it was himself
+who was to be put into it; and as they lifted him up he saw that the
+inspector tried to stand between him and something that stood behind the
+cab, but was not quick enough to prevent Oleron seeing that this
+something was a hooded stretcher. The angry voices sounded like a sea;
+something hard, like a stone, hit the back of the cab; and the inspector
+followed Oleron in and stood with his back to the window nearer the side
+where the people were. The door they had put Oleron in at remained open,
+apparently till the other inspector should come; and through the opening
+Oleron had a glimpse of the hatchet-like "To Let" boards among the
+privet-trees. One of them said that the key was at Number Six....
+
+Suddenly the raging of voices was hushed. Along the entrance-alley
+shuffling steps were heard, and the other inspector appeared at the
+cab door.
+
+"Right away," he said to the driver.
+
+He entered, fastened the door after him, and blocked up the second window
+with his back. Between the two inspectors Oleron slept peacefully. The
+cab moved down the square, the other vehicle went up the hill. The
+mortuary lay that way.
+
+
+
+
+PHANTAS
+
+
+     _"For, barring all pother,
+      With this, or the other,
+Still Britons are Lords of the Main._"
+
+
+THE CHAPTER OF ADMIRALS
+
+
+I
+
+As Abel Keeling lay on the galleon's deck, held from rolling down it only
+by his own weight and the sun-blackened hand that lay outstretched upon
+the planks, his gaze wandered, but ever returned to the bell that hung,
+jammed with the dangerous heel-over of the vessel, in the small
+ornamental belfry immediately abaft the mainmast. The bell was of cast
+bronze, with half-obliterated bosses upon it that had been the heads of
+cherubs; but wind and salt spray had given it a thick incrustation of
+bright, beautiful, lichenous green. It was this colour that Abel
+Keeling's eyes liked.
+
+For wherever else on the galleon his eyes rested they found only
+whiteness--the whiteness of extreme eld. There were slightly varying
+degrees in her whiteness; here she was of a white that glistened like
+salt-granules, there of a greyish chalky white, and again her whiteness
+had the yellowish cast of decay; but everywhere it was the mild,
+disquieting whiteness of materials out of which the life had departed.
+Her cordage was bleached as old straw is bleached, and half her ropes
+kept their shape little more firmly than the ash of a string keeps its
+shape after the fire has passed; her pallid timbers were white and clean
+as bones found in sand; and even the wild frankincense with which (for
+lack of tar, at her last touching of land) she had been pitched, had
+dried to a pale hard gum that sparkled like quartz in her open seams. The
+sun was yet so pale a buckler of silver through the still white mists
+that not a cord or timber cast a shadow; and only Abel Keeling's face and
+hands were black, carked and cinder-black from exposure to his pitiless
+rays.
+
+The galleon was the _Mary of the Tower_, and she had a frightful list to
+starboard. So canted was she that her mainyard dipped one of its steel
+sickles into the glassy water, and, had her foremast remained, or more
+than the broken stump of her bonaventure mizzen, she must have turned
+over completely. Many days ago they had stripped the mainyard of its
+course, and had passed the sail under the Mary's bottom, in the hope that
+it would stop the leak. This it had partly done as long as the galleon
+had continued to glide one way; then, without coming about, she had begun
+to glide the other, the ropes had parted, and she had dragged the sail
+after her, leaving a broad tarnish on the silver sea.
+
+For it was broadside that the galleon glided, almost imperceptibly, ever
+sucking down. She glided as if a loadstone drew her, and, at first, Abel
+Keeling had thought it was a loadstone, pulling at her iron, drawing her
+through the pearly mists that lay like face-cloths to the water and hid
+at a short distance the tarnish left by the sail. But later he had known
+that it was no loadstone drawing at her iron. The motion was due--must
+be due--to the absolute deadness of the calm in that silent, sinister,
+three-miles-broad waterway. With the eye of his mind he saw that
+loadstone now as he lay against a gun-truck, all but toppling down the
+deck. Soon that would happen again which had happened for five days past.
+He would hear again the chattering of monkeys and the screaming of
+parrots, the mat of green and yellow weeds would creep in towards the
+Mary over the quicksilver sea, once more the sheer wall of rock would
+rise, and the men would run....
+
+But no; the men would not run this time to drop the fenders. There were
+no men left to do so, unless Bligh was still alive. Perhaps Bligh was
+still alive. He had walked half-way down the quarter-deck steps a little
+before the sudden nightfall of the day before, had then fallen and lain
+for a minute (dead, Abel Keeling had supposed, watching him from his
+place by the gun-truck), and had then got up again and tottered forward
+to the forecastle, his tall figure swaying and his long arms waving. Abel
+Keeling had not seen him since. Most likely, he had died in the
+forecastle during the night. If he had not been dead he would have come
+aft again for water....
+
+At the remembrance of the water Abel Keeling lifted his head. The strands
+of lean muscle about his emaciated mouth worked, and he made a little
+pressure of his sun-blackened hand on the deck, as if to verify its
+steepness and his own balance. The mainmast was some seven or eight yards
+away.... He put one stiff leg under him and began, seated as he was, to
+make shuffling movements down the slope.
+
+To the mainmast, near the belfry, was affixed his contrivance for
+catching water. It consisted of a collar of rope set lower at one side
+than at the other (but that had been before the mast had steeved so many
+degrees away from the zenith), and tallowed beneath. The mists lingered
+later in that gully of a strait than they did on the open ocean, and the
+collar of rope served as a collector for the dews that condensed on the
+mast. The drops fell into a small earthen pipkin placed on the deck
+beneath it.
+
+Abel Keeling reached the pipkin and looked into it. It was nearly a third
+full of fresh water. Good. If Bligh, the mate, was dead, so much the more
+water for Abel Keeling, master of the _Mary of the Tower_. He dipped two
+fingers into the pipkin and put them into his mouth. This he did several
+times. He did not dare to raise the pipkin to his black and broken lips
+for dread of a remembered agony, he could not have told how many days
+ago, when a devil had whispered to him, and he had gulped down the
+contents of the pipkin in the morning, and for the rest of the day had
+gone waterless.... Again he moistened his fingers and sucked them; then
+he lay sprawling against the mast, idly watching the drops of water
+as they fell.
+
+It was odd how the drops formed. Slowly they collected at the edge of the
+tallowed collar, trembled in their fullness for an instant, and fell,
+another beginning the process instantly. It amused Abel Keeling to watch
+them. Why (he wondered) were all the drops the same size? What cause and
+compulsion did they obey that they never varied, and what frail tenuity
+held the little globules intact? It must be due to some Cause.... He
+remembered that the aromatic gum of the wild frankincense with which they
+had parcelled the seams had hung on the buckets in great sluggish gouts,
+obedient to a different compulsion; oil was different again, and so were
+juices and balsams. Only quicksilver (perhaps the heavy and motionless
+sea put him in mind of quicksilver) seemed obedient to no law.... Why was
+it so?
+
+Bligh, of course, would have had his explanation: it was the Hand of God.
+That sufficed for Bligh, who had gone forward the evening before, and
+whom Abel Keeling now seemed vaguely and as at a distance to remember as
+the deep-voiced fanatic who had sung his hymns as, man by man, he had
+committed the bodies of the ship's company to the deep. Bligh was that
+sort of man; accepted things without question; was content to take things
+as they were and be ready with the fenders when the wall of rock rose out
+of the opalescent mists. Bligh, too, like the waterdrops, had his Law,
+that was his and nobody else's....
+
+There floated down from some rotten rope up aloft a flake of scurf, that
+settled in the pipkin. Abel Keeling watched it dully as it settled
+towards the pipkin's rim. When presently he again dipped his fingers into
+the vessel the water ran into a little vortex, drawing the flake with it.
+The water settled again; and again the minute flake determined towards
+the rim and adhered there, as if the rim had power to draw it....
+
+It was exactly so that the galleon was gliding towards the wall of rock,
+the yellow and green weeds, and the monkeys and parrots. Put out into
+mid-water again (while there had been men to put her out) she had glided
+to the other wall. One force drew the chip in the pipkin and the ship
+over the tranced sea. It was the Hand of God, said Bligh....
+
+Abel Keeling, his mind now noting minute things and now clouded with
+torpor, did not at first hear a voice that was quakingly lifted up
+over by the forecastle--a voice that drew nearer, to an accompaniment of
+swirling water.
+
+_"O Thou, that Jonas in the fish
+  Three days didst keep from pain,
+Which was a figure of Thy death
+  And rising up again--"_
+
+It was Bligh, singing one of his hymns:
+
+_"O Thou, that Noah keptst from flood
+  And Abram, day by day,
+As he along through Egypt passed
+  Didst guide him in the way--"_
+
+The voice ceased, leaving the pious period uncompleted. Bligh was alive,
+at any rate.... Abel Keeling resumed his fitful musing.
+
+Yes, that was the Law of Bligh's life, to call things the Hand of God;
+but Abel Keeling's Law was different; no better, no worse, only
+different. The Hand of God, that drew chips and galleons, must work by
+some method; and Abel Keeling's eyes were dully on the pipkin again as if
+he sought the method there....
+
+Then conscious thought left him for a space, and when he resumed it was
+without obvious connection.
+
+Oars, of course, were the thing. With oars, men could laugh at calms.
+Oars, that only pinnaces and galliasses now used, had had their
+advantages. But oars (which was to say a method, for you could say if you
+liked that the Hand of God grasped the oar-loom, as the Breath of God
+filled the sail)--oars were antiquated, belonged to the past, and meant a
+throwing-over of all that was good and new and a return to fine lines, a
+battle-formation abreast to give effect to the shock of the ram, and a
+day or two at sea and then to port again for provisions. Oars ... no.
+Abel Keeling was one of the new men, the men who swore by the line-ahead,
+the broadside fire of sakers and demi-cannon, and weeks and months
+without a landfall. Perhaps one day the wits of such men as he would
+devise a craft, not oar-driven (because oars could not penetrate into the
+remote seas of the world)--not sail-driven (because men who trusted to
+sails found themselves in an airless, three-mile strait, suspended
+motionless between cloud and water, ever gliding to a wall of rock)--but
+a ship ... a ship ...
+
+"_To Noah and his sons with him
+  God spake, and thus said He:
+A covenant set I up with you
+  And your posterity_--"
+
+It was Bligh again, wandering somewhere in the waist. Abel Keeling's mind
+was once more a blank. Then slowly, slowly, as the water drops collected
+on the collar of rope, his thought took shape again.
+
+A galliasse? No, not a galliasse. The galliasse made shift to be two
+things, and was neither. This ship, that the hand of man should one day
+make for the Hand of God to manage, should be a ship that should take and
+conserve the force of the wind, take it and store it as she stored her
+victuals; at rest when she wished, going ahead when she wished; turning
+the forces both of calm and storm against themselves. For, of course, her
+force must be wind--stored wind--a bag of the winds, as the children's
+tale had it--wind probably directed upon the water astern, driving it
+away and urging forward the ship, acting by reaction. She would have a
+wind-chamber, into which wind would be pumped with pumps.... Bligh would
+call that equally the Hand of God, this driving-force of the ship of the
+future that Abel Keeling dimly foreshadowed as he lay between the
+mainmast and the belfry, turning his eyes now and then from ashy white
+timbers to the vivid green bronze-rust of the bell above him....
+
+Bligh's face, liver-coloured with the sun and ravaged from inwards by the
+faith that consumed him, appeared at the head of the quarter-deck steps.
+His voice beat uncontrolledly out.
+
+_"And in the earth here is no place
+    Of refuge to be found,
+Nor in the deep and water-course
+    That passeth under ground--"_
+
+
+II
+
+Bligh's eyes were lidded, as if in contemplation of his inner ecstasy.
+His head was thrown back, and his brows worked up and down tormentedly.
+His wide mouth remained open as his hymn was suddenly interrupted on the
+long-drawn note. From somewhere in the shimmering mists the note was
+taken up, and there drummed and rang and reverberated through the strait
+a windy, hoarse, and dismal bellow, alarming and sustained. A tremor rang
+through Bligh. Moving like a sightless man, he stumbled forward from the
+head of the quarter-deck steps, and Abel Keeling was aware of his gaunt
+figure behind him, taller for the steepness of the deck. As that vast
+empty sound died away, Bligh laughed in his mania.
+
+"Lord, hath the grave's wide mouth a tongue to praise Thee? Lo, again--"
+
+Again the cavernous sound possessed the air, louder and nearer. Through
+it came another sound, a slow throb, throb--throb, throb--Again the
+sounds ceased.
+
+"Even Leviathan lifteth up his voice in praise!" Bligh sobbed.
+
+Abel Keeling did not raise his head. There had returned to him the memory
+of that day when, before the morning mists had lifted from the strait, he
+had emptied the pipkin of the water that was the allowance until night
+should fall again. During that agony of thirst he had seen shapes and
+heard sounds with other than his mortal eyes and ears, and even in the
+moments that had alternated with his lightness, when he had known these
+to be hallucinations, they had come again. He had heard the bells on a
+Sunday in his own Kentish home, the calling of children at play, the
+unconcerned singing of men at their daily labour, and the laughter and
+gossip of the women as they had spread the linen on the hedge or
+distributed bread upon the platters. These voices had rung in his brain,
+interrupted now and then by the groans of Bligh and of two other men who
+had been alive then. Some of the voices he had heard had been silent on
+earth this many a long year, but Abel Keeling, thirst-tortured, had heard
+them, even as he was now hearing that vacant moaning with the
+intermittent throbbing that filled the strait with alarm....
+
+"Praise Him, praise Him, praise Him!" Bligh was calling deliriously.
+
+Then a bell seemed to sound in Abel Keeling's ears, and, as if something
+in the mechanism of his brain had slipped, another picture rose in his
+fancy--the scene when the _Mary of the Tower_ had put out, to a bravery
+of swinging bells and shrill fifes and valiant trumpets. She had not been
+a leper-white galleon then. The scroll-work on her prow had twinkled with
+gilding; her belfry and stern-galleries and elaborate lanterns had
+flashed in the sun with gold; and her fighting-tops and the war-pavesse
+about her waist had been gay with painted coats and scutcheons. To her
+sails had been stitched gaudy ramping lions of scarlet saye, and from her
+mainyard, now dipping in the water, had hung the broad two-tailed pennant
+with the Virgin and Child embroidered upon it....
+
+Then suddenly a voice about him seemed to be saying, "_And a
+half-seven--and a half-seven--_" and in a twink the picture in Abel
+Keeling's brain changed again. He was at home again, instructing his son,
+young Abel, in the casting of the lead from the skiff they had pulled out
+of the harbour.
+
+"_And a half-seven!_" the boy seemed to be calling.
+
+Abel Keeling's blackened lips muttered: "Excellently well cast, Abel,
+excellently well cast!"
+
+"_And a half-seven--and a half-seven--seven--seven--_"
+
+"Ah," Abel Keeling murmured, "that last was not a clear cast--give me the
+line--thus it should go ... ay, so.... Soon you shall sail the seas with
+me in the _Mary of the Tower_. You are already perfect in the stars and
+the motions of the planets; to-morrow I will instruct you in the use of
+the backstaff...."
+
+For a minute or two he continued to mutter; then he dozed. When again he
+came to semi-consciousness it was once more to the sound of bells, at
+first faint, then louder, and finally becoming a noisy clamour
+immediately above his head. It was Bligh. Bligh, in a fresh attack of
+delirium, had seized the bell-lanyard and was ringing the bell insanely.
+The cord broke in his fingers, but he thrust at the bell with his hand,
+and again called aloud.
+
+"Upon an harp and an instrument of ten strings ... let Heaven and Earth
+praise Thy Name!..."
+
+He continued to call aloud, and to beat on the bronze-rusted bell.
+
+_"Ship ahoy! What ship's that?"_
+
+One would have said that a veritable hail had come out of the mists; but
+Abel Keeling knew those hails that came out of the mists. They came from
+ships which were not there. "Ay, ay, keep a good look-out, and have a
+care to your lodemanage," he muttered again to his son....
+
+But, as sometimes a sleeper sits up in his dream, or rises from his couch
+and walks, so all of a sudden Abel Keeling found himself on his hands and
+knees on the deck, looking back over his shoulder. In some deep-seated
+region of his consciousness he was dimly aware that the cant of the deck
+had become more perilous, but his brain received the intelligence and
+forgot it again. He was looking out into the bright and baffling mists.
+The buckler of the sun was of a more ardent silver; the sea below it was
+lost in brilliant evaporation; and between them, suspended in the haze,
+no more substantial than the vague darknesses that float before dazzled
+eyes, a pyramidal phantom-shape hung. Abel Keeling passed his hand over
+his eyes, but when he removed it the shape was still there, gliding
+slowly towards the _Mary's_ quarter. Its form changed as he watched it.
+The spirit-grey shape that had been a pyramid seemed to dissolve into
+four upright members, slightly graduated in tallness, that nearest the
+_Mary's_ stern the tallest and that to the left the lowest. It might have
+been the shadow of the gigantic set of reed-pipes on which that vacant
+mournful note had been sounded.
+
+And as he looked, with fooled eyes, again his ears became fooled:
+
+_"Ahoy there! What ship's that? Are you a ship?... Here, give me that
+trumpet--"_ Then a metallic barking. _"Ahoy there! What the devil are
+you? Didn't you ring a bell? Ring it again, or blow a blast or something,
+and go dead slow!"_
+
+All this came, as it were, indistinctly, and through a sort of high
+singing in Abel Keeling's own ears. Then he fancied a short bewildered
+laugh, followed by a colloquy from somewhere between sea and sky.
+
+"Here, Ward, just pinch me, will you? Tell me what you see there. I want
+to know if I'm awake."
+
+"See where?"
+
+"There, on the starboard bow. (Stop that ventilating fan; I can't
+hear myself think.) See anything? Don't tell me it's that damned
+Dutchman--don't pitch me that old Vanderdecken tale--give me an easy
+one first, something about a sea-serpent.... You did hear that bell,
+didn't you?"
+
+"Shut up a minute--listen--"
+
+Again Bligh's voice was lifted up.
+
+_"This is the cov'nant that I make:
+  From henceforth nevermore
+Will I again the world destroy
+  With water, as before."_
+
+Bligh's voice died away again in Abel Keeling's ears.
+
+"_Oh--my--fat--Aunt--Julia!_" the voice that seemed to come from between
+sea and sky sounded again. Then it spoke more loudly. "_I say,_" it began
+with careful politeness, "_if you are a ship, do you mind telling us
+where the masquerade is to be? Our wireless is out of order, and we
+hadn't heard of it.... Oh, you do see it, Ward, don't you?... Please,
+please tell us what the hell you are!_"
+
+Again Abel Keeling had moved as a sleepwalker moves. He had raised
+himself up by the belfry timbers, and Bligh had sunk in a heap on the
+deck. Abel Keeling's movement overturned the pipkin, which raced the
+little trickle of its contents down the deck and lodged where the still
+and brimming sea made, as it were, a chain with the carved balustrade of
+the quarter-deck--one link a still gleaming edge, then a dark baluster,
+and then another gleaming link. For one moment only Abel Keeling found
+himself noticing that that which had driven Bligh aft had been the
+rising of the water in the waist as the galleon settled by the head--the
+waist was now entirely submerged; then once more he was absorbed in
+his dream, its voices, and its shape in the mist, which had again taken
+the form of a pyramid before his eyeballs.
+
+"_Of course_," a voice seemed to be complaining anew, and still through
+that confused dinning in Abel Keeling's ears, "_we can't turn a four-inch
+on it.... And, of course, Ward, I don't believe in 'em. D'you hear, Ward?
+I don't believe in 'em, I say.... Shall we call down to old A. B.? This
+might interest His Scientific Skippership...._"
+
+"Oh, lower a boat and pull out to it--into it--over it--through it--"
+
+"Look at our chaps crowded on the barbette yonder. They've seen it.
+Better not give an order you know won't be obeyed...."
+
+Abel Keeling, cramped against the antique belfry, had begun to find his
+dream interesting. For, though he did not know her build, that mirage was
+the shape of a ship. No doubt it was projected from his brooding on ships
+of half an hour before; and that was odd.... But perhaps, after all, it
+was not very odd. He knew that she did not really exist; only the
+appearance of her existed; but things had to exist like that before they
+really existed. Before the _Mary of the Tower_ had existed she had been a
+shape in some man's imagination; before that, some dreamer had dreamed
+the form of a ship with oars; and before that, far away in the dawn and
+infancy of the world, some seer had seen in a vision the raft before man
+had ventured to push out over the water on his two planks. And since this
+shape that rode before Abel Keeling's eyes was a shape in his, Abel
+Keeling's dream, he, Abel Keeling, was the master of it. His own brooding
+brain had contrived her, and she was launched upon the illimitable ocean
+of his own mind....
+
+_"And I will not unmindful be
+  Of this, My covenant, passed
+Twixt Me and you and every flesh
+ Whiles that the world should last,"_
+
+sang Bligh, rapt....
+
+But as a dreamer, even in his dream, will scratch upon the wall by his
+couch some key or word to put him in mind of his vision on the morrow
+when it has left him, so Abel Keeling found himself seeking some sign to
+be a proof to those to whom no vision is vouchsafed. Even Bligh sought
+that--could not be silent in his bliss, but lay on the deck there,
+uttering great passionate Amens and praising his Maker, as he said, upon
+an harp and an instrument of ten strings. So with Abel Keeling. It would
+be the Amen of his life to have praised God, not upon a harp, but upon a
+ship that should carry her own power, that should store wind or its
+equivalent as she stored her victuals, that should be something wrested
+from the chaos of uninvention and ordered and disciplined and
+subordinated to Abel Keeling's will.... And there she was, that
+ship-shaped thing of spirit-grey, with the four pipes that resembled a
+phantom organ now broadside and of equal length. And the ghost-crew
+of that ship were speaking again....
+
+The interrupted silver chain by the quarterdeck balustrade had now become
+continuous, and the balusters made a herring-bone over their own
+motionless reflections. The spilt water from the pipkin had dried, and
+the pipkin was not to be seen. Abel Keeling stood beside the mast, erect
+as God made man to go. With his leathery hand he smote upon the bell. He
+waited for the space of a minute, and then cried:
+
+"Ahoy!... Ship ahoy!... What ship's that?"
+
+
+III
+
+We are not conscious in a dream that we are playing a game the beginning
+and end of which are in ourselves. In this dream of Abel Keeling's a
+voice replied:
+
+"_Hallo, it's found its tongue.... Ahoy there! What are you?_"
+
+Loudly and in a clear voice Abel Keeling called: "Are you a ship?"
+
+With a nervous giggle the answer came:
+
+"_We are a ship, aren't we, Ward? I hardly feel sure.... Yes, of course,
+we're a ship. No question about us. The question is what the dickens
+you are._"
+
+Not all the words these voices used were intelligible to Abel Keeling,
+and he knew not what it was in the tone of these last words that reminded
+him of the honour due to the _Mary of the Tower_. Blister-white and at
+the end of her life as she was, Abel Keeling was still jealous of her
+dignity; the voice had a youngish ring; and it was not fitting that young
+chins should be wagged about his galleon. He spoke curtly.
+
+"You that spoke--are you the master of that ship?"
+
+"_Officer of the watch_," the words floated back; "_the captain's
+below_."
+
+"Then send for him. It is with masters that masters hold speech," Abel
+Keeling replied.
+
+He could see the two shapes, flat and without relief, standing on a high
+narrow structure with rails. One of them gave a low whistle, and seemed
+to be fanning his face; but the other rumbled something into a sort of
+funnel. Presently the two shapes became three. There was a murmuring,
+as of a consultation, and then suddenly a new voice spoke. At its thrill
+and tone a sudden tremor ran through Abel Keeling's frame. He wondered
+what response it was that that voice found in the forgotten recesses of
+his memory....
+
+"_Ahoy!_" seemed to call this new yet faintly remembered voice. "_What's
+all this about? Listen. We're His Majesty's destroyer_ Seapink, _out of
+Devonport last October, and nothing particular the matter with us. Now
+who are you?_"
+
+"The _Mary of the Tower_, out of the Port of Rye on the day of Saint
+Anne, and only two men--"
+
+A gasp interrupted him.
+
+"_Out of_ WHERE?" that voice that so strangely moved Abel Keeling said
+unsteadily, while Bligh broke into groans of renewed rapture.
+
+"Out of the Port of Rye, in the County of Sussex ... nay, give ear, else
+I cannot make you hear me while this man's spirit and flesh wrestle so
+together!... Ahoy! Are you gone?" For the voices had become a low murmur,
+and the ship-shape had faded before Abel Keeling's eyes. Again and again
+he called. He wished to be informed of the disposition and economy of the
+wind-chamber....
+
+"The wind-chamber!" he called, in an agony lest the knowledge
+almost within his grasp should be lost. "I would know about the
+wind-chamber...."
+
+Like an echo, there came back the words, uncomprehendingly uttered, "_The
+wind-chamber_?..."
+
+"... that driveth the vessel--perchance 'tis not wind--a steel bow that
+is bent also conserveth force--the force you store, to move at will
+through calm and storm...."
+
+"Can you make out what it's driving at?"
+
+"Oh, we shall all wake up in a minute...."
+
+"Quiet, I have it; the engines; it wants to know about our engines.
+It'll be wanting to see our papers presently. Rye Port!... Well, no harm
+in humouring it; let's see what it can make of this. Ahoy there!" came
+the voice to Abel Keeling, a little more strongly, as if a shifting wind
+carried it, and speaking faster and faster as it went on. "Not wind, but
+steam; d'you hear? Steam, steam. Steam, in eight Yarrow water-tube
+boilers. S-t-e-a-m, steam. Got it? And we've twin-screw triple expansion
+engines, indicated horse-power four thousand, and we can do 430
+revolutions per minute; savvy? Is there anything your phantomhood would
+like to know about our armament?..."
+
+Abel Keeling was muttering fretfully to himself. It annoyed him that
+words in his own vision should have no meaning for him. How did words
+come to him in a dream that he had no knowledge of when wide awake? The
+_Seapink_--that was the name of this ship; but a pink was long and
+narrow, low-carged and square-built aft....
+
+"_And as for our armament,_" the voice with the tones that so profoundly
+troubled Abel Keeling's memory continued, "_we've two revolving Whitehead
+torpedo-tubes, three six-pounders on the upper deck, and that's a
+twelve-pounder forward there by the conning-tower. I forgot to mention
+that we're nickel steel, with a coal capacity of sixty tons in most
+damnably placed bunkers, and that thirty and a quarter knots is about our
+top. Care to come aboard?_"
+
+But the voice was speaking still more rapidly and feverishly, as if to
+fill a silence with no matter what, and the shape that was uttering it
+was straining forward anxiously over the rail.
+
+"_Ugh! But I'm glad this happened in the daylight,_" another voice was
+muttering.
+
+"I wish I was sure it was happening at all.... Poor old spook!"
+
+"I suppose it would keep its feet if her deck was quite vertical. Think
+she'll go down, or just melt?"
+
+"Kind of go down ... without wash...."
+
+"Listen--here's the other one now--"
+
+For Bligh was singing again:
+
+"For, Lord, Thou know'st our nature such
+  If we great things obtain,
+And in the getting of the same
+  Do feel no grief or pain,
+
+"We little do esteem thereof;
+  But, hardly brought to pass,
+A thousand times we do esteem
+  More than the other was."
+
+_"But oh, look--look--look at the other!... Oh, I say, wasn't he a grand
+old boy! Look!"_
+
+For, transfiguring Abel Reeling's form as a prophet's form is
+transfigured in the instant of his rapture, flooding his brain with the
+white eureka-light of perfect knowledge, that for which he and his dream
+had been at a standstill had come. He knew her, this ship of the future,
+as if God's Finger had bitten her lines into his brain. He knew her as
+those already sinking into the grave know things, miraculously,
+completely, accepting Life's impossibilities with a nodded "Of course."
+From the ardent mouths of her eight furnaces to the last drip from her
+lubricators, from her bed-plates to the breeches of her quick-firers, he
+knew her--read her gauges, thumbed her bearings, gave the ranges from her
+range-finders, and lived the life he lived who was in command of her. And
+he would not forget on the morrow, as he had forgotten on many morrows,
+for at last he had seen the water about his feet, and knew that there
+would be no morrow for him in this world....
+
+And even in that moment, with but a sand or two to run in his glass,
+indomitable, insatiable, dreaming dream on dream, he could not die until
+he knew more. He had two questions to ask, and a master-question; and but
+a moment remained. Sharply his voice rang out.
+
+"Ho, there!... This ancient ship, the _Mary of the Tower_, cannot steam
+thirty and a quarter knots, but yet she can sail the waters. What
+more does your ship? Can she soar above them, as the fowls of the air
+soar?"
+
+"_Lord, he thinks we're an aeroplane!... No, she can't...._"
+
+"And can you dive, even as the fishes of the deep?"
+
+"_No.... Those are submarines ... we aren't a submarine...._"
+
+But Abel Keeling waited for no more. He gave an exulting chuckle.
+
+"Oho, oho--thirty knots, and but on the face of the waters--no more than
+that? Oho!... Now _my_ ship, the ship I see as a mother sees full-grown
+the child she has but conceived--_my_ ship, I say--oho!--_my_ ship
+shall.... Below there--trip that gun!"
+
+The cry came suddenly and alertly, as a muffled sound came from below and
+an ominous tremor shook the galleon.
+
+"_By Jove, her guns are breaking loose below--that's her finish_--"
+
+"Trip that gun, and double-breech the others!" Abel Keeling's voice rang
+out, as if there had been any to obey him. He had braced himself within
+the belfry frame; and then in the middle of the next order his voice
+suddenly failed him. His ship-shape, that for the moment he had
+forgotten, rode once more before his eyes. This was the end, and his
+master-question, apprehension for the answer to which was now torturing
+his face and well-nigh bursting his heart, was still unasked.
+
+"Ho--he that spoke with me--the master," he cried in a voice that ran
+high, "is he there?"
+
+"_Yes, yes!_" came the other voice across the water, sick with suspense.
+"_Oh, be quick!_"
+
+There was a moment in which hoarse cries from many voices, a heavy thud
+and rumble on wood, and a crash of timbers and a gurgle and a splash were
+indescribably mingled; the gun under which Abel Keeling had lain had
+snapped her rotten breechings and plunged down the deck, carrying Bligh's
+unconscious form with it. The deck came up vertical, and for one instant
+longer Abel Keeling clung to the belfry.
+
+"I cannot see your face," he screamed, "but meseems your voice is a voice
+I know. _What is your name_?"
+
+In a torn sob the answer came across the water:
+
+"_Keeling--Abel Keeling.... Oh, my God!_"
+
+And Abel Keeling's cry of triumph, that mounted to a victorious "Huzza!"
+was lost in the downward plunge of the _Mary of the Tower_, that left
+the strait empty save for the sun's fiery blaze and the last smoke-like
+evaporation of the mists.
+
+
+
+
+ROOUM
+
+
+For all I ever knew to the contrary, it was his own name; and something
+about him, name or man or both, always put me in mind, I can't tell you
+how, of negroes. As regards the name, I dare say it was something
+huggermugger in the mere sound--something that I classed, for no
+particular reason, with the dark and ignorant sort of words, such as
+"Obi" and "Hoodoo." I only know that after I learned that his name was
+Rooum, I couldn't for the life of me have thought of him as being called
+anything else.
+
+The first impression that you got of his head was that it was a patchwork
+of black and white--black bushy hair and short white beard, or else the
+other way about. As a matter of fact, both hair and beard were piebald,
+so that if you saw him in the gloom a dim patch of white showed down one
+side of his head, and dark tufts cropped up here and there in his beard.
+His eyebrows alone were entirely black, with a little sprouting of hair
+almost joining them. And perhaps his skin helped to make me think of
+negroes, for it was very dark, of the dark brown that always seems to
+have more than a hint of green behind it. His forehead was low, and
+scored across with deep horizontal furrows.
+
+We never knew when he was going to turn up on a job. We might not have
+seen him for weeks, but his face was always as likely as not to appear
+over the edge of a crane-platform just when that marvellous mechanical
+intuition of his was badly needed. He wasn't certificated. He wasn't even
+trained, as the rest of us understood training; and he scoffed at the
+drawing-office, and laughed outright at logarithms and our laborious
+methods of getting out quantities. But he could set sheers and tackle in
+a way that made the rest of us look silly. I remember once how, through
+the parting of a chain, a sixty-foot girder had come down and lay under
+a ruck of other stuff, as the bottom chip lies under a pile of
+spellikins--a hopeless-looking smash. Myself, I'm certificated twice or
+three times over; but I can only assure you that I wanted to kick myself
+when, after I'd spent a day and a sleepless night over the job, I saw the
+game of tit-tat-toe that Rooum made of it in an hour or two. Certificated
+or not, a man isn't a fool who can do that sort of thing. And he was
+one of these fellows, too, who can "find water"--tell you where water is
+and what amount of getting it is likely to take, by just walking over the
+place. We aren't certificated up to that yet.
+
+He was offered good money to stick to us--to stick to our firm--but he
+always shook his black-and-white piebald head. He'd never be able to keep
+the bargain if he were to make it, he told us quite fairly. I know there
+are these chaps who can't endure to be clocked to their work with a
+patent time-clock in the morning and released of an evening with a
+whistle--and it's one of the things no master can ever understand. So
+Rooum came and went erratically, showing up maybe in Leeds or Liverpool,
+perhaps next on Plymouth breakwater, and once he turned up in an
+out-of-the-way place in Glamorganshire just when I was wondering what had
+become of him.
+
+The way I got to know him (got to know him, I mean, more than just to
+nod) was that he tacked himself on to me one night down Vauxhall way,
+where we were setting up some small plant or other. We had knocked off
+for the day, and I was walking in the direction of the bridge when he
+came up. We walked along together; and we had not gone far before it
+appeared that his reason for joining me was that he wanted to know "what
+a molecule was."
+
+I stared at him a bit.
+
+"What do you want to know that for?" I said. "What does a chap like you,
+who can do it all backwards, want with molecules?"
+
+Oh, he just wanted to know, he said.
+
+So, on the way across the bridge, I gave it him more or less from the
+book--molecular theory and all the rest of it. But, from the childish
+questions he put, it was plain that he hadn't got the hang of it at all.
+"Did the molecular theory allow things to pass through one another?" he
+wanted to know; "_Could_ things pass through one another?" and a lot of
+ridiculous things like that. I gave it up.
+
+"You're a genius in your own way, Rooum," I said finally; "you know these
+things without the books we plodders have to depend on. If I'd luck like
+that, I think I should be content with it."
+
+But he didn't seem satisfied, though he dropped the matter for that time.
+But I had his acquaintance, which was more than most of us had. He
+asked me, rather timidly, if I'd lend him a book or two. I did so, but
+they didn't seem to contain what he wanted to know, and he soon returned
+them, without remark.
+
+Now you'd expect a fellow to be specially sensitive, one way or another,
+who can tell when there's water a hundred feet beneath him; and as you
+know, the big men are squabbling yet about this water-finding business.
+But, somehow, the water-finding puzzled me less than it did that Rooum
+should be extraordinarily sensitive to something far commoner and easier
+to understand--ordinary echoes. He couldn't stand echoes. He'd go a
+mile round rather than pass a place that he knew had an echo; and if he
+came on one by chance, sometimes he'd hurry through as quick as he
+could, and sometimes he'd loiter and listen very intently. I rather joked
+about this at first, till I found it really distressed him; then, of
+course, I pretended not to notice. We're all cranky somewhere, and for
+that matter, I can't touch a spider myself.
+
+For the remarkable thing that overtook Rooum--(that, by the way, is an
+odd way to put it, as you'll see presently; but the words came that
+way into my head, so let them stand)--for the remarkable thing that
+overtook Rooum, I don't think I can begin better than with the first
+time, or very soon after the first time, that I noticed this peculiarity
+about the echoes.
+
+It was early on a particularly dismal November evening, and this time we
+were somewhere out south-east London way, just beyond what they are
+pleased to call the building-line--you know these districts of wretched
+trees and grimy fields and market-gardens that are about the same to real
+country that a slum is to a town. It rained that night; rain was the most
+appropriate weather for the brickfields and sewage-farms and yards of old
+carts and railway-sleepers we were passing. The rain shone on the black
+hand-bag that Rooum always carried; and I sucked at the dottle of a pipe
+that it was too much trouble to fill and light again. We were walking in
+the direction of Lewisham (I think it would be), and were still a little
+way from that eruption of red-brick houses that ... but you've doubtless
+seen them.
+
+You know how, when they're laying out new roads, they lay down the
+narrow strip of kerb first, with neither setts on the one hand nor
+flagstones on the other? We had come upon one of these. (I had noticed
+how, as we had come a few minutes before under a tall hollow-ringing
+railway arch, Rooum had all at once stopped talking--it was the echo, of
+course, that bothered him.) The unmade road to which we had come had
+headless lamp-standards at intervals, and ramparts of grey road-metal
+ready for use; and save for the strip of kerb, it was a broth of mud
+and stiff clay. A red light or two showed where the road-barriers
+were--they were laying the mains; a green railway light showed on an
+embankment; and the Lewisham lamps made a rusty glare through the rain.
+Rooum went first, walking along the narrow strip of kerb.
+
+The lamp-standards were a little difficult to see, and when I heard Rooum
+stop suddenly and draw in his breath sharply, I thought he had walked
+into one of them.
+
+"Hurt yourself?" I said.
+
+He walked on without replying; but half a dozen yards farther on he
+stopped again. He was listening again. He waited for me to come up.
+
+"I say," he said, in an odd sort of voice, "go a yard or two ahead, will
+you?"
+
+"What's the matter?" I asked, as I passed ahead. He didn't answer.
+
+Well, I hadn't been leading for more than a minute before he wanted to
+change again. He was breathing very quick and short.
+
+"Why, what ails you?" I demanded, stopping.
+
+"It's all right.... You're not playing any tricks, are you?..."
+
+I saw him pass his hand over his brow.
+
+"Come, get on," I said shortly; and we didn't speak again till we struck
+the pavement with the lighted lamps. Then I happened to glance at him.
+
+"Here," I said brusquely, taking him by the sleeve, "you're not well.
+We'll call somewhere and get a drink."
+
+"Yes," he said, again wiping his brow. "I say ... did you hear?"
+
+"Hear what?"
+
+"Ah, you didn't ... and, of course, you didn't feel anything...."
+
+"Come, you're shaking."
+
+When presently we came to a brightly lighted public-house or hotel, I saw
+that he was shaking even worse than I had thought. The shirt-sleeved
+barman noticed it too, and watched us curiously. I made Rooum sit down,
+and got him some brandy.
+
+"What was the matter?" I asked, as I held the glass to his lips.
+
+But I could get nothing out of him except that it was "All right--all
+right," with his head twitching over his shoulder almost as if he had
+touch of the dance. He began to come round a little. He wasn't the kind
+of man you'd press for explanations, and presently we set out again.
+He walked with me as far as my lodgings, refused to come in, but for all
+that lingered at the gate as if loath to leave. I watched him turn the
+corner in the rain.
+
+We came home together again the next evening, but by a different way,
+quite half a mile longer. He had waited for me a little pertinaciously.
+It seemed he wanted to talk about molecules again.
+
+Well, when a man of his age--he'd be near fifty--begins to ask questions,
+he's rather worse than a child who wants to know where Heaven is or some
+such thing--for you can't put him off as you can the child. Somewhere or
+other he'd picked up the word "osmosis," and seemed to have some
+glimmering of its meaning. He dropped the molecules, and began to ask me
+about osmosis.
+
+"It means, doesn't it," he demanded, "that liquids will work their way
+into one another--through a bladder or something? Say a thick fluid and a
+thin: you'll find some of the thick in the thin, and the thin in the
+thick?"
+
+"Yes. The thick into the thin is ex-osmosis, and the other end-osmosis.
+That takes place more quickly. But I don't know a deal about it."
+
+"Does it ever take place with solids?" he next asked.
+
+What was he driving at? I thought; but replied: "I believe that what is
+commonly called 'adhesion' is something of the sort, under another name."
+
+"A good deal of this bookwork seems to be finding a dozen names for the
+same thing," he grunted; and continued to ask his questions.
+
+But what it was he really wanted to know I couldn't for the life of me
+make out.
+
+Well, he was due any time now to disappear again, having worked quite six
+weeks in one place; and he disappeared. He disappeared for a good many
+weeks. I think it would be about February before I saw or heard of him
+again.
+
+It was February weather, anyway, and in an echoing enough place that I
+found him--the subway of one of the Metropolitan stations. He'd probably
+forgotten the echoes when he'd taken the train; but, of course, the
+railway folk won't let a man who happens to dislike echoes go wandering
+across the metals where he likes.
+
+He was twenty yards ahead when I saw him. I recognised him by his patched
+head and black hand-bag. I ran along the subway after him.
+
+It was very curious. He'd been walking close to the white-tiled wall,
+and I saw him suddenly stop; but he didn't turn. He didn't even turn
+when I pulled up, close behind him; he put out one hand to the wall, as
+if to steady himself. But, the moment I touched his shoulder, he just
+dropped--just dropped, half on his knees against the white tiling. The
+face he turned round and up to me was transfixed with fright.
+
+There were half a hundred people about--a train was just in--and it isn't
+a difficult matter in London to get a crowd for much less than a man
+crouching terrified against a wall, looking over his shoulder as Rooum
+looked, at another man almost as terrified. I felt somebody's hand on
+my own arm. Evidently somebody thought I'd knocked Rooum down.
+
+The terror went slowly from his face. He stumbled to his feet. I shook
+myself free of the man who held me and stepped up to Rooum.
+
+"What the devil's all this about?" I demanded, roughly enough.
+
+"It's all right ... it's all right,..." he stammered.
+
+"Heavens, man, you shouldn't play tricks like that!"
+
+"No ... no ... but for the love of God don't do it again!..."
+
+"We'll not explain here," I said, still in a good deal of a huff; and
+the small crowd melted away--disappointed, I dare say, that it wasn't
+a fight.
+
+"Now," I said, when we were outside in the crowded street, "you might let
+me know what all this is about, and what it is that for the love of
+God I'm not to do again."
+
+He was half apologetic, but at the same time half blustering, as if I had
+committed some sort of an outrage.
+
+"A senseless thing like that!" he mumbled to himself. "But there: you
+didn't know.... You _don't_ know, do you?... I tell you, d'you hear,
+_you're not to run at all when I'm about_! You're a nice fellow and all
+that, and get your quantities somewhere near right, if you do go a long
+way round to do it--but I'll not answer for myself if you run, d'you
+hear?... Putting your hand on a man's shoulder like that, just when ..."
+
+"Certainly I might have spoken," I agreed, a little stiffly.
+
+"Of course, you ought to have spoken! Just you see you don't do it again.
+It's monstrous!"
+
+I put a curt question.
+
+"Are you sure you're quite right in your head, Rooum?"
+
+"Ah," he cried, "don't you think I just fancy it, my lad! Nothing so
+easy! I thought you guessed that other time, on the new road ... it's as
+plain as a pikestaff... no, no, no! _I_ shall be telling _you_ something
+about molecules one of these days!"
+
+We walked for a time in silence.
+
+Suddenly he asked: "What are you doing now?"
+
+"I myself, do you mean? Oh, the firm. A railway job, past Pinner.
+But we've a big contract coming on in the West End soon they might
+want you for. They call it 'alterations,' but it's one of these big
+shop-rebuildings."
+
+"I'll come along."
+
+"Oh, it isn't for a month or two yet."
+
+"I don't mean that. I mean I'll come along to Pinner with you now,
+to-night, or whenever you go."
+
+"Oh!" I said.
+
+I don't know that I specially wanted him. It's a little wearing, the
+company of a chap like that. You never know what he's going to let you in
+for next. But, as this didn't seem to occur to him, I didn't say
+anything. If he really liked catching the last train down, a three-mile
+walk, and then sharing a double-bedded room at a poor sort of alehouse
+(which was my own programme), he was welcome. We walked a little farther;
+then I told him the time of the train and left him.
+
+He turned up at Euston, a little after twelve. We went down together. It
+was getting on for one when we left the station at the other end, and
+then we began the tramp across the Weald to the inn. A little to my
+surprise (for I had begun to expect unaccountable behaviour from him) we
+reached the inn without Rooum having dodged about changing places with
+me, or having fallen cowering under a gorse-bush, or anything of
+that kind. Our talk, too, was about work, not molecules and osmosis.
+
+The inn was only a roadside beerhouse--I have forgotten its name--and all
+its sleeping accomodation was the one double-bedded room. Over the head
+of my own bed the ceiling was cut away, following the roof-line; and the
+wallpaper was perfectly shocking--faded bouquets that made V's and A's,
+interlacing everywhere. The other bed was made up, and lay across the
+room.
+
+I think I only spoke once while we were making ready for bed, and that
+was when Rooum took from his black hand-bag a brush and a torn nightgown.
+
+"That's what you always carry about, is it?" I remarked; and Rooum
+grunted something: Yes ... never knew where you'd be next ... no harm,
+was it? We tumbled into bed.
+
+But, for all the lateness of the hour, I wasn't sleepy; so from my own
+bag I took a book, set the candle on the end of the mantel, and began
+to read. Mark you, I don't say I was much better informed for the reading
+I did, for I was watching the V's on the wallpaper mostly--that, and
+wondering what was wrong with the man in the other bed who had fallen
+down at a touch in the subway. He was already asleep.
+
+Now I don't know whether I can make the next clear to you. I'm quite
+certain he was sound asleep, so that it wasn't just the fact that he
+spoke. Even that is a little unpleasant, I always think, any sort of
+sleep-talking; but it's a very queer sort of sensation when a man
+actually answers a question that's put to him, knowing nothing whatever
+about it in the morning. Perhaps I ought not to have put that question;
+having put it, I did the next best thing afterwards, as you'll see in a
+moment ... but let me tell you.
+
+He'd been asleep perhaps an hour, and I woolgathering about the
+wallpaper, when suddenly, in a far more clear and loud voice than he ever
+used when awake, he said:
+
+_"What the devil is it prevents me seeing him, then?"_
+
+That startled me, rather, for the second time that evening; and I really
+think I had spoken before I had fully realised what was happening.
+
+"From seeing whom?" I said, sitting up in bed.
+
+"Whom?... You're not attending. The fellow I'm telling you about, who
+runs after me," he answered--answered perfectly plainly.
+
+I could see his head there on the pillow, black and white, and his
+eyes were closed. He made a slight movement with his arm, but that did
+not wake him. Then it came to me, with a sort of start, what was
+happening. I slipped half out of bed. Would he--would he?--answer
+another question?... I risked it, breathlessly:
+
+"Have you any idea who he is?"
+
+Well, that too he answered.
+
+"Who he is? The Runner?... Don't be silly. _Who else should it be?_"
+
+With every nerve in me tingling, I tried again.
+
+"What happens, then, when he catches you?"
+
+This time, I really don't know whether his words were an answer or not;
+they were these:
+
+"To hear him catching you up ... and then padding away ahead again! All
+right, all right ... but I guess it's weakening him a bit, too...."
+
+Without noticing it, I had got out of bed, and had advanced quite to the
+middle of the floor.
+
+"What did you say his name was?" I breathed.
+
+But that was a dead failure. He muttered brokenly for a moment, gave a
+deep troubled sigh, and then began to snore loudly and regularly.
+
+I made my way back to bed; but I assure you that before I did so I filled
+my basin with water, dipped my face into it, and then set the candlestick
+afloat in it, leaving the candle burning. I thought I'd like to have a
+light.... It had burned down by morning. Rooum, I remember, remarked on
+the silly practice of reading in bed.
+
+Well, it was a pretty kind of obsession for a man to have, wasn't it?
+Somebody running after him all the time, and then ... running on ahead?
+And, of course, on a broad pavement there would be plenty of room for
+this running gentleman to run round; but on an eight- or nine-inch kerb,
+such as that of the new road out Lewisham way ... but perhaps he was a
+jumping gentleman too, and could jump over a man's head. You'd think he'd
+have to get past some way, wouldn't you?... I remember vaguely wondering
+whether the name of that Runner was not Conscience; but Conscience isn't
+a matter of molecules and osmosis....
+
+One thing, however, was clear; I'd got to tell Rooum what I'd learned:
+for you can't get hold of a fellow's secrets in ways like that. I lost
+no time about it. I told him, in fact, soon after we'd left the inn the
+next morning--told him how he'd answered in his sleep.
+
+And--what do you think of this?--he seemed to think I ought to have
+guessed it! _Guessed_ a monstrous thing like that!
+
+"You're less clever than I thought, with your books and that, if you
+didn't," he grunted.
+
+"But ... Good God, man!"
+
+"Queer, isn't it? But you don't know the queerest ..."
+
+He pondered for a moment, and then suddenly put his lips to my ear.
+
+"I'll tell you," he whispered. "_It gets harder every time_!... At first,
+he just slipped through: a bit of a catch at my heart, like when you nod
+off to sleep in a chair and jerk up awake again; and away he went. But
+now it's getting grinding, sluggish; and the pain.... You'd notice, that
+night on the road, the little check it gave me; that's past long since;
+and last night, when I'd just braced myself up stiff to meet it, and you
+tapped me on the shoulder ..." He passed the back of his hand over his
+brow.
+
+"I tell you," he continued, "it's an agony each time. I could scream at
+the thought of it. It's oftener, too, now, and he's getting stronger. The
+end-osmosis is getting to be ex-osmosis--is that right? Just let me tell
+you one more thing--"
+
+But I'd had enough. I'd asked questions the night before, but now--well,
+I knew quite as much as, and more than, I wanted.
+
+"Stop, please," I said. "You're either off your head, or worse. Let's
+call it the first. Don't tell me any more, please."
+
+"Frightened, what? Well, I don't blame you. But what would _you_ do?"
+
+"I should see a doctor; I'm only an engineer," I replied.
+
+"Doctors?... Bah!" he said, and spat.
+
+I hope you see how the matter stood with Rooum. What do you make of it?
+Could you have believed it--_do_ you believe it?... He'd made a nearish
+guess when he'd said that much of our knowledge is giving names to things
+we know nothing about; only rule-of-thumb Physics thinks everything's
+explained in the Manual; and you've always got to remember one thing:
+You can call it Force or what you like, but it's a certainty that things,
+solid things of wood and iron and stone, would explode, just go off in a
+puff into space, if it wasn't for something just as inexplicable as that
+that Rooum said he felt in his own person. And if you can swallow that,
+it's a relatively small matter whether Rooum's light-footed Familiar
+slipped through him unperceived, or had to struggle through obstinately.
+You see now why I said that "a queer thing overtook Rooum."
+
+More: I saw it. This thing, that outrages reason--I saw it happen. That
+is to say, I saw its effects, and it was in broad daylight, on an
+ordinary afternoon, in the middle of Oxford Street, of all places. There
+wasn't a shadow of doubt about it. People were pressing and jostling
+about him, and suddenly I saw him turn his head and listen, as I'd seen
+him before. I tell you, an icy creeping ran all over my skin. I fancied I
+felt it approaching too, nearer and nearer.... The next moment he had
+made a sort of gathering of himself, as if against a gust. He stumbled
+and thrust--thrust with his body. He swayed, physically, as a tree sways
+in a wind; he clutched my arm and gave a loud scream. Then, after
+seconds--minutes--I don't know how long--he was free again.
+
+And for the colour of his face when by-and-by I glanced at it ... well, I
+once saw a swarthy Italian fall under a sunstroke, and _his_ face was
+much the same colour that Rooum's negro face had gone; a cloudy, whitish
+green.
+
+"Well--you've seen it--what do you think of it?" he gasped presently,
+turning a ghastly grin on me.
+
+But it was night before the full horror of it had soaked into me.
+
+Soon after that he disappeared again. I wasn't sorry.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Our big contract in the West End came on. It was a time-contract, with
+all manner of penalty clauses if we didn't get through; and I assure
+you that we were busy. I myself was far too busy to think of Rooum.
+
+It's a shop now, the place we were working at, or rather one of these
+huge weldings of fifty shops where you can buy anything; and if you'd
+seen us there... but perhaps you did see us, for people stood up on the
+tops of omnibuses as they passed, to look over the mud-splashed hoarding
+into the great excavation we'd made. It was a sight. Staging rose on
+staging, tier on tier, with interminable ladders all over the steel
+structure. Three or four squat Otis lifts crouched like iron turtles on
+top, and a lattice-crane on a towering three-cornered platform rose a
+hundred and twenty feet into the air. At one end of the vast quarry
+was a demolished house, showing flues and fireplaces and a score of
+thicknesses of old wallpaper; and at night--they might well have stood up
+on the tops of the buses! A dozen great spluttering violet arc-lights
+half-blinded you; down below were the watchmen's fires; overhead, the
+riveters had their fire-baskets; and in odd corners naphtha-lights
+guttered and flared. And the steel rang with the riveters' hammers, and
+the crane-chains rattled and clashed.... There's not much doubt in _my_
+mind, it's the engineers who are the architects nowadays. The chaps who
+think they're the architects are only a sort of paperhangers, who hang
+brick and terra-cotta on our work and clap a pinnacle or two on top--but
+never mind that. There we were, sweating and clanging and navvying, till
+the day shift came to relieve us.
+
+And I ought to say that fifty feet above our great gap, and from end to
+end across it, there ran a travelling crane on a skeleton line, with
+platform, engine, and wooden cab all compact in one.
+
+It happened that they had pitched in as one of the foremen some fellow or
+other, a friend of the firm's, a rank duffer, who pestered me incessantly
+with his questions. I did half his work and all my own, and it hadn't
+improved my temper much. On this night that I'm telling about, he'd been
+playing the fool with his questions as if a time-contract was a sort of
+summer holiday; and he'd filled me up to that point that I really can't
+say just when it was that Rooum put in an appearance again. I think I had
+heard somebody mention his name, but I'd paid no attention.
+
+Well, our Johnnie Fresh came up to me for the twentieth time that night,
+this time wanting to know something about the overhead crane. At that
+I fairly lost my temper.
+
+"What ails the crane?" I cried. "It's doing its work, isn't it? Isn't
+everybody doing their work except you? Why can't you ask Hopkins? Isn't
+Hopkins there?"
+
+"I don't know," he said.
+
+"Then," I snapped, "in that particular I'm as ignorant as you, and I hope
+it's the only one."
+
+But he grabbed my arm.
+
+"Look at it now!" he cried, pointing; and I looked up.
+
+Either Hopkins or somebody was dangerously exceeding the speed-limit. The
+thing was flying along its thirty yards of rail as fast as a tram, and
+the heavy fall-blocks swung like a ponderous kite-tail, thirty feet
+below. As I watched, the engine brought up within a yard of the end of
+the way, the blocks crashed like a ram into the broken house end,
+fetching down plaster and brick, and then the mechanism was reversed. The
+crane set off at a tear back.
+
+"Who in Hell ..." I began; but it wasn't a time to talk. "_Hi!_" I
+yelled, and made a spring for a ladder.
+
+The others had noticed it, too, for there were shouts all over the place.
+By that time I was halfway up the second stage. Again the crane tore
+past, with the massive tackle sweeping behind it, and again I heard the
+crash at the other end. Whoever had the handling of it was managing
+it skilfully, for there was barely a foot to spare when it turned again.
+
+On the fourth platform, at the end of the way, I found Hopkins. He was
+white, and seemed to be counting on his fingers.
+
+"What's the matter here?" I cried.
+
+"It's Rooum," he answered. "I hadn't stepped out of the cab, not a
+minute, when I heard the lever go. He's running somebody down, he says;
+he'll run the whole shoot down in a minute--look!..."
+
+The crane was coming back again. Half out of the cab I could see Rooum's
+mottled hair and beard. His brow was ribbed like a gridiron, and as he
+ripped past one of the arcs his face shone like porcelain with the sweat
+that bathed it.
+
+"Now ... you!... Now, damn you!..." he was shouting.
+
+"Get ready to board him when he reverses!" I shouted to Hopkins.
+
+Just how we scrambled on I don't know. I got one arm over the
+lifting-gear (which, of course, wasn't going), and heard Hopkins on
+the other footplate. Rooum put the brakes down and reversed; again came
+the thud of the fall-blocks; and we were speeding back again over the
+gulf of misty orange light. The stagings were thronged with gaping men.
+
+"Ready? Now!" I cried to Hopkins; and we sprang into the cab.
+
+Hopkins hit Rooum's wrist with a spanner. Then he seized the lever,
+jammed the brake down and tripped Rooum, all, as it seemed, in one
+movement. I fell on top of Rooum. The crane came to a standstill
+half-way down the line. I held Rooum panting.
+
+But either Rooum was stronger than I, or else he took me very much
+unawares. All at once he twisted clear from my grasp and stumbled on his
+knees to the rear door of the cab. He threw up one elbow, and staggered
+to his feet as I made another clutch at him.
+
+"Keep still, you fool!" I bawled. "Hit him over the head, Hopkins!"
+
+Rooum screamed in a high voice.
+
+"Run him down--cut him up with the wheels--down, you!--down, I say!--Oh,
+my God!... _Ha_!"
+
+He sprang clear out from the crane door, well-nigh taking me with him.
+
+I told you it was a skeleton line, two rails and a tie or two. He'd
+actually jumped to the right-hand rail. And he was running along
+it--running along that iron tightrope, out over that well of light and
+watching men. Hopkins had started the travelling-gear, as if with some
+insane idea of catching him; but there was only one possible end to it.
+He'd gone fully a dozen yards, while I watched, horribly fascinated; and
+then I saw the turn of his head....
+
+He didn't meet it this time; he sprang to the other rail, as if to evade
+it....
+
+Even at the take-off he missed. As far as I could see, he made no attempt
+to save himself with his hands. He just went down out of the field of
+my vision. There was an awful silence; then, from far below ...
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They weren't the men on the lower stages who moved first. The men above
+went a little way down, and then they too stopped. Presently two of them
+descended, but by a distant way. They returned, with two bottles of
+brandy, and there was a hasty consultation. Two men drank the brandy off
+there and then--getting on for a pint of brandy apiece; then they went
+down, drunk.
+
+I, Hopkins tells me, had got down on my knees in the crane cab, and was
+jabbering away cheerfully to myself. When I asked him what I said,
+he hesitated, and then said: "Oh, you don't want to know that, sir," and
+I haven't asked him since.
+
+What do _you_ make of it?
+
+
+
+
+BENLIAN
+
+
+I
+
+It would be different if you had known Benlian. It would be different if
+you had had even that glimpse of him that I had the very first time I saw
+him, standing on the little wooden landing at the top of the flight of
+steps outside my studio door. I say "studio"; but really it was just a
+sort of loft looking out over the timber-yard, and I used it as a studio.
+The real studio, the big one, was at the other end of the yard, and that
+was Benlian's.
+
+Scarcely anybody ever came there. I wondered many a time if the
+timber-merchant was dead or had lost his memory and forgotten all about
+his business; for his stacks of floorboards, set criss-crosswise to
+season (you know how they pile them up) were grimy with soot, and nobody
+ever disturbed the rows of scaffold-poles that stood like palisades along
+the walls. The entrance was from the street, through a door in a
+billposter's hoarding; and on the river not far away the steamboats
+hooted, and, in windy weather, the floorboards hummed to keep them
+company.
+
+I suppose some of these real, regular artists wouldn't have called me an
+artist at all; for I only painted miniatures, and it was trade-work at
+that, copied from photographs and so on. Not that I wasn't jolly good at
+it, and punctual too (lots of these high-flown artists have simply no
+idea of punctuality); and the loft was cheap, and suited me very well.
+But, of course, a sculptor wants a big place on the ground floor; it's
+slow work, that with blocks of stone and marble that cost you twenty
+pounds every time you lift them; so Benlian had the studio. His name was
+on a plate on the door, but I'd never seen him till this time I'm telling
+you of.
+
+I was working that evening at one of the prettiest little things I'd ever
+done: a girl's head on ivory, that I'd stippled up just like ... oh,
+you'd never have thought it was done by hand at all. The daylight had
+gone, but I knew that "Prussian" would be about the colour for the eyes
+and the bunch of flowers at her breast, and I wanted to finish.
+
+I was working at my little table, with a shade over my eyes; and I jumped
+a bit when somebody knocked at the door--not having heard anybody come up
+the steps, and not having many visitors anyway. (Letters were always put
+into the box in the yard door.)
+
+When I opened the door, there he stood on the platform; and I gave a bit
+of a start, having come straight from my ivory, you see. He was one of
+these very tall, gaunt chaps, that make us little fellows feel even
+smaller than we are; and I wondered at first where his eyes were, they
+were set so deep in the dark caves on either side of his nose. Like a
+skull, his head was; I could fancy his teeth curving round inside his
+cheeks; and his zygomatics stuck up under his skin like razorbacks (but
+if you're not one of us artists you'll not understand that). A bit of
+smoky, greenish sky showed behind him; and then, as his eyes moved in
+their big pits, one of them caught the light of my lamp and flashed like
+a well of lustre.
+
+He spoke abruptly, in a deep, shaky sort of voice.
+
+"I want you to photograph me in the morning," he said. I supposed he'd
+seen my printing-frames out on the window-sash some time or other.
+
+"Come in," I said. "But I'm afraid, if it's a miniature you want, that
+I'm retained--my firm retains me--you'd have to do it through them. But
+come in, and I'll show you the kind of thing I do--though you ought to
+have come in the daylight ..."
+
+He came in. He was wearing a long, grey dressing-gown that came right
+down to his heels and made him look something like a Noah's-ark figure.
+Seen in the light, his face seemed more ghastly bony still; and as he
+glanced for a moment at my little ivory he made a sound of contempt--I
+know it was contempt. I thought it rather cheek, coming into my place
+and--
+
+He turned his cavernous eyeholes on me.
+
+"I don't want anything of that sort. I want you to photograph me. I'll be
+here at ten in the morning."
+
+So, just to show him that I wasn't to be treated that way, I said, quite
+shortly, "I can't. I've an appointment at ten o'clock."
+
+"What's that?" he said--he'd one of these rich deep voices that always
+sound consumptive.
+
+"Take that thing off your eyes, and look at me," he ordered.
+
+Well, I was awfully indignant.
+
+"If you think I'm going to be told to do things like this--" I began.
+
+"Take that thing off," he just ordered again.
+
+I've got to remember, of course, that you didn't know Benlian. _I_ didn't
+then. And for a chap just to stalk into a fellow's place, and tell him to
+photograph him, and order him about ... but you'll see in a minute. I
+took the shade off my eyes, just to show him that _I_ could browbeat a
+bit too.
+
+I used to have a tall strip of looking-glass leaning against my wall; for
+though I didn't use models much, it's awfully useful to go to Nature for
+odd bits now and then, and I've sketched myself in that glass, oh,
+hundreds of times! We must have been standing in front of it, for all at
+once I saw the eyes at the bottom of his pits looking rigidly over my
+shoulder. Without moving his eyes from the glass, and scarcely moving his
+lips, he muttered:
+
+"Get me a pair of gloves, get me a pair of gloves."
+
+It was a funny thing to ask for; but I got him a pair of my gloves from a
+drawer. His hands were shaking so that he could hardly get them on, and
+there was a little glistening of sweat on his face, that looked like the
+salt that dries on you when you've been bathing in the sea. Then I
+turned, to see what it was that he was looking so earnestly and
+profoundly at in the mirror. I saw nothing except just the pair of us, he
+with my gloves on.
+
+He stepped aside, and slowly drew the gloves off. I think _I_ could have
+bullied _him_ just then. He turned to me.
+
+"Did that look all right to you?" he asked.
+
+"Why, my dear chap, whatever ails you?" I cried.
+
+"I suppose," he went on, "you couldn't photograph me to-night--now?"
+
+I could have done, with magnesium, but I hadn't a scrap in the place. I
+told him so. He was looking round my studio. He saw my camera standing in
+a corner.
+
+"Ah!" he said.
+
+He made a stride towards it. He unscrewed the lens, brought it to the
+lamp, and peered attentively through it, now into the air, now at his
+sleeve and hand, as if looking for a flaw in it. Then he replaced it, and
+pulled up the collar of his dressing-gown as if he was cold.
+
+"Well, another night of it," he muttered; "but," he added, facing
+suddenly round on me, "if your appointment was to meet your God Himself,
+you must photograph me at ten to-morrow morning!"
+
+"All right," I said, giving in (for he seemed horribly ill). "Draw up to
+the stove and have a drink of something and a smoke."
+
+"I neither drink nor smoke," he replied, moving towards the door.
+
+"Sit down and have a chat, then," I urged; for I always like to be decent
+with fellows, and it was a lonely sort of place, that yard.
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"Be ready by ten o'clock in the morning," he said; and he passed down my
+stairs and crossed the yard to his studio without even having said "Good
+night."
+
+Well, he was at my door again at ten o'clock in the morning, and I
+photographed him. I made three exposures; but the plates were some that
+I'd had in the place for some time, and they'd gone off and fogged in the
+developing.
+
+"I'm awfully sorry," I said; "but I'm going out this afternoon, and will
+get some more, and we'll have another shot in the morning."
+
+One after the other, he was holding the negatives up to the light and
+examining them. Presently he put them down quietly, leaning them
+methodically up against the edge of the developing-bath.
+
+"Never mind. It doesn't matter. Thank you," he said; and left me.
+
+After that, I didn't see him for weeks; but at nights I could see the
+light of his roof-window, shining through the wreathing river-mists, and
+sometimes I heard him moving about, and the muffled knock-knocking of his
+hammer on marble.
+
+
+II
+
+Of course I did see him again, or I shouldn't be telling you all this. He
+came to my door, just as he had done before, and at about the same time
+in the evening. He hadn't come to be photographed this time, but for all
+that it was something about a camera--something he wanted to know. He'd
+brought two books with him, big books, printed in German. They were on
+Light, he said, and Physics (or else it was Psychics--I always get those
+two words wrong). They were full of diagrams and equations and figures;
+and, of course, it was all miles above my head.
+
+He talked a lot about "hyper-space," whatever that is; and at first I
+nodded, as if I knew all about it. But he very soon saw that I didn't,
+and he came down to my level again. What he'd come to ask me was this:
+Did I know anything, of my own experience, about things "photographing
+through"? (You know the kind of thing: a name that's been painted out on
+a board, say, comes up in the plate.)
+
+Well, as it happened, I _had_ once photographed a drawing for a fellow,
+and the easel I had stood it on had come up through the picture; and I
+knew by the way Benlian nodded that that was the kind of thing he meant.
+
+"More," he said.
+
+I told him I'd once seen a photograph of a man with a bowler hat on, and
+the shape of his crown had showed through the hat.
+
+"Yes, yes," he said, musing; and then he asked: "Have you ever heard of
+things not photographing at all?"
+
+But I couldn't tell him anything about that; and off he started again,
+about Light and Physics and so on. Then, as soon as I could get a word
+in, I said, "But, of course, the camera isn't Art." (Some of my
+miniatures, you understand, were jolly nice little things.)
+
+"No--no," he murmured absently; and then abruptly he said: "Eh? What's
+that? And what the devil do _you_ know about it?"
+
+"Well," said I, in a dignified sort of way, "considering that for ten
+years I've been--"
+
+"Chut!... Hold your tongue," he said, turning away.
+
+There he was, talking to me again, just as if I'd asked him in to bully
+me. But you've got to be decent to a fellow when he's in your own place;
+and by-and-by I asked him, but in a cold, off-hand sort of way, how his
+own work was going on. He turned to me again.
+
+"Would you like to see it?" he asked.
+
+"_Aha_!" thought I, "he's got to a sticking-point with his work! It's all
+very well," I thought, "for you to sniff at my miniatures, my friend, but
+we all get stale on our work sometimes, and the fresh eye, even of a
+miniature-painter ..."
+
+"I shall be glad if I can be of any help to you," I answered, still a bit
+huffish, but bearing no malice.
+
+"Then come," he said.
+
+We descended and crossed the timber-yard, and he held his door open for
+me to pass in.
+
+It was an enormous great place, his studio, and all full of mist; and the
+gallery that was his bedroom was up a little staircase at the farther
+end. In the middle of the floor was a tall structure of scaffolding, with
+a stage or two to stand on; and I could see the dim ghostly marble figure
+in the gloom. It had been jacked up on a heavy base; and as it would have
+taken three or four men to put it into position, and scarcely a stranger
+had entered the yard since I had been there, I knew that the figure must
+have stood for a long time. Sculpture's weary, slow work.
+
+Benlian was pottering about with a taper at the end of a long rod; and
+suddenly the overhead gas-ring burst into light. I placed myself before
+the statue--to criticise, you know.
+
+Well, it didn't seem to me that he needed to have turned up his nose at
+my ivories, for I didn't think much of his statue--except that it was a
+great, lumping, extraordinary piece of work. It had an outstretched arm
+that, I remember thinking, was absolutely misshapen--disproportioned,
+big enough for a giant, ridiculously out of drawing. And as I looked at
+the thing this way and that, I knew that his eyes in their deep cellars
+never left my face for a moment.
+
+"It's a god," he said by-and-by.
+
+Then I began to tell him about that monstrous arm; but he cut me very
+short.
+
+"I say it's a god," he interrupted, looking at me as if he would have
+eaten me. "Even you, child as you are, have seen the gods men have made
+for themselves before this. Half-gods they've made, all good or all evil
+(and then they've called them the Devil). This is _my_ god--the god of
+good and of evil also."
+
+"Er--I see," I said, rather taken aback (but quite sure he was off his
+head for all that). Then I looked at the arm again; a child could have
+seen how wrong it was....
+
+But suddenly, to my amazement, he took me by the shoulders and turned me
+away.
+
+"That'll do," he said curtly. "I didn't ask you to come in here with a
+view to learning anything from you. I wanted to see how it struck you. I
+shall send for you again--and again--"
+
+Then he began to jabber, half to himself.
+
+"Bah!" he muttered. "'Is that all?' they ask before a stupendous thing.
+Show them the ocean, the heavens, infinity, and they ask, 'Is that all?'
+If they saw their God face to face they'd ask it!... There's only one
+Cause, that works now in good and now in evil, but show It to them and
+they put their heads on one side and begin to appraise and patronise
+It!... I tell you, what's seen at a glance flies away at a glance. Gods
+come slowly over you, but presently, ah! they begin to grip you, and at
+the end there's no fleeing from them! You'll tell me more about my statue
+by-and-by!... What was that you said?" he demanded, facing swiftly round
+on me. "That arm? Ah, yes; but we'll see what you say about that arm six
+months from now! Yes, the arm.... Now be off!" he ordered me. "I'll send
+for you again when I want you!"
+
+He thrust me out.
+
+"An asylum, Mr. Benlian," I thought as I crossed the yard, "is the place
+for you!" You see, I didn't know him then, and that he wasn't to be
+judged as an ordinary man is. Just you wait till you see....
+
+And straight away, I found myself vowing that I'd have nothing more to do
+with him. I found myself resolving that, as if I were making up my mind
+not to smoke or drink--and (I don't know why) with a similar sense that I
+was depriving myself of something. But, somehow, I forgot, and within a
+month he'd been in several times to see me, and once or twice had fetched
+me in to see his statue.
+
+In two months I was in an extraordinary state of mind about him. I was
+familiar with him in a way, but at the same time I didn't know one scrap
+more about him. Because I'm a fool (oh, yes, I know quite well, now, what
+I am) you'll think I'm talking folly if I even begin to tell you what
+sort of a man he was. I don't mean just his knowledge (though I think he
+knew everything--sciences, languages, and all that) for it was far more
+than that. Somehow, when he was there, he had me all restless and uneasy;
+and when he wasn't there I was (there's only the one word for it)
+jealous--as jealous as if he'd been a girl! Even yet I can't make it
+out....
+
+And he knew how unsettled he'd got me; and I'll tell you how I found that
+out.
+
+Straight out one night, when he was sitting up in my place, he asked me:
+"Do you like me, Pudgie?" (I forgot to say that I'd told him they used to
+call me Pudgie at home, because I was little and fat; it was odd, the
+number of things I told him that I wouldn't have told anybody else.)
+
+"Do you like me, Pudgie?" he said.
+
+As for my answer, I don't know how it spurted out. I was much more
+surprised than he was, for I really didn't intend it. It was for all the
+world as if somebody else was talking with my mouth.
+
+"_I loathe and adore you!_" it came; and then I looked round, awfully
+startled to hear myself saying that.
+
+But he didn't look at me. He only nodded.
+
+"Yes. Of good and evil too--" he muttered to himself. And then all of a
+sudden he got up and went out.
+
+I didn't sleep for ever so long after that, thinking how odd it was I
+should have said that.
+
+Well (to get on), after that something I couldn't account for began to
+come over me sometimes as I worked. It began to come over me, without any
+warning, that he was thinking of me down there across the yard. I used to
+_know_ (this must sound awfully silly to you) that he was down yonder,
+thinking of me and doing something to me. And one night I was so sure
+that it wasn't fancy that I jumped straight up from my work, and I'm not
+quite sure what happened then, until I found myself in his studio, just
+as if I'd walked there in my sleep.
+
+And he seemed to be waiting for me, for there was a chair by his own, in
+front of the statue.
+
+"What is it, Benlian?" I burst out.
+
+"Ah!" he said.... "Well, it's about that arm, Pudgie; I want you to tell
+me about the arm. Does it look so strange as it did?"
+
+"No," I said.
+
+"I thought it wouldn't," he observed. "But I haven't touched it,
+Pudgie--"
+
+So I stayed the evening there.
+
+But you must not think he was always doing that thing--whatever it
+was--to me. On the other hand, I sometimes felt the oddest sort of
+release (I don't know how else to put it) ... like when, on one of these
+muggy, earthy-smelling days, when everything's melancholy, the wind
+freshens up suddenly and you breathe again. And that (I'm trying to take
+it in order, you see, so that it will be plain to you) brings me to the
+time I found out that _he_ did that too, and knew when he was doing it.
+
+I'd gone into his place one night to have a look at his statue. It was
+surprising what a lot I was finding out about that statue. It was still
+all out of proportion (that is to say, I knew it must be--remembered I'd
+thought so--though it didn't annoy me now quite so much. I suppose I'd
+lost _my_ fresh eye by that time). Somehow, too, my own miniatures had
+begun to look a bit kiddish; they made me impatient; and that's horrible,
+to be discontented with things that once seemed jolly good to you.
+
+Well, he'd been looking at me in the hungriest sort of way, and I looking
+at the statue, when all at once that feeling of release and lightness
+came over me. The first I knew of it was that I found myself thinking of
+some rather important letters my firm had written to me, wanting to know
+when a job I was doing was going to be finished. I thought myself it was
+time I got it finished; I thought I'd better set about it at once; and I
+sat suddenly up in my chair, as if I'd just come out of a sleep. And,
+looking at the statue, I saw it as it had seemed at first--all misshapen
+and out of drawing.
+
+The very next moment, as I was rising, I sat down again as suddenly as if
+somebody had pulled me back.
+
+Now a chap doesn't like to be changed about like that; so, without
+looking at Benlian, I muttered a bit testily, "Don't, Benlian!"
+
+Then I heard him get up and knock his chair away. He was standing behind
+me.
+
+"Pudgie," he said, in a moved sort of voice, "I'm no good to you. Get out
+of this. Get out--"
+
+"No, no, Benlian!" I pleaded.
+
+"Get out, do you hear, and don't come again! Go and live somewhere
+else--go away from London--don't let me know where you go--"
+
+"Oh, what have I done?" I asked unhappily; and he was muttering again.
+
+"Perhaps it would be better for me too," he muttered; and then he added,
+"Come, bundle out!"
+
+So in home I went, and finished my ivory for the firm; but I can't tell
+you how friendless and unhappy I felt.
+
+Now I used to know in those days a little girl--a nice, warm-hearted
+little thing, just friendly you know, who used to come to me sometimes in
+another place I lived at and mend for me and so on. It was an awful long
+time since I'd seen her; but she found me out one night--came to that
+yard, walked straight in, went straight to my linen-bag, and began to
+look over my things to see what wanted mending, just as she used to. I
+don't mind confessing that I was a bit sweet on her at one time; and it
+made me feel awfully mean, the way she came in, without asking any
+questions, and took up my mending.
+
+So she sat doing my things, and I sat at my work, glad of a bit of
+company; and she chatted as she worked, just jolly and gentle and not at
+all reproaching me.
+
+But as suddenly as a shot, right in the middle of it all, I found myself
+wondering about Benlian again. And I wasn't only wondering; somehow I was
+horribly uneasy about him. It came to me that he might be ill or
+something. And all the fun of her having come to see me was gone. I found
+myself doing all sorts of stupid things to my work, and glancing at my
+watch that was lying on the table before me.
+
+At last I couldn't stand it any longer. I got up.
+
+"Daisy," I said, "I've got to go out now."
+
+She seemed surprised.
+
+"Oh, why didn't you tell me I'd been keeping you!" she said, getting up
+at once.
+
+I muttered that I was awfully sorry....
+
+I packed her off. I closed the door in the hoarding behind her. Then I
+walked straight across the yard to Benlian's.
+
+He was lying on a couch, not doing anything.
+
+"I know I ought to have come sooner, Benlian," I said, "but I had
+somebody with me."
+
+"Yes," he said, looking hard at me; and I got a bit red.
+
+"She's awfully nice," I stammered; "but you never bother with girls, and
+you don't drink or smoke--"
+
+"No," he said.
+
+"Well," I continued, "you ought to have a little relaxation; you're
+knocking yourself up." And, indeed, he looked awfully ill.
+
+But he shook his head.
+
+"A man's only a definite amount of force in him, Pudgie," he said, "and
+if he spends it in one way he goes short in another. Mine goes--there."
+He glanced at the statue. "I rarely sleep now," he added.
+
+"Then you ought to see a doctor," I said, a bit alarmed. (I'd felt sure
+he was ill.)
+
+"No, no, Pudgie. My force is all going there--all but the minimum that
+can't be helped, you know.... You've heard artists talk about 'putting
+their soul into their work,' Pudgie?"
+
+"Don't rub it in about my rotten miniatures, Benlian," I asked him.
+
+"You've heard them say that; but they're charlatans, professional
+artists, all, Pudgie. They haven't got any souls bigger than a sixpence
+to put into it.... You know, Pudgie, that Force and Matter are the same
+thing--that it's decided nowadays that you can't define matter otherwise
+than as 'a point of Force'?"
+
+"Yes," I found myself saying eagerly, as if I'd heard it dozens of times
+before.
+
+"So that if they could put their souls into it, it would be just as easy
+for them to put their _bodies_ into it?..."
+
+I had drawn very close to him, and again--it was not fancy--I felt as if
+somebody, not me, was using my mouth. A flash of comprehension seemed to
+come into my brain.
+
+"_Not that, Benlian_?" I cried breathlessly.
+
+He nodded three or four times, and whispered. I really don't know why we
+both whispered.
+
+"_Really that, Benlian_?" I whispered again.
+
+"Shall I show you?... I tried my hardest not to, you know,..." he still
+whispered.
+
+"Yes, show me!" I replied in a suppressed voice.
+
+"Don't breathe a sound then! I keep them up there...."
+
+He put his finger to his lips as if we had been two conspirators; then he
+tiptoed across the studio and went up to his bedroom in the gallery.
+Presently he tiptoed down again, with some rolled-up papers in his hand.
+They were photographs, and we stooped together over a little table. His
+hand shook with excitement.
+
+"You remember this?" he whispered, showing me a rough print.
+
+It was one of the prints from the fogged plates that I'd taken after that
+first night.
+
+"Come closer to me if you feel frightened, Pudgie," he said. "You said
+they were old plates, Pudgie. No no; the plates were all right; it's _I_
+who am wrong!"
+
+"Of course," I said. It seemed so natural.
+
+"This one," he said, taking up one that was numbered "1," "is a plain
+photograph, in the flesh, before it started; _you_ know! Now look at
+this, and this--"
+
+He spread them before me, all in order.
+
+"2" was a little fogged, as if a novice had taken it; on "3" a sort of
+cloudy veil partly obliterated the face; "4" was still further smudged
+and lost; and "5" was a figure with gloved hands held up, as a man holds
+his hands up when he is covered by a gun. The face of this one was
+completely blotted out.
+
+And it didn't seem in the least horrible to me, for I kept on murmuring,
+"Of course, of course."
+
+Then Benlian rubbed his hands and smiled at me. "I'm making good
+progress, am I not?" he said.
+
+"Splendid!" I breathed.
+
+"Better than you know, too," he chuckled, "for you're not properly under
+yet. But you will be, Pudgie, you will be--"
+
+"Yes, yes!... Will it be long, Benlian?"
+
+"No," he replied, "not if I can keep from eating and sleeping and
+thinking of other things than the statue--and if you don't disturb me by
+having girls about the place, Pudgie."
+
+"I'm awfully sorry," I said contritely.
+
+"All right, all right; ssh!... This, you know, Pudgie, is my own studio;
+I bought it; I bought it purposely to make my statue, my god. I'm passing
+nicely into it; and when I'm quite passed--_quite_ passed, Pudgie--you
+can have the key and come in when you like."
+
+"Oh, thanks awfully," I murmured gratefully.
+
+He nudged me.
+
+"What would they think of it, Pudgie--those of the exhibitions and
+academies, who say 'their souls are in their work'? What would the
+cacklers think of it, Pudgie?"
+
+"Aren't they fools!" I chuckled.
+
+"And I shall have _one_ worshipper, shan't I, Pudgie?"
+
+"Rather!" I replied. "Isn't it splendid!... Oh, need I go back just yet?"
+
+"Yes, you must go now; but I'll send for you again very soon.... You know
+I tried to do without you, Pudge; I tried for thirteen days, and it
+nearly killed me! That's past. I shan't try again. Now off you trot, my
+Pudgie--"
+
+I winked at him knowingly, and came skipping and dancing across the yard.
+
+
+III
+
+It's just silly--that's what it is--to say that something of a man
+doesn't go into his work.
+
+Why, even those wretched little ivories of mine, the thick-headed fellows
+who paid for them knew my touch in them, and once spotted it instantly
+when I tried to slip in another chap's who was hard up. Benlian used to
+say that a man went about spreading himself over everything he came in
+contact with--diffusing some sort of influence (as far as I could make it
+out); and the mistake was, he said, that we went through the world just
+wasting it instead of directing it. And if Benlian didn't understand all
+about those things, I should jolly well like to know who does! A chap
+with a great abounding will and brain like him, it's only natural he
+should be able to pass himself on, to a statue or anything else, when he
+really tried--did without food and talk and sleep in order to save
+himself up for it!
+
+"A man can't both _do_ and _be_," I remember he said to me once. "He's so
+much force, no more, and he can either make himself with it or something
+else. If he tries to do both, he does both imperfectly. I'm going to do
+_one_ perfect thing." Oh, he was a queer chap! Fancy, a fellow making a
+thing like that statue, out of himself, and then wanting somebody to
+adore him!
+
+And I hadn't the faintest conception of how much I did adore him till
+yet again, as he had done before, he seemed to--you know--to take
+himself away from me again, leaving me all alone, and so wretched!... And
+I was angry at the same time, for he'd promised me he wouldn't do it
+again.... (This was one night, I don't remember when.)
+
+I ran to my landing and shouted down into the yard.
+
+"Benlian! Benlian!"
+
+There was a light in his studio, and I heard a muffled shout come back.
+
+"Keep away--keep away--keep away!"
+
+He was struggling--I knew he was struggling as I stood there on my
+landing--struggling to let me go. And I could only run and throw myself
+on my bed and sob, while he tried to set me free, who didn't want to be
+set free ... he was having a terrific struggle, all alone there....
+
+(He told me afterwards that he _had_ to eat something now and then and to
+sleep a little, and that weakened him--strengthened him--strengthened
+his body and weakened the passing, you know.)
+
+But the next day it was all right again. I was Benlian's again. And I
+wondered, when I remembered his struggle, whether a dying man had ever
+fought for life as hard as Benlian was fighting to get away from it and
+pass himself.
+
+The next time after that that he fetched me--called me--whatever you like
+to name it--I burst into his studio like a bullet. He was sunk in a big
+chair, gaunt as a mummy now, and all the life in him seemed to burn in
+the bottom of his deep eye-sockets. At the sight of him I fiddled with
+my knuckles and giggled.
+
+"You _are_ going it, Benlian!" I said.
+
+"Am I not?" he replied, in a voice that was scarcely a breath.
+
+"You _meant_ me to bring the camera and magnesium, didn't you?" (I had
+snatched them up when I felt his call, and had brought them.)
+
+"Yes. Go ahead."
+
+So I placed the camera before him, made all ready, and took the magnesium
+ribbon in a pair of pincers.
+
+"Are you ready?" I said; and lighted the ribbon.
+
+The studio seemed to leap with the blinding glare. The ribbon spat and
+spluttered. I snapped the shutter, and the fumes drifted away and hung
+in clouds in the roof.
+
+"You'll have to walk me about soon, Pudgie, and bang me with bladders, as
+they do the opium-patients," he said sleepily.
+
+"Let me take one of the statue now," I said eagerly.
+
+But he put up his hand.
+
+"No, no. _That's_ too much like testing our god. Faith's the food they
+feed gods on, Pudgie. We'll let the S.P.R. people photograph it when it's
+all over," he said. "Now get it developed."
+
+I developed the plate. The obliteration now seemed complete.
+
+But Benlian seemed dissatisfied.
+
+"There's something wrong somewhere," he said. "It isn't so perfect as
+that yet--I can feel within me it isn't. It's merely that your camera
+isn't strong enough to find me, Pudgie."
+
+"I'll get another in the morning," I cried.
+
+"No," he answered. "I know something better than that. Have a cab here by
+ten o'clock in the morning, and we'll go somewhere."
+
+By half-past ten the next morning we had driven to a large hospital, and
+had gone down a lot of steps and along corridors to a basement room.
+There was a stretcher couch in the middle of the room, and all manner of
+queer appliances, frames of ground glass, tubes of glass blown into
+extraordinary shapes, a dynamo, and a lot of other things all about. A
+couple of doctors were there too, and Benlian was talking to them.
+
+"We'll try my hand first," Benlian said by-and-by.
+
+He advanced to the couch, and put his hand under one of the frames of
+ground glass. One of the doctors did something in a corner. A harsh
+crackling filled the room, and an unearthly, fluorescent light shot and
+flooded across the frame where Benlian's hand was. The two doctors
+looked, and then started back. One of them gave a cry. He was sickly
+white.
+
+"Put me on the couch," said Benlian.
+
+I and the doctor who was not ill lifted him on the canvas stretcher. The
+green-gleaming frame of fluctuating light was passed over the whole of
+his body. Then the doctor ran to a telephone and called a colleague....
+
+We spent the morning there, with dozens of doctors coming and going. Then
+we left. All the way home in the cab Benlian chuckled to himself.
+
+"That scared 'em, Pudgie!" he chuckled. "A man they can't X-ray--that
+scared 'em! We must put that down in the diary--"
+
+"Wasn't it ripping!" I chuckled back.
+
+He kept a sort of diary or record. He gave it to me afterwards, but
+they've borrowed it. It was as big as a ledger, and immensely valuable,
+I'm sure; they oughtn't to borrow valuable things like that and not
+return them. The laughing that Benlian and I have had over that diary!
+It fooled them all--the clever X-ray men, the artists of the academies,
+everybody! Written on the fly-leaf was "_To My Pudgie_." I shall publish
+it when I get it back again.
+
+Benlian had now got frightfully weak; it's awfully hard work, passing
+yourself. And he had to take a little milk now and then or he'd have
+died before he had quite finished. I didn't bother with miniatures any
+longer, and when angry letters came from my employers we just put them
+into the fire, Benlian and I, and we laughed--that is to say, I laughed,
+but Benlian only smiled, being too weak to laugh really. He'd lots of
+money, so that was all right; and I slept in his studio, to be there for
+the passing.
+
+And that wouldn't be very long now, I thought; and I was always looking
+at the statue. Things like that (in case you don't know) have to be done
+gradually, and I supposed he was busy filling up the inside of it and
+hadn't got to the outside yet--for the statue was much the same to look
+at. But, reckoning off his sips of milk and snatches of sleep, he was
+making splendid progress, and the figure must be getting very full now.
+I was awfully excited, it was getting so near....
+
+And then somebody came bothering and nearly spoiling all. It's odd, but I
+really forget exactly what it was. I only know there was a funeral, and
+people were sobbing and looking at me, and somebody said I was callous,
+but somebody else said, "No, look at him," and that it was just the other
+way about. And I think I remember, now, that it wasn't in London, for I
+was in a train; but after the funeral I dodged them, and found myself
+back at Euston again. They followed me, but I shook them off. I locked my
+own studio up, and lay as quiet as a mouse in Benlian's place when they
+came hammering at the door....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And now I must come to what you'll called the finish--though it's awfully
+stupid to call things like that "finishes."
+
+I'd slipped into my own studio one night--I forget what for; and I'd gone
+quietly, for I knew they were following me, those people, and would catch
+me if they could. It was a thick, misty night, and the light came
+streaming up through Benlian's roof window, with the shadows of the
+window-divisions losing themselves like dark rays in the fog. A lot of
+hooting was going on down the river, steamers and barges.... Oh, I know
+what I'd come into my studio for! It was for those negatives. Benlian
+wanted them for the diary, so that it could be seen there wasn't any
+fake about the prints. For he'd said he would make a final spurt that
+evening and get the job finished. It had taken a long time, but I'll bet
+_you_ couldn't have passed _yourself_ any quicker.
+
+When I got back he was sitting in the chair he'd hardly left for weeks,
+and the diary was on the table by his side. I'd taken all the scaffolding
+down from the statue, and he was ready to begin. He had to waste one last
+bit of strength to explain to me, but I drew as close as I could, so that
+he wouldn't lose much.
+
+"Now, Pudgie," I just heard him say, "you've behaved splendidly, and
+you'll be quite still up to the finish, won't you?"
+
+I nodded.
+
+"And you mustn't expect the statue to come down and walk about,
+or anything like that," he continued. "_Those_ aren't the really
+wonderful things. And no doubt people will tell you it hasn't changed;
+but you'll know better! It's much more wonderful that I should be there
+than that they should be able to prove it, isn't it?... And, of course,
+I don't know exactly how it will happen, for I've never done this
+before.... You have the letter for the S.P.R.? They can photograph it if
+they want.... By the way, you don't think the same of my statue as you
+did at first, do you?"
+
+"Oh, it's wonderful!" I breathed.
+
+"And even if, like the God of the others, it doesn't vouchsafe a special
+sign and wonder, it's Benlian, for all that?"
+
+"Oh, do be quick, Benlian! I can't bear another minute!"
+
+Then, for the last time, he turned his great eaten-out eyes on me.
+
+"_I seal you mine, Pudgie_!" he said.
+
+Then his eyes fastened themselves on the statue.
+
+I waited for a quarter of an hour, scarcely breathing. Benlian's breath
+came in little flutters, many seconds apart. He had a little clock on the
+table. Twenty minutes passed, and half an hour. I was a little
+disappointed, really, that the statue wasn't going to move; but Benlian
+knew best, and it was filling quietly up with him instead. Then I thought
+of those zigzag bunches of lightning they draw on the electric-belt
+advertisements, and I was rather glad after all that the statue _wasn't_
+going to move. It would have been a little cheap, that ... vulgar, in a
+sense.... He was breathing a little more sharply now, as if in pain, but
+his eyes never moved. A dog was howling somewhere, and I hoped that the
+hooting of the tugs wouldn't disturb Benlian....
+
+Nearly an hour had passed when, all of a sudden, I pushed my chair
+farther away and cowered back, gnawing my fingers, very frightened.
+Benlian had suddenly moved. He'd set himself forward in his chair, and he
+seemed to be strangling. His mouth was wide open, and he began to make
+long harsh "_Aaaaah-aaaah's_!" I shouldn't have thought passing yourself
+was such agony....
+
+And then I gave a scream--for he seemed to be thrusting himself back in
+his chair again, as if he'd changed his mind and didn't want to pass
+himself at all. But just you ask anybody: When you get yourself just over
+half-way passed, the other's dragged out of you, and you can't help
+yourself. His "_Aaaaahs_!" became so loud and horrid that I shut my eyes
+and stopped my ears.... Minutes that lasted; and then there came a high
+dinning that I couldn't shut out, and all at once the floor shook with a
+heavy thump. When all was still again I opened my eyes.
+
+His chair had overturned, and he lay in a heap beside it.
+
+I called "Benlian!" but he didn't answer....
+
+He'd passed beautifully; quite dead. I looked up at the statue. It was
+just as Benlian had said--it didn't open its eyes, nor speak, nor
+anything like that. Don't you believe chaps who tell you that statues
+that have been passed into do that; they don't.
+
+But instead, in a blaze and flash and shock, I knew now for the first
+time what a glorious thing that statue was! Have you ever seen anything
+for the first time like that? If you have, you never see very much
+afterwards, you know. The rest's all piffle after that. It was like
+coming out of fog and darkness into a split in the open heavens, my
+statue was so transfigured; and I'll bet if you'd been there you'd have
+clapped your hands, as I did, and chucked the tablecloth over the Benlian
+on the floor till they should come to cart that empty shell away, and
+patted the statue's foot and cried: "_Is it all right, Benlian_?"
+
+I did this; and then I rushed excitedly out into the street, to call
+somebody to see how glorious it was....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They've brought me here for a holiday, and I'm to go back to the studio
+in two or three days. But they've said that before, and I think it's
+caddish of fellows not to keep their word--and not to return a valuable
+diary too! But there isn't a peephole in my room, as there is in some of
+them (the Emperor of Brazil told me that); and Benlian knows I haven't
+forsaken him, for they take me a message every day to the studio, and
+Benlian always answers that it's "_all right_, and I'm to stay where I am
+for a bit." So as long as he knows, I don't mind so much. But it is a bit
+rotten hanging on here, especially when the doctors themselves admit how
+reasonable it all is.... Still, if Benlian says it's "_All right_ ..."
+
+
+
+
+IO
+
+
+As the young man put his hand to the uppermost of the four brass
+bell-knobs to the right of the fanlighted door he paused, withdrew the
+hand again, and then pulled at the lowest knob. The sawing of bell-wire
+answered him, and he waited for a moment, uncertain whether the bell had
+rung, before pulling again. Then there came from the basement a single
+cracked stroke; the head of a maid appeared in the whitewashed area
+below; and the head was withdrawn as apparently the maid recognised him.
+Steps were heard along the hall; the door was opened; and the maid stood
+aside to let him enter, the apron with which she had slipped the latch
+still crumpled in her greasy hand.
+
+"Sorry, Daisy," the young man apologised, "but I didn't want to bring her
+down all those stairs. How is she? Has she been out to-day?"
+
+The maid replied that the person spoken of had been out; and the young
+man walked along the wide carpeted passage.
+
+It was cumbered like an antique-shop with alabaster busts on pedestals,
+dusty palms in faience vases, and trophies of spears and shields and
+assegais. At the foot of the stairs was a rustling portière of strung
+beads, and beyond it the carpet was continued up the broad, easy flight,
+secured at each step by a brass rod. Where the stairs made a turn, the
+fading light of the December afternoon, made still dimmer by a window of
+decalcomanied glass, shone on a cloudy green aquarium with sallow
+goldfish, a number of cacti on a shabby console table, and a large and
+dirty white sheepskin rug. Passing along a short landing, the young man
+began the ascent of the second flight. This also was carpeted, but with a
+carpet that had done duty in some dining- or bed-room before being cut up
+into strips of the width of the narrow space between the wall and the
+handrail. Then, as he still mounted, the young man's feet sounded loud on
+oilcloth; and when he finally paused and knocked at a door it was on a
+small landing of naked boards beneath the cold gleam of the skylight
+above the well of the stairs.
+
+"Come in," a girl's voice called.
+
+The room he entered had a low sagging ceiling on which shone a low glow
+of firelight, making colder still the patch of eastern sky beyond the
+roofs and the cowls and hoods of chimneys framed by the square of the
+single window. The glow on the ceiling was reflected dully in the old
+dark mirror over the mantelpiece. An open door in the farther corner,
+hampered with skirts and blouses, allowed a glimpse of the girl's
+bedroom.
+
+The young man set the paper bag he carried down on the littered round
+table and advanced to the girl who sat in an old wicker chair before
+the fire. The girl did not turn her head as he kissed her cheek, and he
+looked down at something that had muffled the sound of his steps as
+he had approached her.
+
+"Hallo, that's new, isn't it, Bessie? Where did that come from?" he asked
+cheerfully.
+
+The middle of the floor was covered with a common jute matting, but on
+the hearth was a magnificent leopard-skin rug.
+
+"Mrs. Hepburn sent it up. There was a draught from under the door. It's
+much warmer for my feet."
+
+"Very kind of Mrs. Hepburn. Well, how are you feeling to-day, old girl?"
+
+"Better, thanks, Ed."
+
+"That's the style. You'll be yourself again soon. Daisy says you've been
+out to-day?"
+
+"Yes, I went for a walk. But not far; I went to the Museum and then sat
+down. You're early, aren't you?"
+
+He turned away to get a chair, from which he had to move a mass of
+tissue-paper patterns and buckram linings. He brought it to the rug.
+
+"Yes. I stopped last night late to cash up for Vedder, so he's staying
+to-night. Turn and turn about. Well, tell us all about it, Bess."
+
+Their faces were red in the firelight. Hers had the prettiness that the
+first glance almost exhausts, the prettiness, amazing in its quantity,
+that one sees for a moment under the light of the street lamps when shops
+and offices close for the day. She was short-nosed, pulpy-mouthed and
+faunish-eyed, and only the rather remarkable smallness of the head on the
+splendid thick throat saved her from ordinariness. He, too, might have
+been seen in his thousands at the close of any day, hurrying home to
+Catford or Walham Green or Tufnell Park to tea and an evening with a
+girl or in a billiard-room, or else dining cheaply "up West" preparatory
+to smoking cigarettes from yellow packets in the upper circle of a
+music-hall. Four inches of white up-and-down collar encased his neck; and
+as he lifted his trousers at the knee to clear his purple socks, the pair
+of paper covers showed, that had protected his cuffs during the day at
+the office. He removed them, crumpled them up and threw them on the fire;
+and the momentary addition to the light of the upper chamber showed how
+curd-white was that superb neck of hers and how moody and tired her eyes.
+
+From his face only one would have guessed, and guessed wrongly, that his
+preferences were for billiard-rooms and music-halls. His conversation
+showed them to be otherwise. It was of Polytechnic classes that he spoke,
+and of the course of lectures in English literature that had just begun.
+And, as if somebody had asserted that the pursuit of such studies was not
+compatible with a certain measure of physical development also, he
+announced that he was not sure that he should not devote, say, half an
+evening a week, on Wednesdays, to training in the gymnasium.
+
+"_Mens sana in corpore sano_, Bessie," he said; "a sound mind in a sound
+body, you know. That's tremendously important, especially when a fellow
+spends the day in a stuffy office. Yes, I think I shall give it half
+Wednesdays, from eight-thirty to nine-thirty; sends you home in a glow.
+But I was going to tell you about the Literature Class. The second
+lecture's to-night. The first was splendid, all about the languages of
+Europe and Asia--what they call the Indo-Germanic languages, you know.
+Aryans. I can't tell you exactly without my notes, but the Hindoos and
+Persians, I think it was, they crossed the Himalaya Mountains and spread
+westward somehow, as far as Europe. That was the way it all began. It
+was splendid, the way the lecturer put it. English is a Germanic
+language, you know. Then came the Celts. I wish I'd brought my notes. I
+see you've been reading; let's look--"
+
+A book lay on her knees, its back warped by the heat of the fire. He took
+it and opened it.
+
+"Ah, Keats! Glad you like Keats, Bessie. We needn't be great readers, but
+it's important that what we do read should be all right. I don't know
+him, not _really_ know him, that is. But he's quite all right--A1 in
+fact. And he's an example of what I've always maintained, that knowledge
+should be brought within the reach of all. It just shows. He was the son
+of a livery-stable keeper, you know, so what he'd have been if he'd
+really had chances, been to universities and so on, there's no knowing.
+But, of course, it's more from the historical standpoint that I'm
+studying these things. Let's have a look--"
+
+He opened the book where a hairpin between the leaves marked a place.
+The firelight glowed on the page, and he read, monotonously and
+inelastically:
+
+"_And as I sat, over the light blue hills
+There came a noise of revellers; the rills
+Into the wide stream came of purple hue--
+  'Twas Bacchus and his crew!
+The earnest trumpet spake, and silver thrills
+From kissing cymbals made a merry din--
+  'Twas Bacchus and his kin!
+Like to a moving vintage down they came,
+Crowned with green leaves, and faces all on flame
+All madly dancing through the pleasant valley
+  To scare thee, Melancholy!"_
+
+It was the wondrous passage from _Endymion_, of the descent of the wild
+inspired rabble into India. Ed plucked for a moment at his lower lip, and
+then, with a "Hm! What's it all about, Bessie?" continued:
+
+_"Within his car, aloft, young Bacchus stood,
+Trifling his ivy-dart, in dancing mood,
+  With sidelong laughing;
+And little rills of crimson wine imbrued
+His plump white arms and shoulders, enough white
+  For Venus' pearly bite;
+And near him rode Silenus on his ass,
+Pelted with flowers as he on did pass,
+  Tipsily quaffing."_
+
+"Hm! I see. Mythology. That's made up of tales, and myths, you know. Like
+Odin and Thor and those, only those were Scandinavian Mythology. So it
+would be absurd to take it too seriously. But I think, in a way, things
+like that do harm. You see," he explained, "the more beautiful they are
+the more harm they might do. We ought always to show virtue and vice in
+their true colours, and if you look at it from that point of view this is
+just drunkenness. That's rotten; destroys your body and intellect; as I
+heard a chap say once, it's an insult to the beasts to call it beastly. I
+joined the Blue Ribbon when I was fourteen and I haven't been sorry for
+it yet. No. Now there's Vedder; he 'went off on a bend,' as he calls it,
+last night, and even he says this morning it wasn't worth it. But let's
+read on."
+
+Again he read, with unresilient movement:
+
+"_I saw Osirian Egypt kneel adown
+Before the vine wreath crown!
+  I saw parched Abyssinia rouse and sing
+  To the silver cymbals' ring!
+I saw the whelming vintage hotly pierce
+  Old Tartary the fierce!
+Great Brahma from his mystic heaven groans_ ..."
+
+"Hm! He was a Buddhist god, Brahma was; mythology again. As I say, if you
+take it seriously, it's just glorifying intoxication.--But I say; I can
+hardly see. Better light the lamp. We'll have tea first, then read. No,
+you sit still; I'll get it ready; I know where things are--"
+
+He rose, crossed to a little cupboard with a sink in it, filled the
+kettle at the tap, and brought it to the fire. Then he struck a match and
+lighted the lamp.
+
+The cheap glass shade was of a foolish corolla shape, clear glass below,
+shading to pink, and deepening to red at the crimped edge. It gave a
+false warmth to the spaces of the room above the level of the
+mantelpiece, and Ed's figure, as he turned the regulator, looked from the
+waist upwards as if he stood within that portion of a spectrum screen
+that deepens to the band of red. The bright concentric circles that
+spread in rings of red on the ceiling were more dimly reduplicated in the
+old mirror over the mantelpiece; and the wintry eastern light beyond the
+chimney-hoods seemed suddenly almost to die out.
+
+Bessie, her white neck below the level of the lamp-shade, had taken up
+the book again; but she was not reading. She was looking over it at the
+upper part of the grate. Presently she spoke. "I was looking at some of
+those things this afternoon, at the Museum."
+
+He was clearing from the table more buckram linings and patterns of
+paper, numbers of Myra's Journal and The Delineator. Already on his way
+to the cupboard he had put aside a red-bodiced dressmaker's "shape" of
+wood and wire. "What things?" he asked.
+
+"Those you were reading about. Greek, aren't they?"
+
+"Oh, the Greek room!... But those people, Bacchus and those, weren't
+people in the ordinary sense. Gods and goddesses, most of 'em; Bacchus
+was a god. That's what mythology means. I wish sometimes our course took
+in Greek literature, but it's a dead language after all. German's more
+good in modern life. It would be nice to know everything, but one has to
+select, you know. Hallo, I clean forgot; I brought you some grapes,
+Bessie; here they are, in this bag; we'll have 'em after tea, what?"
+
+"But," she said again after a pause, still looking at the grate, "they
+had their priests and priestesses, and followers and people, hadn't they?
+It was their things I was looking at--combs and brooches and hairpins,
+and things to cut their nails with. They're all in a glass case there.
+And they had safety-pins, exactly like ours."
+
+"Oh, they were a civilised people," said Ed cheerfully. "It all gives you
+an idea. I only hope you didn't tire yourself out. You'll soon be all
+right, of course, but you have to be careful yet. We'll have a clean
+tablecloth, shall we?"
+
+She had been seriously ill; her life had been despaired of; and somehow
+the young Polytechnic student seemed anxious to assure her that she was
+now all right again, or soon would be. They were to be married "as soon
+as things brightened up a bit," and he was very much in love with her. He
+watched her head and neck as he continued to lay the table, and then, as
+he crossed once more to the cupboard, he put his hand lightly in passing
+on her hair.
+
+She gave so quick a start that he too started. She must have been very
+deep in her reverie to have been so taken by surprise.
+
+"I say, Bessie, don't jump like that!" he cried with involuntary
+quickness. Indeed, had his hand been red-hot, or ice-cold, or taloned,
+she could not have turned a more startled, even frightened, face to him.
+
+"It was your touching me," she muttered, resuming her gazing into the
+grate.
+
+He stood looking anxiously down on her. It would have been better not to
+discuss her state, and he knew it; but in his anxiety he forgot it.
+
+"That jumpiness is the effect of your illness, you know. I shall be glad
+when it's all over. It's made you so odd."
+
+She was not pleased that he should speak of her "oddness." For that
+matter, she, too, found him "odd"--at any rate, found it difficult to
+realise that he was as he always had been. He had begun to irritate her a
+little. His club-footed reading of the verses had irritated her, and she
+had tried hard to hide from him that his cocksure opinions and the tone
+in which they were pronounced jarred on her. It was not that she was
+"better" than he, "knew" any more than he did, didn't (she supposed) love
+him still the same; these moods, that dated from her illness, had nothing
+to do with those things; she reproached herself sometimes that she was
+subject to such doldrums.
+
+"It's all right, Ed, but please don't touch me just now," she said.
+
+He was in the act of leaning over her chair, but he saw her shrink, and
+refrained.
+
+"Poor old girl!" he said sympathetically. "What's the matter?"
+
+"I don't know. It's awfully stupid of me to be like this, but I can't
+help it. I shall be better soon if you leave me alone."
+
+"Nothing's happened, has it?"
+
+"Only those silly dreams I told you about."
+
+"Bother the dreams!" muttered the Polytechnic student.
+
+During her illness she had had dreams, and had come to herself at
+intervals to find Ed or the doctor, Mrs. Hepburn or her aunt, bending
+over her. These kind, solicitous faces had been no more than a glimpse,
+and then she had gone off into the dreams again. The curious thing had
+been that the dreams had seemed to be her vivid waking life, and the
+other things--the anxious faces, the details of her dingy bedroom, the
+thermometer under her tongue--had been the dream. And, though she had
+come back to actuality, the dreams had never quite vanished. She could
+remember no more of them than that they had seemed to hold a high singing
+and jocundity, issuing from some region of haze and golden light; and
+they seemed to hover, ever on the point of being recaptured, yet ever
+eluding all her mental efforts. She was living now between reality and a
+vision.
+
+She had fewer words than sensations, and it was a little pitiful to hear
+her vainly striving to make clear what she meant.
+
+"It's so queer," she said. "It's like being on the edge of something--a
+sort of tiptoe--I can't describe it. Sometimes I could almost touch it
+with my hand, and then it goes away, but never quite away. It's like
+something just past the corner of my eye, over my shoulder, and I sit
+very still sometimes, trying to take it off its guard. But the moment I
+move my head it moves too--like this--"
+
+Again he gave a quick start at the suddenness of her action. Very
+stealthily her faunish eyes had stolen sideways, and then she had swiftly
+turned her head.
+
+"Here, I say, don't, Bessie!" he cried nervously. "You look awfully
+uncanny when you do that! You're brooding," he continued, "that's what
+you're doing, brooding. You're getting into a low state. You want bucking
+up. I don't think I shall go to the Polytec. to-night; I shall stay and
+cheer you up. You know, I really don't think you're making an effort,
+darling."
+
+His last words seemed to strike her. They seemed to fit in with something
+of which she too was conscious. "Not making an effort ..." she wondered
+how he knew that. She felt in some vague way that it was important that
+she should make an effort.
+
+For, while her dream ever evaded her, and yet never ceased to call her
+with such a voice as he who reads on a magic page of the calling of elves
+hears stilly in his brain, yet somehow behind the seduction was another
+and a sterner voice. There was warning as well as fascination. Beyond
+that edge at which she strained on tiptoe, mingled with the jocund calls
+to Hasten, Hasten, were deeper calls that bade her Beware. They puzzled
+her. Beware of what? Of what danger? And to whom?...
+
+"How do you mean, I'm not making an effort, Ed?" she asked slowly, again
+looking into the fire, where the kettle now made a gnat-like singing.
+
+"Why, an effort to get all right again. To be as you used to be--as, of
+course, you will be soon."
+
+"As I used to be?" The words came with a little check in her breathing.
+
+"Yes, before all this. To be yourself, you know."
+
+"Myself?"
+
+"All jolly, and without these jerks and jumps. I wish you could get away.
+A fortnight by the sea would do you all the good in the world."
+
+She knew not what it was in the words "the sea" that caused her suddenly
+to breathe more deeply. The sea!... It was as if, by the mere uttering of
+them, he had touched some secret spring, brought to fulfilment some
+spell. What had he meant by speaking of the sea?... A fortnight before,
+had somebody spoken to her of the sea it would have been the sea of
+Margate, of Brighton, of Southend, that, supplying the image that a word
+calls up as if by conjuration, she would have seen before her; and what
+other image could she supply, could she possibly supply, now?... Yet she
+did, or almost did, supply one. What new experience had she had, or what
+old, old one had been released in her? With that confused, joyous dinning
+just beyond the range of physical hearing there had suddenly mingled
+a new illusion of sound--a vague, vast pash and rustle, silky and harsh
+both at once, its tireless voice holding meanings of stillness and
+solitude compared with which the silence that is mere absence of sound
+was vacancy. It was part of her dream, invisible, intangible, inaudible,
+yet there. As if he had been an enchanter, it had come into being at the
+word upon his lips. Had he other such words? Had he the Master Word
+that--(ah, she knew what the Master Word would do!)--would make the
+Vision the Reality and the Reality the Vision? Deep within her she felt
+something--her soul, herself, she knew not what--thrill and turn over and
+settle again....
+
+"The sea," she repeated in a low voice.
+
+"Yes, that's what you want to set you up--rather! Do you remember that
+fortnight at Littlehampton, you and me and your Aunt? Jolly that was! I
+like Littlehampton. It isn't flash like Brighton, and Margate's always so
+beastly crowded. And do you remember that afternoon by the windmill? I
+did love you that afternoon, Bessie!"...
+
+He continued to talk, but she was not listening. She was wondering why
+the words "the sea" were somehow part of it all--the pins and brooches
+of the Museum, the book on her knees, the dream. She remembered a game of
+hide-and-seek she had played as a child, in which cries of "Warm, warm,
+warmer!" had announced the approach to the hidden object. Oh, she was
+getting warm--positively hot....
+
+He had ceased to talk, and was watching her. Perhaps it was the thought
+of how he had loved her that afternoon by the windmill that had brought
+him close to her chair again. She was aware of his nearness, and closed
+her eyes for a moment as if she dreaded something. Then she said quickly,
+"Is tea nearly ready, Ed?" and, as he turned to the table, took up the
+book again.
+
+She felt that even to touch that book brought her "warmer." It fell open
+at a page. She did not hear the clatter Ed made at the table, nor yet the
+babble his words had evoked, of the pierrots and banjos and minstrels of
+Margate and Littlehampton. It was to hear a gladder, wilder tumult that
+she sat once more so still, so achingly listening....
+
+_"The earnest trumpet spake, and silver thrills
+From kissing cymbals made a merry din--"_
+
+The words seemed to move on the page. In her eyes another light than the
+firelight seemed to play. Her breast rose, and in her thick white throat
+a little inarticulate sound twanged.
+
+"Eh? Did you speak, Bessie?" Ed asked, stopping in his buttering of
+bread.
+
+"Eh?... No."
+
+In answering, her head had turned for a moment, and she had seen him.
+Suddenly it struck her with force: what a shaving of a man he was!
+Desk-chested, weak-necked, conscious of his little "important" lip
+and chin--yes, he needed a Polytechnic gymnastic course! Then she
+remarked how once, at Margate, she had seen him in the distance, as
+in a hired baggy bathing-dress he had bathed from a machine, in muddy
+water, one of a hundred others, all rather cold, flinging a polo-ball
+about and shouting stridently. "A sound mind in a sound body!"... He
+was rather vain of his neat shoes, too, and doubtless stunted his
+feet; and she had seen the little spot on his neck caused by the
+chafing of his collar-stud.... No, she did not want him to touch her,
+just now at any rate. His touch would be too like a betrayal of another
+touch ... somewhere, sometime, somehow ... in that tantalising dream
+that refused to allow itself either to be fully remembered or quite
+forgotten. What was that dream? What was it?...
+
+She continued to gaze into the fire.
+
+Of a sudden she sprang to her feet with a choked cry of almost animal
+fury. The fool had touched her. Carried away doubtless by the memory of
+that afternoon by the windmill, he had, in passing once more to the
+kettle, crept softly behind her and put a swift burning kiss on the side
+of her neck.
+
+Then he had retreated before her, stumbling against the table and causing
+the cups and saucers to jingle.
+
+The basket-chair tilted up, but righted itself again.
+
+"I told you--I told you--" she choked, her stockish figure shaking with
+rage, "I told you--you--"
+
+He put up his elbow as if to ward off a blow.
+
+"_You_ touch me--_you!--you!_" the words broke from her.
+
+He had put himself farther round the table. He stammered.
+
+"Here--dash it all, Bessie--what is the matter?"
+
+"_You_ touch me!"
+
+"All right," he said sullenly. "I won't touch you again--no fear. I
+didn't know you were such a firebrand. All right, drop it now. I won't
+again. Good Lord!"
+
+Slowly the white fist she had drawn back sank to her side again.
+
+"All right now," he continued to grumble resentfully. "You needn't take
+on so. It's said--I won't touch you again." Then, as if he remembered
+that after all she was ill and must be humoured, he began, while her
+bosom still rose and fell rapidly, to talk with an assumption that
+nothing much had happened. "Come, sit down again, Bessie. The tea's in
+the pot and I'll have it ready in a couple of jiffs. What a ridiculous
+little girl you are, to take on like that!... And I say, listen! That's a
+muffin-bell, and there's a grand fire for toast! You sit down while I run
+out and get 'em. Give me your key, so I can let myself in again--"
+
+He took her key from her bag, caught up his hat, and hastened out.
+
+But she did not sit down again. She was no calmer for his quick
+disappearance. In that moment when he had recoiled from her she had had
+the expression of some handsome and angered snake, its hood puffed, ready
+to strike. She stood dazed; one would have supposed that that ill-advised
+kiss of his had indeed been the Master Word she sought, the Word she felt
+approaching, the Word to which the objects of the Museum, the book, that
+rustle of a sea she had never seen, had been but the ever "warming"
+stages. Some merest trifle stood between her and those elfin cries,
+between her and that thin golden mist in which faintly seen shapes seemed
+to move--shapes almost of tossed arms, waving, brandishing objects
+strangely all but familiar. That roaring of the sea was not the rushing
+of her own blood in her ears, that rosy flush not the artificial glow of
+the cheap red lampshade. The shapes were almost as plain as if she saw
+them in some clear but black mirror, the sounds almost as audible as if
+she heard them through some not very thick muffling....
+
+"Quick--the book," she muttered.
+
+But even as she stretched out her hand for it, again came that solemn
+sound of warning. As if something sought to stay it, she had deliberately
+to thrust her hand forward. Again the high dinning calls of "Hasten!
+Hasten!" were mingled with that deeper "Beware!" She knew in her soul
+that, once over that terrible edge, the Dream would become the Reality
+and the Reality the Dream. She knew nothing of the fluidity of the thing
+called Personality--not a thing at all, but a state, a balance, a
+relation, a resultant of forces so delicately in equilibrium that a
+touch, and--pff!--the horror of Formlessness rushed over all.
+
+As she hesitated a new light appeared in the chamber. Within the frame of
+the small square window, beyond the ragged line of the chimney-cowls,
+an edge of orange brightness showed. She leaned forward. It was the full
+moon, rusty and bloated and flattened by the earth-mist.
+
+The next moment her hand had clutched at the book.
+
+_"Whence came ye, merry Damsels! Whence came ye
+So many, and so many, and such glee?
+Why have ye left your bowers desolate,
+      Your lutes, and gentler fate?
+'We follow Bacchus, Bacchus on the wing A-conquering!
+Bacchus, young Bacchus! Good or ill betide
+We dance before him thorough kingdoms wide!
+Come hither, Lady fair, and joined be
+      To our wild minstrelsy!'"_
+
+There was an instant in which darkness seemed to blot out all else; then
+it rolled aside, and in a blaze of brightness was gone. It was gone, and
+she stood face to face with her Dream, that for two thousand years had
+slumbered in the blood of her and her line. She stood, with mouth agape
+and eyes that hailed, her thick throat full of suppressed clamour. The
+other was the Dream now, and these!... they came down, mad and noisy
+and bright--Maenades, Thyades, satyrs, fauns--naked, in hides of beasts,
+ungirded, dishevelled, wreathed and garlanded, dancing, singing,
+shouting. The thudding of their hooves shook the ground, and the clash of
+their timbrels and the rustling of their thyrsi filled the air. They
+brandished frontal bones, the dismembered quarters of kids and goats;
+they struck the bronze cantharus, they tossed the silver obba up aloft.
+Down a cleft of rocks and woods they came, trooping to a wide seashore
+with the red of the sunset behind them. She saw the evening light on the
+sleek and dappled hides, the gilded ivory and rich brown of their legs
+and shoulders, the white of inner arms held up on high, their wide red
+mouths, the quivering of the twin flesh-gouts on the necks of the leaping
+fauns. And, shutting out the glimpse of sky at the head of the deep
+ravine, the god himself descended, with his car full of drunken girls who
+slept with the serpents coiled about them.
+
+Shouting and moaning and frenzied, leaping upon one another with
+libidinous laughter and beating one another with the half-stripped
+thyrsi, they poured down to the yellow sands and the anemonied pools of
+the shore. They raced to the water, that gleamed pale as nacre in the
+deepening twilight in the eye of the evening star. They ran along its
+edge over their images in the wet sands, calling their lost companion.
+
+"Hasten, hasten!" they cried; and one of them, a young man with a torso
+noble as the dawn and shoulder-lines strong as those of the eternal
+hills, ran here and there calling her name.
+
+"Louder, louder!" she called back in an ecstasy.
+
+Something dropped and tinkled against the fender. It was one of her
+hairpins. One side of her hair was in a loose tumble; she threw up the
+small head on the superb thick neck.
+
+"Louder!--I cannot hear! Once more--"
+
+The throwing up of her head that had brought down the rest of her hair
+had given her a glimpse of herself in the glass over the mantelpiece. For
+the last time that formidable "Beware!" sounded like thunder in her ears;
+the next moment she had snapped with her fingers the ribbon that was
+cutting into her throbbing throat. He with the torso and those shoulders
+was seeking her ... how should he know her in that dreary garret, in
+those joyless habiliments? He would as soon known his Own in that
+crimson-bodiced, wire-framed dummy by the window yonder!...
+
+Her fingers clutched at the tawdry mercerised silk of her blouse. There
+was a rip, and her arms and throat were free. She panted as she tugged
+at something that gave with a short "click-click," as of steel
+fastenings; something fell against the fender.... These also.... She tore
+at them, and kicked them as they lay about her feet as leaves lie about
+the trunk of a tree in autumn....
+
+"Ah!"
+
+And as she stood there, as if within the screen of a spectrum that
+deepened to the band of red, her eyes fell on the leopard-skin at her
+feet. She caught it up, and in doing so saw purple grapes--purple
+grapes that issued from the mouth of a paper bag on the table. With the
+dappled pelt about her she sprang forward. The juice spurted through them
+into the mass of her loosened hair. Down her body there was a spilth of
+seeds and pulp. She cried hoarsely aloud.
+
+"Once more--oh, answer me! Tell me my name!"
+
+Ed's steps were heard on the oilclothed portion of the staircase.
+
+"My name--oh, my name!" she cried in an agony of suspense.... "Oh, they
+will not wait for me! They have lighted the torches--they run up and down
+the shore with torches--oh, cannot you see me?..."
+
+Suddenly she dashed to the chair on which the litter of linings and
+tissue-paper lay. She caught up a double handful and crammed them on the
+fire. They caught and flared. There was a call upon the stairs, and the
+sound of somebody mounting in haste.
+
+"Once--once only--my name!"
+
+The soul of the Bacchante rioted, struggled to escape from her eyes. Then
+as the door was flung open, she heard, and gave a terrifying shout of
+recognition.
+
+"I hear--I almost hear--but once more.... IO! _Io, Io, Io!_"
+
+Ed, in the doorway, stood for one moment agape; the next, ignorant of the
+full purport of his own words--ignorant that though man may come
+westwards he may yet bring his worship with him--ignorant that to make
+the Dream the Reality and the Reality the Dream is Heaven's dreadfullest
+favour--and ignorant that, that Edge once crossed, there is no return to
+the sanity and sweetness and light that are only seen clearly in the
+moment when they are lost for ever--he had dashed down the stairs crying
+in a voice hoarse and high with terror:
+
+"She's mad! She's mad!"
+
+
+
+
+THE ACCIDENT
+
+
+I
+
+The street had not changed so much but that, little by little, its
+influence had come over Romarin again; and as the clock a street or two
+away had struck seven he had stood, his hands folded on his stick, first
+curious, then expectant, and finally, as the sound had died away, oddly
+satisfied in his memory. The clock had a peculiar chime, a rather
+elaborate one, ending inconclusively on the dominant and followed after
+an unusually long interval by the stroke of the hour itself. Not until
+its last vibration had become too subtle for his ear had Romarin resumed
+the occupation that the pealing of the hour had interrupted.
+
+It was an occupation that especially tended to abstraction of mind--the
+noting in detail of the little things of the street that he had forgotten
+with such completeness that they awakened only tardy responses in his
+memory now that his eyes rested on them again. The shape of a
+doorknocker, the grouping of an old chimney-stack, the crack, still
+there, in a flagstone--somewhere deep in the past these things had
+associations; but they lay very deep, and the disturbing of them gave
+Romarin a curious, desolate feeling, as of returning to things he had
+long out-grown.
+
+But, as he continued to stare at the objects, the sluggish memories
+roused more and more; and for each bit of the old that reasserted itself
+scores of yards of the new seemed to disappear. New shop-frontages went;
+a wall, brought up flush where formerly a recess had been, became the
+recess once more; the intermittent electric sign at the street's end,
+that wrote in green and crimson the name of a whiskey across a lamp-lit
+façade, ceased to worry his eyes; and the unfamiliar new front of the
+little restaurant he was passing and repassing took on its old and
+well-known aspect again.
+
+Seven o'clock. He had thought, in dismissing his hansom, that it had been
+later. His appointment was not until a quarter past. But he decided
+against entering the restaurant and waiting inside; seeing who his guest
+was, it would be better to wait at the door. By the light of the
+restaurant window he corrected his watch, and then sauntered a few yards
+along the street, to where men were moving flats of scenery from a back
+door of the new theatre into a sort of tumbril. The theatre was twenty
+years old, but to Romarin it was "the new theatre." There had been no
+theatre there in his day.
+
+In his day!... His day had been twice twenty years before. Forty years
+before, that street, that quarter, had been bound up in his life. He had
+not, forty years ago, been the famous painter, honoured, decorated, taken
+by the arm by monarchs; he had been a student, wild and raw as any, with
+that tranquil and urbane philosophy that had made his success still in
+abeyance within him. As his eyes had rested on the doorknocker next to
+the restaurant a smile had crossed his face. How had _that_ door-knocker
+come to be left by the old crowd that had wrenched off so many others? By
+what accident had _that_ survived, to bring back all the old life now so
+oddly? He stood, again smiling, his hands folded on his stick. A Crown
+Prince had given him that stick, and had had it engraved, "To my Friend,
+Romarin."
+
+"You oughtn't to be here, you know," he said to the door-knocker. "If I
+didn't get you, Marsden ought to have done so...."
+
+It was Marsden whom Romarin had come to meet--Marsden, of whom he had
+thought with such odd persistency lately. Marsden was the only man in the
+world between whom and himself lay as much as the shadow of an enmity;
+and even that faint shadow was now passing. One does not guard, for forty
+years, animosities that take their rise in quick outbreaks of the young
+blood; and, now that Romarin came to think of it, he hadn't really hated
+Marsden for more than a few months. It had been within those very doors
+(Romarin was passing the restaurant again) that there had been that quick
+blow, about a girl, and the tables had been pushed hastily back, and he
+and Marsden had fought, while the other fellows had kept the waiters
+away.... And Romarin was now sixty-four, and Marsden must be a year
+older, and the girl--who knew?--probably dead long ago ... Yes, time
+heals these things, thank God; and Romarin had felt a genuine flush of
+pleasure when Marsden had accepted his invitation to dinner.
+
+But--Romarin looked at his watch again--it was rather like Marsden to be
+late. Marsden had always been like that--had come and gone pretty much as
+he had pleased, regardless of inconvenience to others. But, doubtless, he
+had had to walk. If all reports were true, Marsden had not made very much
+of his life in the way of worldly success, and Romarin, sorry to hear it,
+had wished he could give him a leg-up. Even a good man cannot do much
+when the current of his life sets against him in a tide of persistent
+ill-luck, and Romarin, honoured and successful, yet knew that he had been
+one of the lucky ones....
+
+But it was just like Marsden to be late, for all that.
+
+At first Romarin did not recognise him when he turned the corner of the
+street and walked towards him. He hadn't made up his mind beforehand
+exactly how he had expected Marsden to look, but he was conscious that he
+didn't look it. It was not the short stubble of grey beard, so short that
+it seemed to hesitate between beard and unshavenness; it was not the
+figure nor carriage--clothes alter that, and the clothes of the man who
+was advancing to meet Romarin were, to put it bluntly, shabby; nor was
+it... but Romarin did not know what it was in the advancing figure that
+for the moment found no response in his memory. He was already within
+half a dozen yards of the men who were moving the scenery from the
+theatre into the tumbril, and one of the workmen put up his hand as the
+edge of a fresh "wing" appeared....
+
+But at the sound of his voice the same thing happened that had happened
+when the clock had struck seven. Romarin found himself suddenly
+expectant, attentive, and then again curiously satisfied in his memory.
+Marsden's voice at least had not changed; it was as in the old days--a
+little envious, sarcastic, accepting lower interpretations somewhat
+willingly, somewhat grudging of better ones. It completed the taking back
+of Romarin that the chiming of the clock, the doorknocker, the grouping
+of the chimney-stack and the crack in the flagstone had begun.
+
+"Well, my distinguished Academician, my--"
+
+Marsden's voice sounded across the group of scene-shifters...
+
+"_'Alf_ a mo, _if_ you please, guv'nor," said another voice...
+
+For a moment the painted "wing" shut them off from one another.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In that moment Romarin's accident befell him. If its essential nature is
+related in arbitrary terms, it is that there are no other terms to relate
+it in. It is a decoded cipher, which can be restored to its cryptic form
+as Romarin subsequently restored it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As the painter took Marsden's arm and entered the restaurant, he noticed
+that while the outside of the place still retained traces of the old, its
+inside was entirely new. Its cheap glittering wall-mirrors, that gave a
+false impression of the actual size of the place, its Loves and
+Shepherdesses painted in the style of the carts of the vendors of
+ice-cream, its hat-racks and its four-bladed propeller that set the air
+slowly in motion at the farther end of the room, might all have been
+matched in a dozen similar establishments within hail of a cab-whistle.
+Its gelatine-written menu-cards announced that one might dine there _à
+la carte_ or _table d'hôte_ for two shillings. Neither the cooking nor
+the service had influenced Romarin in his choice of a place to dine at.
+
+He made a gesture to the waiter who advanced to help him on with his coat
+that Marsden was to be assisted first; but Marsden, with a grunted "All
+right," had already helped himself. A glimpse of the interior of the coat
+told Romarin why Marsden kept waiters at arm's-length. A little twinge of
+compunction took him that his own overcoat should be fur-collared and
+lined with silk.
+
+They sat down at a corner table not far from the slowly moving
+four-bladed propeller.
+
+"Now we can talk," Romarin said. "I'm glad, glad to see you again,
+Marsden."
+
+It was a peculiarly vicious face that he saw, corrugated about the brows,
+and with stiff iron-grey hair untrimmed about the ears. It shocked
+Romarin a little; he had hardly looked to see certain things so
+accentuated by the passage of time. Romarin's own brow was high and bald
+and benign, and his beard was like a broad shield of silver.
+
+"You're glad, are you?" said Marsden, as they sat down facing one
+another. "Well, I'm glad--to be seen with you. It'll revive my credit a
+bit. There's a fellow across there has recognised you already by your
+photographs in the papers.... I assume I may...?"
+
+He made a little upward movement of his hand. It was a gin and
+bitters Marsden assumed he might have. Romarin ordered it; he himself
+did not take one. Marsden tossed down the _apéritif_ at one gulp; then
+he reached for his roll, pulled it to pieces, and--Romarin remembered
+how in the old days Marsden had always eaten bread like that--began to
+throw bullets of bread into his mouth. Formerly this habit had irritated
+Romarin intensely; now ... well, well, Life uses some of us better than
+others. Small blame to these if they throw up the struggle. Marsden, poor
+devil ... but the arrival of the soup interrupted Romarin's meditation.
+He consulted the violet-written card, ordered the succeeding courses, and
+the two men ate for some minutes in silence.
+
+"Well," said Romarin presently, pushing away his plate and wiping his
+white moustache, "are you still a Romanticist, Marsden?"
+
+Marsden, who had tucked his napkin between two of the buttons of his
+frayed waistcoat, looked suspiciously across the glass with the dregs of
+the gin and bitters that he had half raised to his lips.
+
+"Eh?" he said. "I say, Romarin, don't let's go grave-digging among
+memories merely for the sake of making conversation. Yours may be
+pleasant, but I'm not in the habit of wasting much time over mine.
+Might as well be making new ones ... I'll drink whiskey and soda."
+
+It was brought, a large one; and Marsden, nodding, took a deep gulp.
+
+"Health," he said.
+
+"Thanks," said Romarin--instantly noting that the monosyllable, which
+matched the other's in curtness, was not at all the reply he had
+intended. "Thank you--yours," he amended; and a short pause followed, in
+which fish was brought.
+
+This was not what Romarin had hoped for. He had desired to be reconciled
+with Marsden, not merely to be allowed to pay for his dinner. Yet if
+Marsden did not wish to talk it was difficult not to defer to his wish.
+It was true that he had asked if Marsden was still a Romanticist largely
+for the sake of something to say; but Marsden's prompt pointing out of
+this was not encouraging. Now that he came to think of it, he had never
+known precisely what Marsden had meant by the word "Romance" he had so
+frequently taken into his mouth; he only knew that this creed of
+Romanticism, whatever it was, had been worn rather challengingly, a chip
+on the shoulder, to be knocked off at some peril or other. And it had
+seemed to Romarin a little futile in the violence with which it had been
+maintained ... But that was neither here nor there. The point was, that
+the conversation had begun not very happily, and must be mended at once
+if at all. To mend it, Romarin leaned across the table.
+
+"Be as friendly as I am, Marsden," he said. "I think--pardon me--that if
+our positions were reversed, and I saw in you the sincere desire to help
+that I have, I'd take it in the right way." Again Marsden looked
+suspiciously at him. "To help? How to help?" he demanded "That's what I
+should like you to tell me. But I suppose (for example) you still work?"
+
+"Oh, my work!" Marsden made a little gesture of contempt. "Try again,
+Romarin."
+
+"You don't do any?... Come, I'm no bad friend to my friends, and you'll
+find me--especially so."
+
+But Marsden put up his hand.
+
+"Not quite so quickly," he said. "Let's see what you mean by help first.
+Do you really mean that you want me to borrow money from you? That's help
+as I understand it nowadays."
+
+"Then you've changed," said Romarin--wondering, however, in his secret
+heart whether Marsden had changed very much in that respect after all.
+
+Marsden gave a short honk of a laugh.
+
+"You didn't suppose I hadn't changed, did you?" Then he leaned suddenly
+forward. "This is rather a mistake, Romarin--rather a mistake," he said.
+
+"What is?"
+
+"This--our meeting again. Quite a mistake."
+
+Romarin sighed. "I had hoped not," he said.
+
+Marsden leaned forward again, with another gesture Romarin remembered
+very well--dinner knife in hand, edge and palm upwards, punctuating
+and expounding with the point.
+
+"I tell you, it's a mistake," he said, knife and hand balanced. "You
+can't reopen things like this. You don't really _want_ to reopen them;
+you only want to reopen certain of them; you want to pick and choose
+among things, to approve and disapprove. There must have been somewhere
+or other something in me you didn't altogether dislike--I can't for the
+life of me think what it was, by the way; and you want to lay stress on
+that and to sink the rest. Well, you can't. I won't let you. I'll not
+submit my life to you like that. If you want to go into things, all
+right; but it must be all or none. And I'd like another drink."
+
+He put the knife down with a little clap as Romarin beckoned to the
+waiter.
+
+There was distress on Romarin's face. He was not conscious of having
+adopted a superior attitude. But again he told himself that he must make
+allowances. Men who don't come off in Life's struggle are apt to be
+touchy, and he was; after all, the same old Marsden, the man with whom he
+desired to be at peace.
+
+"Are you quite fair to me?" he asked presently, in a low voice.
+
+Again the knife was taken up and its point advanced.
+
+"Yes, I am," said Marsden in a slightly raised voice; and he indicated
+with the knife the mirror at the end of the table. "You know you've done
+well, and I, to all appearances, haven't; you can't look at that glass
+and not know it. But I've followed the line of my development too, no
+less logically than you. My life's been mine, and I'm not going to
+apologise for it to a single breathing creature. More, I'm proud of it.
+At least, there's been singleness of intention about it. So I think I'm
+strictly fair in pointing that out when you talk about helping me."
+
+"Perhaps so, perhaps so," Romarin agreed a little sadly. "It's your tone
+more than anything else that makes things a little difficult. Believe me,
+I've no end in my mind except pure friendliness."
+
+"No-o-o," said Marsden--a long "no" that seemed to deliberate, to
+examine, and finally to admit. "No. I believe that. And you usually get
+what you set out for. Oh yes. I've watched your rise--I've made a point
+of watching it. It's been a bit at a time, but you've got there. You're
+that sort. It's on your forehead--your destiny."
+
+Romarin smiled.
+
+"Hallo, that's new, isn't it?" he said. "It wasn't your habit to talk
+much about destiny, if I remember rightly. Let me see; wasn't this more
+your style--'will, passion, laughs-at-impossibilities and says,' et
+cetera--and so forth? Wasn't that it? With always the suspicion not far
+away that you did things more from theoretical conviction than real
+impulse after all?"
+
+A dispassionate observer would have judged that the words went somewhere
+near home. Marsden was scraping together with the edge of his knife the
+crumbs of his broken roll. He scraped them into a little square, and then
+trimmed the corners. Not until the little pile was shaped to his liking
+did he look surlily up.
+
+"Let it rest, Romarin," he said curtly. "Drop it," he added. "Let it
+alone. If I begin to talk like that, too, we shall only cut one another
+up. Clink glasses--there--and let it alone."
+
+Mechanically Romarin clinked; but his bald brow was perplexed.
+
+"'Cut one another up?'" he repeated.
+
+"Yes. Let it alone."
+
+"'Cut one another up?'" he repeated once more. "You puzzle me entirely."
+
+"Well, perhaps I'm altogether wrong. I only wanted to warn you that I've
+dared a good many things in my time. Now drop it."
+
+Romarin had fine brown eyes, under Oriental arched brows. Again they
+noted the singularly vicious look of the man opposite. They were full
+of mistrust and curiosity, and he stroked his silver beard.
+
+"Drop it?" he said slowly ... "No, let's go on. I want to hear more of
+this."
+
+"I'd much rather have another drink in peace and quietness.... Waiter!"
+
+Either leaned back in his chair, surveying the other. "You're a perverse
+devil still," was Romarin's thought. Marsden's, apparently, was of
+nothing but the whiskey and soda the waiter had gone to fetch.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Romarin was inclined to look askance at a man who could follow up a gin
+and bitters with three or four whiskeys and soda without turning a hair.
+It argued the seasoned cask. Marsden had bidden the waiter leave the
+bottle and the syphon on the table, and was already mixing himself
+another stiff peg.
+
+"Well," he said, "since you will have it so--to the old days."
+
+"To the old days," said Romarin, watching him gulp it down.
+
+"Queer, looking back across all that time at 'em, isn't it? How do you
+feel about it?"
+
+"In a mixed kind of way, I think; the usual thing: pleasure and regret
+mingled."
+
+"Oh, you have regrets, have you?"
+
+"For certain things, yes. Not, let me say, my turn-up with you, Marsden,"
+he laughed. "That's why I chose the old place--" he gave a glance
+round at its glittering newness. "Do you happen to remember what all that
+was about? I've only the vaguest idea."
+
+Marsden gave him a long look. "That all?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, I remember in a sort of way. That 'Romantic' soap-bubble of yours
+was really at the bottom of it, I suspect. Tell me," he smiled, "did you
+really suppose Life could be lived on those mad lines you used to lay
+down?"
+
+"My life," said Marsden calmly, "has been."
+
+"Not literally."
+
+"Literally."
+
+"You mean to say that you haven't outgrown _that_?"
+
+"I hope not."
+
+Romarin had thrown up his handsome head. "Well, well!" he murmured
+incredulously.
+
+"Why 'well, well'?" Marsden demanded.... "But, of course, you never did
+and never will know what I meant."
+
+"By Romance? ... No, I can't say that I did; but as I conceived it, it
+was something that began in appetite and ended in diabetes."
+
+"Not philosophic, eh?" Marsden inquired, picking up a chicken bone.
+
+"Highly unphilosophic," said Romarin, shaking his head.
+
+"Hm!" grunted Marsden, stripping the bone... "Well, I grant it pays in a
+different way."
+
+"It does pay, then?" Romarin asked.
+
+"Oh yes, it pays."
+
+The restaurant had filled up. It was one frequented by young artists,
+musicians, journalists and the clingers to the rather frayed fringes of
+the Arts. From time to time heads were turned to look at Romarin's portly
+and handsome figure, which the Press, the Regent Street photographic
+establishments, and the Academy Supplements had made well known. The
+plump young Frenchwoman within the glazed cash office near the door,
+at whom Marsden had several times glanced in a way at which Romarin had
+frowned, was aware of the honour done the restaurant; and several times
+the blond-bearded proprietor had advanced and inquired with concern
+whether the dinner and the service was to the liking of M'sieu.
+
+And the eyes that were turned to Romarin plainly wondered who the
+scallawag dining with him might be.
+
+Since Romarin had chosen that their conversation should be of the old
+days, and without picking and choosing, Marsden was quite willing that
+it should be so. Again he was casting the bullets of bread into his
+mouth, and again Romarin was conscious of irritation. Marsden, too,
+noticed it; but in awaiting the _rôti_ he still continued to roll and
+bolt the pellets, washing them down with gulps of whiskey and soda.
+
+"Oh yes, it paid," he resumed. "Not in that way, of course--" he
+indicated the head, quickly turned away again, of an aureoled youngster
+with a large bunch of black satin tie, "--not in admiration of that
+sort, but in other ways--"
+
+"Tell me about it."
+
+"Certainly, if you want it. But you're my host. Won't you let me hear
+your side of it all first?"
+
+"But I thought you said you knew that--had followed my career?"
+
+"So I have. It's not your list of honours and degrees; let me see, what
+are you? R.A., D.C.L., Doctor of Literature, whatever that means, and
+Professor of this, that, and the other, and not at the end of it yet. I
+know all that. I don't say you haven't earned it; I admire your painting;
+but it's not that. I want to know what it _feels_ like to be up there
+where you are."
+
+It was a childish question, and Romarin felt foolish in trying to answer
+it. Such things were the things the adoring aureoled youngster a table or
+two away would have liked to ask. Romarin recognised in Marsden the old
+craving for sensation; it was part of the theoretical creed Marsden had
+made for himself, of doing things, not for their own sakes, but in order
+that he might have done them. Of course, it had appeared to a fellow like
+that, that Romarin himself had always had a calculated end in view; he
+had not; Marsden merely measured Romarin's peck out of his own bushel. It
+had been Marsden who, in self-consciously seeking his own life, had lost
+it, and Romarin was more than a little inclined to suspect that the
+vehemence with which he protested that he had not lost it was precisely
+the measure of the loss.
+
+But he essayed it--essayed to give Marsden a _résumé_ of his career. He
+told him of the stroke of sheer luck that had been the foundation of it
+all, the falling ill of another painter who had turned over certain
+commissions to him. He told him of his poor but happy marriage, and of
+the windfall, not large, but timely, that had come to his wife. He told
+him of fortunate acquaintanceships happily cultivated, of his first
+important commission, of the fresco that had procured for him his
+Associateship, of his sale to the Chantrey, and of his quietly
+remunerative Visitorships and his work on Boards and Committees.
+
+And as he talked, Marsden drew his empty glass to him, moistened his
+finger with a little spilt liquid, and began to run the finger round the
+rim of the glass. They had done that formerly, a whole roomful of them,
+producing, when each had found the note of his instrument, a high, thin,
+intolerable singing. To this singing Romarin strove to tell his tale.
+
+But that thin and bat-like note silenced him. He ended lamely, with some
+empty generalisation on success.
+
+"Ah, but success in what?" Marsden demanded, interrupting his playing on
+the glass for a moment.
+
+"In your aim, whatever it may be."
+
+"Ah!" said Marsden, resuming his performance.
+
+Romarin had sought in his recital to minimise differences in
+circumstances; but Marsden seemed bent on aggravating them. He had the
+miserable advantage of the man who has nothing to lose. And bit by bit,
+Romarin had begun to realise that he was going considerably more than
+halfway to meet this old enemy of his, and that amity seemed as far on as
+ever. In his heart he began to feel the foreknowledge that their meeting
+could have no conclusion. He hated the man, the look of his face and the
+sound of his voice, as much as ever.
+
+The proprietor approached with profoundest apology in his attitude.
+M'sieu would pardon him, but the noise of the glass ... it was
+annoying ... another M'sieu had made complaint....
+
+"Eh?..." cried Marsden. "Oh, that! Certainly! It can be put to a much
+better purpose."
+
+He refilled the glass.
+
+The liquor had begun to tell on him. A quarter of the quantity would have
+made a clean-living man incapably drunk, but it had only made Marsden's
+eyes bright. He gave a sarcastic laugh.
+
+"And is that all?" he asked.
+
+Romarin replied shortly that that was all.
+
+"You've missed out the R.A., and the D.C.L."
+
+"Then let me add that I'm a Doctor of Civil Law and a full Member of the
+Royal Academy," said Romarin, almost at the end of his patience. "And
+now, since you don't think much of it, may I hear your own account?"
+
+"Oh, by all means. I don't know, however, that--" he broke off to throw a
+glance at a woman who had just entered the restaurant--a divesting glance
+that caused Romarin to redden to his crown and drop his eyes. "I was
+going to say that you may think as little of my history as I do of yours.
+Supple woman that; when the rather scraggy blonde does take it into her
+head to be a devil she's the worst kind there is...."
+
+Without apology Romarin looked at his watch.
+
+"All right," said Marsden, smiling, "for what _I've_ got out of life,
+then. But I warn you, it's entirely discreditable."
+
+Romarin did not doubt it.
+
+"But it's mine, and I boast of it. I've done--barring receiving honours
+and degrees--everything--everything! If there's anything I haven't done,
+tell me and lend me a sovereign, and I'll go and do it."
+
+"You haven't told the story."
+
+"That's so. Here goes then ... Well, you know, unless you've forgotten,
+how I began...."
+
+Fruit and nutshells and nutcrackers lay on the table between them, and at
+the end of it, shielded from draughts by the menu cards, the coffee
+apparatus simmered over its elusive blue flame. Romarin was taking the
+rind from a pear with a table-knife, and Marsden had declined port in
+favour of a small golden liqueur of brandy. Every seat in the restaurant
+was now occupied, and the proprietor himself had brought his finest
+cigarettes and cigars. The waiter poured out the coffee, and departed
+with the apparatus in one hand and his napkin in the other.
+
+Marsden was already well into his tale...
+
+The frightful unction with which he told it appalled Romarin. It was as
+he had said--there was nothing he had not done and did not exult in with
+a sickening exultation. It had, indeed, ended in diabetes. In the pitiful
+hunting down of sensation to the last inch he had been fiendishly
+ingenious and utterly unimaginative. His unholy curiosity had spared
+nothing, his unnatural appetite had known no truth. It was grinning sin.
+The details of it simply cannot be told....
+
+And his vanity in it all was prodigious. Romarin was pale as he listened.
+What! In order that _this_ malignant growth in Society's breast should
+be able to say "I know," had sanctities been profaned, sweet conventions
+assailed, purity blackened, soundness infected, and all that was bright
+and of the day been sunk in the quagmire that this creature of the night
+had called--yes, stilled called--by the gentle name of Romance? Yes,
+so it had been. Not only had men and women suffered dishonour, but
+manhood and womanhood and the clean institutions by which alone the
+creature was suffered to exist had been brought to shame. And what was he
+to look at when it was all done?...
+
+"Romance--Beauty--the Beauty of things as they are!" he croaked.
+
+If faces in the restaurant were now turned to Romarin, it was the horror
+on Romarin's own face that drew them. He drew out his handkerchief and
+mopped his brow.
+
+"But," he stammered presently, "you are speaking of
+generalities--horrible theories--things diabolically conceivable
+to be done--"
+
+"What?" cried Marsden, checked for a moment in his horrible triumph. "No,
+by God! I've done 'em, done 'em! Don't you understand? If you don't,
+question me!..."
+
+"No, no!" cried Romarin.
+
+"But I say yes! You came for this, and you shall have it! I tried to stop
+you, but you wanted it, and by God you shall have it! You think your
+life's been full and mine empty? Ha ha!... Romance! I had the conviction
+of it, and I've had the courage too! I haven't told you a tenth of it!
+What would you like? Chamber-windows when Love was hot? The killing of a
+man who stood in my way? (I've fought a duel, and killed.) The squeezing
+of the juice out of life like _that_?" He pointed to Romarin's plate;
+Romarin had been eating grapes. "Did you find me saying I'd do a thing
+and then drawing back from it when we--" he made a quick gesture of both
+hands towards the middle of the restaurant floor.
+
+"When we fought--?"
+
+"Yes, when we fought, here!... Oh no, oh no! I've lived, I tell you,
+every moment! Not a title, not a degree, but I've lived such a life as
+you never dreamed of--!"
+
+"Thank God--"
+
+But suddenly Marsden's voice, which had risen, dropped again. He began to
+shake with interior chuckles. They were the old, old chuckles, and they
+filled Romarin with a hatred hardly to be borne. The sound of the
+animal's voice had begun it, and his every word, look, movement,
+gesture, since they had entered the restaurant, had added to it. And he
+was now chuckling, chuckling, shaking with chuckles, as if some
+monstrous tit-bit still remained to be told. Already Romarin had tossed
+aside his napkin, beckoned to the waiter, and said, "M'sieu dines
+with me...."
+
+"Ho ho ho ho!" came the drunken sounds. "It's a long time since M'sieu
+dined here with his old friend Romarin! Do you remember the last time? Do
+you remember it? _Pif, pan_! Two smacks across the table, Romarin--oh,
+you got it in very well!--and then, _brrrrr_! quick! Back with the
+tables--all the fellows round--Farquharson for me and Smith for you, and
+then to it, Romarin!... And you really don't remember what it was all
+about?..."
+
+Romarin had remembered. His face was not the face of the philosophic
+master of Life now.
+
+"You said she shouldn't--little Pattie Hines you know--you said she
+shouldn't--"
+
+Romarin sprang half from his chair, and brought his fist down on the
+table.
+
+"And by Heaven, she didn't! At least that's one thing you haven't done!"
+
+Marsden too had risen unsteadily.
+
+"Oho, oho? You think that?"
+
+A wild thought flashed across Romarin's brain.
+
+"You mean--?"
+
+"I mean?... Oho, oho! Yes, I mean! She did, Romarin...."
+
+The mirrors, mistily seen through the smoke of half a hundred cigars and
+cigarettes, the Loves and Shepherdesses of the garish walls, the diners
+starting up in their places, all suddenly seemed to swing round in a
+great half-circle before Romarin's eyes. The next moment, feeling as if
+he stood on something on which he found it difficult to keep his balance,
+he had caught up the table-knife with which he had peeled the pear and
+had struck at the side of Marsden's neck. The rounded blade snapped, but
+he struck again with the broken edge, and left the knife where it
+entered. The table appeared uptilted almost vertical; over it Marsden's
+head disappeared; it was followed by a shower of glass, cigars,
+artificial flowers and the tablecloth at which he clutched; and the
+dirty American cloth of the table top was left bare.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But the edge behind which Marsden's face had disappeared remained
+vertical. A group of scene-shifters were moving a flat of scenery from a
+theatre into a tumbril-like cart...
+
+And Romarin knew that, past, present, and future, he had seen it all in
+an instant, and that Marsden stood behind that painted wing.
+
+And he knew, too, that he had only to wait until that flat passed and to
+take Marsden's arm and enter the restaurant, _and it would be so_. A
+drowning man is said to see all in one unmeasurable instant of time; a
+year-long dream is but, they say, an instantaneous arrangement in the
+moment of waking of the molecules we associate with ideas; and the past
+of history and the future of prophecy are folded up in the mystic moment
+we call the present....
+
+_It would come true_....
+
+For one moment Romarin stood; the next, he had turned and run for his
+life.
+
+At the corner of the street he collided with a loafer, and only the wall
+saved them from going down. Feverishly Romarin plunged his hand into his
+pocket and brought out a handful of silver. He crammed it into the
+loafer's hand.
+
+"Here--quick--take it!" he gasped. "There's a man there, by that
+restaurant door--he's waiting for Mr. Romarin--tell him--tell him--tell
+him Mr. Romarin's had an accident--"
+
+And he dashed away, leaving the man looking at the silver in his palm.
+
+
+
+
+THE CIGARETTE CASE
+
+
+"A cigarette, Loder?" I said, offering my case. For the moment Loder was
+not smoking; for long enough he had not been talking.
+
+"Thanks," he replied, taking not only the cigarette, but the case also.
+The others went on talking; Loder became silent again; but I noticed
+that he kept my cigarette case in his hand, and looked at it from time to
+time with an interest that neither its design nor its costliness seemed
+to explain. Presently I caught his eye.
+
+"A pretty case," he remarked, putting it down on the table. "I once had
+one exactly like it."
+
+I answered that they were in every shop window.
+
+"Oh yes," he said, putting aside any question of rarity.... "I lost
+mine."
+
+"Oh?..."
+
+He laughed. "Oh, that's all right--I got it back again--don't be afraid
+I'm going to claim yours. But the way I lost it--found it--the whole
+thing--was rather curious. I've never been able to explain it. I wonder
+if you could?"
+
+I answered that I certainly couldn't till I'd heard it, whereupon Loder,
+taking up the silver case again and holding it in his hand as he talked,
+began:
+
+"This happened in Provence, when I was about as old as Marsham there--and
+every bit as romantic. I was there with Carroll--you remember poor old
+Carroll and what a blade of a boy he was--as romantic as four Marshams
+rolled into one. (Excuse me, Marsham, won't you? It's a romantic tale,
+you see, or at least the setting is.) ... We were in Provence, Carroll
+and I; twenty-four or thereabouts; romantic, as I say; and--and this
+happened.
+
+"And it happened on the top of a whole lot of other things, you must
+understand, the things that do happen when you're twenty-four. If it
+hadn't been Provence, it would have been somewhere else, I suppose,
+nearly, if not quite as good; but this was Provence, that smells (as you
+might say) of twenty-four as it smells of argelasse and wild lavender and
+broom....
+
+"We'd had the dickens of a walk of it, just with knapsacks--had started
+somewhere in the Ardèche and tramped south through the vines and almonds
+and olives--Montélimar, Orange, Avignon, and a fortnight at that blanched
+skeleton of a town, Les Baux. We'd nothing to do, and had gone just where
+we liked, or rather just where Carroll had liked; and Carroll had had the
+_De Bello Gallico_ in his pocket, and had had a notion, I fancy, of
+taking in the whole ground of the Roman conquest--I remember he lugged me
+off to some place or other, Pourrières I believe its name was, because--I
+forget how many thousands--were killed in a river-bed there, and they
+stove in the water-casks so that if the men wanted water they'd have to
+go forward and fight for it. And then we'd gone on to Arles, where
+Carroll had fallen in love with everything that had a bow of black
+velvet in her hair, and after that Tarascon, Nîmes, and so on, the usual
+round--I won't bother you with that. In a word, we'd had two months of
+it, eating almonds and apricots from the trees, watching the women at the
+communal washing-fountains under the dark plane-trees, singing _Magali_
+and the _Qué Cantes_, and Carroll yarning away all the time about Caesar
+and Vercingetorix and Dante, and trying to learn Provençal so that he
+could read the stuff in the _Journal des Félibriges_ that he'd never have
+looked at if it had been in English....
+
+"Well, we got to Darbisson. We'd run across some young chap or
+other--Rangon his name was--who was a vine-planter in those parts, and
+Rangon had asked us to spend a couple of days with him, with him and his
+mother, if we happened to be in the neighbourhood. So as we might as
+well happen to be there as anywhere else, we sent him a postcard and
+went. This would be in June or early in July. All day we walked across
+a plain of vines, past hurdles of wattled _cannes_ and great wind-screens
+of velvety cypresses, sixty feet high, all white with dust on the north
+side of 'em, for the mistral was having its three-days' revel, and it
+whistled and roared through the _cannes_ till scores of yards of 'em
+at a time were bowed nearly to the earth. A roaring day it was, I
+remember.... But the wind fell a little late in the afternoon, and we
+were poring over what it had left of our Ordnance Survey--like fools,
+we'd got the unmounted paper maps instead of the linen ones--when Rangon
+himself found us, coming out to meet us in a very badly turned-out trap.
+He drove us back himself, through Darbisson, to the house, a mile and a
+half beyond it, where he lived with his mother.
+
+"He spoke no English, Rangon didn't, though, of course, both French and
+Provençal; and as he drove us, there was Carroll, using him as a
+Franco-Provençal dictionary, peppering him with questions about the names
+of things in the patois--I beg its pardon, the language--though there's
+a good deal of my eye and Betty Martin about that, and I fancy this
+Félibrige business will be in a good many pieces when Frédéric Mistral
+is under that Court-of-Love pavilion arrangement he's had put up for
+himself in the graveyard at Maillanne. If the language has got to go,
+well, it's got to go, I suppose; and while I personally don't want to
+give it a kick, I rather sympathise with the Government. Those jaunts of
+a Sunday out to Les Baux, for instance, with paper lanterns and Bengal
+fire and a fellow spouting _O blanche Venus d'Arles_--they're well
+enough, and compare favourably with our Bank Holidays and Sunday League
+picnics, but ... but that's nothing to do with my tale after all.... So
+he drove on, and by the time we got to Rangon's house Carroll had learned
+the greater part of _Magali_....
+
+"As you, no doubt, know, it's a restricted sort of life in some respects
+that a young _vigneron_ lives in those parts, and it was as we reached
+the house that Rangon remembered something--or he might have been trying
+to tell us as we came along for all I know, and not been able to get a
+word in edgeways for Carroll and his Provençal. It seemed that his mother
+was away from home for some days--apologies of the most profound, of
+course; our host was the soul of courtesy, though he did try to get at
+us a bit later.... We expressed our polite regrets, naturally; but I
+didn't quite see at first what difference it made. I only began to see
+when Rangon, with more apologies, told us that we should have to go back
+to Darbisson for dinner. It appeared that when Madame Rangon went away
+for a few days she dispersed the whole of the female side of her
+establishment also, and she'd left her son with nobody to look after
+him except an old man we'd seen in the yard mending one of these
+double-cylindered sulphur-sprinklers they clap across the horse's back
+and drive between the rows of vines.... Rangon explained all this as we
+stood in the hall drinking an _apéritif_--a hall crowded with oak
+furniture and photographs and a cradle-like bread-crib and doors opening
+to right and left to the other rooms of the ground floor. He had also, it
+seemed, to ask us to be so infinitely obliging as to excuse him for one
+hour after dinner--our postcard had come unexpectedly, he said, and
+already he had made an appointment with his agent about the _vendange_
+for the coming autumn.... We, begged him, of course, not to allow us to
+interfere with his business in the slightest degree. He thanked us a
+thousand times.
+
+"'But though we dine in the village, we will take our own wine with us,'
+he said, 'a wine _surfin_--one of my wines--you shall see--'
+
+"Then he showed us round his place--I forget how many hundreds of acres
+of vines, and into the great building with the presses and pumps and
+casks and the huge barrel they call the thunderbolt--and about seven
+o'clock we walked back to Darbisson to dinner, carrying our wine with us.
+I think the restaurant we dined in was the only one in the place, and our
+gaillard of a host--he was a straight-backed, well-set-up chap, with
+rather fine eyes--did us on the whole pretty well. His wine certainly was
+good stuff, and set our tongues going....
+
+"A moment ago I said a fellow like Rangon leads a restricted sort of life
+in those parts. I saw this more clearly as dinner went on. We dined by an
+open window, from which we could see the stream with the planks across it
+where the women washed clothes during the day and assembled in the
+evening for gossip. There were a dozen or so of them there as we dined,
+laughing and chatting in low tones--they all seemed pretty--it was
+quickly falling dusk--all the girls are pretty then, and are quite
+conscious of it--_you_ know, Marsham. Behind them, at the end of the
+street, one of these great cypress wind-screens showed black against the
+sky, a ragged edge something like the line the needle draws on a rainfall
+chart; and you could only tell whether they were men or women under the
+plantains by their voices rippling and chattering and suddenly a deeper
+note.... Once I heard a muffled scuffle and a sound like a kiss.... It
+was then that Rangon's little trouble came out....
+
+"It seemed that he didn't know any girls--wasn't allowed to know any
+girls. The girls of the village were pretty enough, but you see how it
+was--he'd a position to keep up--appearances to maintain--couldn't be
+familiar during the year with the girls who gathered his grapes for him
+in the autumn.... And as soon as Carroll gave him a chance, _he_ began to
+ask _us_ questions, about England, English girls, the liberty they had,
+and so on.
+
+"Of course, we couldn't tell him much he hadn't heard already, but that
+made no difference; he could stand any amount of that, our strapping
+young _vigneron_; and he asked us questions by the dozen, that we both
+tried to answer at once. And his delight and envy!... What! In England
+did the young men see the young women of their own class without
+restraint--the sisters of their friends _même_--even at the house? Was it
+permitted that they drank tea with them in the afternoon, or went without
+invitation to pass the _soirée_?... He had all the later Prévosts in his
+room, he told us (I don't doubt he had the earlier ones also); Prévost
+and the Disestablishment between them must be playing the mischief
+with the convent system of education for young girls; and our young man
+was--what d'you call it?--'Co-ed'--co-educationalist--by Jove, yes!... He
+seemed to marvel that we should have left a country so blessed as England
+to visit his dusty, wild-lavender-smelling, girl-less Provence.... You
+don't know half your luck, Marsham....
+
+"Well, we talked after this fashion--we'd left the dining-room of the
+restaurant and had planted ourselves on a bench outside with Rangon
+between us--when Rangon suddenly looked at his watch and said it was time
+he was off to see this agent of his. Would we take a walk, he asked us,
+and meet him again there? he said.... But as his agent lived in the
+direction of his own home, we said we'd meet him at the house in an hour
+or so. Off he went, envying every Englishman who stepped, I don't
+doubt.... I told you how old--how young--we were.... Heigho!...
+
+"Well, off goes Rangon, and Carroll and I got up, stretched ourselves,
+and took a walk. We walked a mile or so, until it began to get pretty
+dark, and then turned; and it was as we came into the blackness of one of
+these cypress hedges that the thing I'm telling you of happened. The
+hedge took a sharp turn at that point; as we came round the angle we saw
+a couple of women's figures hardly more than twenty yards ahead--don't
+know how they got there so suddenly, I'm sure; and that same moment I
+found my foot on something small and white and glimmering on the grass.
+
+"I picked it up. It was a handkerchief--a woman's--embroidered--
+
+"The two figures ahead of us were walking in our direction; there was
+every probability that the handkerchief belonged to one of them; so we
+stepped out....
+
+"At my 'Pardon, madame,' and lifted hat one of the figures turned her
+head; then, to my surprise, she spoke in English--cultivated English.
+I held out the handkerchief. It belonged to the elder lady of the two,
+the one who had spoken, a very gentle-voiced old lady, older by very many
+years than her companion. She took the handkerchief and thanked me....
+
+"Somebody--Sterne, isn't it?--says that Englishmen don't travel to see
+Englishmen. I don't know whether he'd stand to that in the case of
+Englishwomen; Carroll and I didn't.... We were walking rather slowly
+along, four abreast across the road; we asked permission to introduce
+ourselves, did so, and received some name in return which, strangely
+enough, I've entirely forgotten--I only remember that the ladies were
+aunt and niece, and lived at Darbisson. They shook their heads when I
+mentioned M. Rangon's name and said we were visiting him. They didn't
+know him....
+
+"I'd never been in Darbisson before, and I haven't been since, so I don't
+know the map of the village very well. But the place isn't very big,
+and the house at which we stopped in twenty minutes or so is probably
+there yet. It had a large double door--a double door in two senses,
+for it was a big _porte-cochère_ with a smaller door inside it, and an
+iron grille shutting in the whole. The gentle-voiced old lady had already
+taken a key from her reticule and was thanking us again for the little
+service of the handkerchief; then, with the little gesture one makes when
+one has found oneself on the point of omitting a courtesy, she gave a
+little musical laugh.
+
+"'But,' she said with a little movement of invitation, 'one sees so
+few compatriots here--if you have the time to come in and smoke a
+cigarette ... also the cigarette,' she added, with another rippling
+laugh, 'for we have few callers, and live alone--'
+
+"Hastily as I was about to accept, Carroll was before me, professing a
+nostalgia for the sound of the English tongue that made his recent
+protestations about Provençal a shameless hypocrisy. Persuasive young
+rascal, Carroll Was--poor chap ... So the elder lady opened the grille
+and the wooden door beyond it, and we entered.
+
+"By the light of the candle which the younger lady took from a bracket
+just within the door we saw that we were in a handsome hall or vestibule;
+and my wonder that Rangon had made no mention of what was apparently a
+considerable establishment was increased by the fact that its tenants
+must be known to be English and could be seen to be entirely charming. I
+couldn't understand it, and I'm afraid hypotheses rushed into my head
+that cast doubts on the Rangons--you know--whether _they_ were all right.
+We knew nothing about our young planter, you see....
+
+"I looked about me. There were tubs here and there against the walls,
+gaily painted, with glossy-leaved aloes and palms in them--one of the
+aloes, I remember, was flowering; a little fountain in the middle made a
+tinkling noise; we put our caps on a carved and gilt console table; and
+before us rose a broad staircase with shallow steps of spotless stone and
+a beautiful wrought-iron handrail. At the top of the staircase were more
+palms and aloes, and double doors painted in a clear grey.
+
+"We followed our hostesses up the staircase. I can hear yet the sharp
+clean click our boots made on that hard shiny stone--see the lights of
+the candle gleaming on the handrail ... The young girl--she was not much
+more than a girl--pushed at the doors, and we went in.
+
+"The room we entered was all of a piece with the rest for rather
+old-fashioned fineness. It was large, lofty, beautifully kept. Carroll
+went round for Miss ... whatever her name was ... lighting candles in
+sconces; and as the flames crept up they glimmered on a beautifully
+polished floor, which was bare except for an Eastern rug here and there.
+The elder lady had sat down in a gilt chair, Louis Fourteenth I should
+say, with a striped rep of the colour of a petunia; and I really don't
+know--don't smile, Smith--what induced me to lead her to it by the
+finger-tips, bending over her hand for a moment as she sat down. There
+was an old tambour-frame behind her chair, I remember, and a vast oval
+mirror with clustered candle-brackets filled the greater part of the
+farther wall, the brightest and clearest glass I've ever seen...."
+
+He paused, looking at my cigarette case, which he had taken into his hand
+again. He smiled at some recollection or other, and it was a minute or
+so before he continued.
+
+"I must admit that I found it a little annoying, after what we'd
+been talking about at dinner an hour before, that Rangon wasn't with
+us. I still couldn't understand how he could have neighbours so
+charming without knowing about them, but I didn't care to insist on
+this to the old lady, who for all I knew might have her own reasons
+for keeping to herself. And, after all, it was our place to return
+Rangon's hospitality in London if he ever came there, not, so to speak,
+on his own doorstep.... So presently I forgot all about Rangon, and I'm
+pretty sure that Carroll, who was talking to his companion of some
+Félibrige junketing or other and having the air of Gounod's _Mireille_
+hummed softly over to him, didn't waste a thought on him either. Soon
+Carroll--you remember what a pretty crooning, humming voice he had--soon
+Carroll was murmuring what they call 'seconds,' but so low that the sound
+hardly came across the room; and I came in with a soft bass note from
+time to time. No instrument, you know; just an unaccompanied murmur no
+louder than an Aeolian harp; and it sounded infinitely sweet and
+plaintive and--what shall I say?--weak--attenuated--faint--'pale' you
+might almost say--in that formal, rather old-fashioned _salon_, with that
+great clear oval mirror throwing back the still flames of the candles in
+the sconces on the walls. Outside the wind had now fallen completely; all
+was very quiet; and suddenly in a voice not much louder than a sigh,
+Carroll's companion was singing _Oft in the Stilly Night_--you know
+it...."
+
+He broke off again to murmur the beginning of the air. Then, with a
+little laugh for which we saw no reason, he went on again:
+
+"Well, I'm not going to try to convince you of such a special and
+delicate thing as the charm of that hour--it wasn't more than an
+hour--it would be all about an hour we stayed. Things like that just
+have to be said and left; you destroy them the moment you begin to
+insist on them; we've every one of us had experiences like that, and
+don't say much about them. I was as much in love with my old lady as
+Carroll evidently was with his young one--I can't tell you why--being
+in love has just to be taken for granted too, I suppose... Marsham
+understands.... We smoked our cigarettes, and sang again, once more
+filling that clear-painted, quiet apartment with a murmuring no louder
+than if a light breeze found that the bells of a bed of flowers were
+really bells and played on 'em. The old lady moved her fingers gently
+on the round table by the side of her chair,.. oh, infinitely pretty it
+was.... Then Carroll wandered off into the _Qué Cantes_--awfully
+pretty--'It is not for myself I sing, but for my friend who is near
+me'--and I can't tell you how like four old friends we were, those two
+so oddly met ladies and Carroll and myself.... And so to _Oft in the
+Stilly Night_ again....
+
+"But for all the sweetness and the glamour of it, we couldn't stay on
+indefinitely, and I wondered what time it was, but didn't ask--anything
+to do with clocks and watches would have seemed a cold and mechanical
+sort of thing just then.... And when presently we both got up neither
+Carroll nor I asked to be allowed to call again in the morning to
+thank them for a charming hour.... And they seemed to feel the same as
+we did about it. There was no 'hoping that we should meet again in
+London'--neither an au revoir nor a good-bye--just a tacit understanding
+that that hour should remain isolated, accepted like a good gift without
+looking the gift-horse in the mouth, single, unattached to any hours
+before or after--I don't know whether you see what I mean.... Give me a
+match somebody....
+
+"And so we left, with no more than looks exchanged and finger-tips
+resting between the back of our hands and our lips for a moment. We
+found our way out by ourselves, down that shallow-stepped staircase with
+the handsome handrail, and let ourselves out of the double door and
+grille, closing it softly. We made for the village without speaking a
+word.... Heigho!..."
+
+Loder had picked up the cigarette case again, but for all the way his
+eyes rested on it I doubt whether he really saw it. I'm pretty sure he
+didn't; I knew when he did by the glance he shot at me, as much as to say
+"I see you're wondering where the cigarette case comes in."... He
+resumed with another little laugh.
+
+"Well," he continued, "we got back to Rangon's house. I really don't
+blame Rangon for the way he took it when we told him, you know--he
+thought we were pulling his leg, of course, and he wasn't having any; not
+he! There were no English ladies in Darbisson, he said.... We told him as
+nearly as we could just where the house was--we weren't very precise, I'm
+afraid, for the village had been in darkness as we had come through it,
+and I had to admit that the cypress hedge I tried to describe where we'd
+met our friends was a good deal like other cypress hedges--and, as I say,
+Rangon wasn't taking any. I myself was rather annoyed that he should
+think we were returning his hospitality by trying to get at him, and it
+wasn't very easy either to explain in my French and Carroll's Provençal
+that we were going to let the thing stand as it was and weren't going to
+call on our charming friends again.... The end of it was that Rangon
+just laughed and yawned....
+
+"'I knew it was good, my wine,' he said, 'but--' a shrug said the rest.
+'Not so good as all that,' he meant....
+
+"Then he gave us our candles, showed us to our rooms, shook hands, and
+marched off to his own room and the Prévosts.
+
+"I dreamed of my old lady half the night.
+
+"After coffee the next morning I put my hand into my pocket for my
+cigarette case and didn't find it. I went through all my pockets, and
+then I asked Carroll if he'd got it.
+
+"'No,' he replied.... 'Think you left it behind at that place last
+night?'
+
+"'Yes; did you?' Rangon popped in with a twinkle.
+
+"I went through all my pockets again. No cigarette case....
+
+"Of course, it was possible that I'd left it behind, and I was annoyed
+again. I didn't want to go back, you see.... But, on the other hand, I
+didn't want to lose the case--it was a present--and Rangon's smile
+nettled me a good deal, too. It was both a challenge to our truthfulness
+and a testimonial to that very good wine of his....
+
+"'Might have done,' I grunted.... 'Well, in that case we'll go and get
+it.'
+
+"'If one tried the restaurant first--?' Rangon suggested, smiling again.
+
+"'By all means,' said I stuffily, though I remembered having the case
+after we'd left the restaurant.
+
+"We were round at the restaurant by half-past nine. The case wasn't
+there. I'd known jolly well beforehand it wasn't, and I saw Rangon's
+mouth twitching with amusement.
+
+"'So we now seek the abode of these English ladies, _hein_?' he said.
+
+"'Yes,' said I; and we left the restaurant and strode through the village
+by the way we'd taken the evening before....
+
+"That vigneron's smile became more and more irritating to me.... 'It is
+then the next village?' he said presently, as we left the last house and
+came out into the open plain.
+
+"We went back....
+
+"I was irritated because we were two to one, you see, and Carroll backed
+me up. 'A double door, with a grille in front of it,' he repeated for
+the fiftieth time.... Rangon merely replied that it wasn't our good faith
+he doubted. He didn't actually use the word 'drunk.'...
+
+"'_Mais tiens_,' he said suddenly, trying to conceal his mirth. '_Si
+c'est possible... si c'est possible_... a double door with a grille? But
+perhaps that I know it, the domicile of these so elusive ladies.... Come
+this way.'
+
+"He took us back along a plantain-groved street, and suddenly turned up
+an alley that was little more than two gutters and a crack of sky
+overhead between two broken-tiled roofs. It was a dilapidated, deserted
+_ruelle_, and I was positively angry when Rangon pointed to a blistered
+old _porte-cochère_ with a half-unhinged railing in front of it.
+
+"'Is it that, your house?' he asked.
+
+"'No,' says I, and 'No,' says Carroll ... and off we started again....
+
+"But another half-hour brought us back to the same place, and Carroll
+scratched his head.
+
+"'Who lives there, anyway?' he said, glowering at the _porte-cochère_,
+chin forward, hands in pockets.
+
+"'Nobody,' says Rangon, as much as to say 'look at it!' 'M'sieu then
+meditates taking it?'...
+
+"Then I struck in, quite out of temper by this time.
+
+"'How much would the rent be?' I asked, as if I really thought of taking
+the place just to get back at him.
+
+"He mentioned something ridiculously small in the way of francs.
+
+"'One might at least see the place,' says I. 'Can the key be got?'
+
+"He bowed. The key was at the baker's, not a hundred yards away, he
+said....
+
+"We got the key. It was the key of the inner wooden door--that grid of
+rusty iron didn't need one--it came clean off its single hinge when
+Carroll touched it. Carroll opened, and we stood for a moment motioning
+to one another to step in. Then Rangon went in first, and I heard him
+murmur 'Pardon, Mesdames.'...
+
+"Now this is the odd part. We passed into a sort of vestibule or hall,
+with a burst lead pipe in the middle of a dry tank in the centre of it.
+There was a broad staircase rising in front of us to the first floor, and
+double doors just seen in the half-light at the head of the stairs. Old
+tubs stood against the walls, but the palms and aloes in them were
+dead--only a cabbage-stalk or two--and the rusty hoops lay on the ground
+about them. One tub had come to pieces entirely and was no more than a
+heap of staves on a pile of spilt earth. And everywhere, everywhere was
+dust--the floor was an inch deep in dust and old plaster that muffled our
+footsteps, cobwebs hung like old dusters on the walls, a regular goblin's
+tatter of cobwebs draped the little bracket inside the door, and the
+wrought-iron of the hand-rail was closed up with webs in which not even a
+spider moved. The whole thing was preposterous....
+
+"'It is possible that for even a less rental--'
+
+"Rangon murmured, dragging his forefinger across the hand-rail and
+leaving an inch-deep furrow....
+
+"'Come upstairs,' said I suddenly....
+
+"Up we went. All was in the same state there. A clutter of stuff came
+down as I pushed at the double doors of the _salon_, and I had to strike
+a stinking French sulphur match to see into the room at all. Underfoot
+was like walking on thicknesses of flannel, and except where we put
+our feet the place was as printless as a snowfield--dust, dust, unbroken
+grey dust. My match burned down....
+
+"'Wait a minute--I've a _bougie_,' said Carroll, and struck the wax
+match....
+
+"There were the old sconces, with never a candle-end in them. There was
+the large oval mirror, but hardly reflecting Carroll's match for the
+dust on it. And the broken chairs were there, all gutless, and the
+rickety old round table....
+
+"But suddenly I darted forward. Something new and bright on the table
+twinkled with the light of Carroll's match. The match went out, and by
+the time Carroll had lighted another I had stopped. I wanted Rangon to
+see what was on the table....
+
+"'You'll see by my footprints how far from that table _I've_ been,' I
+said. 'Will you pick it up?'
+
+"And Rangon, stepping forward, picked up from the middle of the table--my
+cigarette case."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Loder had finished. Nobody spoke. For quite a minute nobody spoke, and
+then Loder himself broke the silence, turning to me.
+
+"Make anything of it?" he said.
+
+I lifted my eyebrows. "Only your _vigneron's_ explanation--" I began, but
+stopped again, seeing that wouldn't do.
+
+"_Any_body make anything of it?" said Loder, turning from one to another.
+
+I gathered from Smith's face that he thought one thing might be made of
+it--namely, that Loder had invented the whole tale. But even Smith
+didn't speak.
+
+"Were any English ladies ever found to have lived in the place--murdered,
+you know--bodies found and all that?" young Marsham asked diffidently,
+yearning for an obvious completeness.
+
+"Not that we could ever learn," Loder replied. "We made inquiries
+too.... So you all give it up? Well, so do I...."
+
+And he rose. As he walked to the door, myself following him to get his
+hat and stick, I heard him humming softly the lines--they are from
+_Oft in the Stilly Night_--
+
+"_I seem like one who treads alone
+    Some banquet-hall deserted,
+Whose guests are fled, whose garlands dead,
+    And all but he--departed!_"
+
+
+
+
+THE ROCKER
+
+
+I
+
+There was little need for the swart gipsies to explain, as they stood
+knee-deep in the snow round the bailiff of the Abbey Farm, what it
+was that had sent them. The unbroken whiteness of the uplands told that,
+and, even as they spoke, there came up the hill the dark figures of the
+farm men with shovels, on their way to dig out the sheep. In the summer,
+the bailiff would have been the first to call the gipsies vagabonds
+and roost-robbers; now ... they had women with them too.
+
+"The hares and foxes were down four days ago, and the liquid-manure pumps
+like a snow man," the bailiff said.... "Yes, you can lie in the laithes
+and welcome--if you can find 'em. Maybe you'll help us find our sheep
+too--"
+
+The gipsies had done so. Coming back again, they had had some ado to
+discover the spot where their three caravans made a hummock of white
+against a broken wall.
+
+The women--they had four women with them--began that afternoon to weave
+the mats and baskets they hawked from door to door; and in the forenoon
+of the following day one of them, the black-haired, soft-voiced quean
+whom the bailiff had heard called Annabel, set her babe in the sling on
+her back, tucked a bundle of long cane-loops under her oxter, and trudged
+down between eight-foot walls of snow to the Abbey Farm. She stood in the
+latticed porch, dark and handsome against the whiteness, and then,
+advancing, put her head into the great hall-kitchen.
+
+"Has the lady any chairs for the gipsy woman to mend?" she asked in a
+soft and insinuating voice....
+
+They brought her the old chairs; she seated herself on a box in the
+porch; and there she wove the strips of cane in and out, securing each
+one with a little wooden peg and a tap of her hammer. The child remained
+in the sling at her back, taking the breast from time to time over her
+shoulder; and the silver wedding ring could be seen as she whipped the
+cane, back and forth.
+
+As she worked, she cast curious glances into the old hall-kitchen. The
+snow outside cast a pallid, upward light on the heavy ceiling-beams; this
+was reflected in the polished stone floor; and the children, who at first
+had shyly stopped their play, seeing the strange woman in the porch--the
+nearest thing they had seen to gipsies before had been the old itinerant
+glazier with his frame of glass on his back--resumed it, but still eyed
+her from time to time. In the ancient walnut chair by the hearth sat the
+old, old lady who had told them to bring the chairs. Her hair, almost
+as white as the snow itself, was piled up on her head _à la Marquise_;
+she was knitting; but now and then she allowed the needle in the little
+wooden sheath at her waist to lie idle, closed her eyes, and rocked
+softly in the old walnut chair.
+
+"Ask the woman who is mending the chairs whether she is warm enough
+there," the old lady said to one of the children; and the child went
+to the porch with the message.
+
+"Thank you, little missie--thank you, lady dear--Annabel is quite warm,"
+said the soft voice; and the child returned to the play.
+
+It was a childish game of funerals at which the children played. The hand
+of Death, hovering over the dolls, had singled out Flora, the
+articulations of whose sawdust body were seams and whose boots were
+painted on her calves of fibrous plaster. For the greater solemnity, the
+children had made themselves sweeping trains of the garments of their
+elders, and those with cropped curls had draped their heads with shawls,
+the fringes of which they had combed out with their fingers to simulate
+hair--long hair, such as Sabrina, the eldest, had hanging so low down
+her back that she could almost sit on it. A cylindrical-bodied horse,
+convertible (when his flat head came out of its socket) into a
+locomotive, headed the sad _cortège_; then came the defunct Flora; then
+came Jack, the raffish sailor doll, with other dolls; and the children
+followed with hushed whisperings.
+
+The youngest of the children passed the high-backed walnut chair in which
+the old lady sat. She stopped.
+
+"Aunt Rachel--" she whispered, slowly and gravely opening very wide and
+closing very tight her eyes.
+
+"Yes, dear?"
+
+"Flora's dead!"
+
+The old lady, when she smiled, did so less with her lips than with her
+faded cheeks. So sweet was her face that you could not help wondering,
+when you looked on it, how many men had also looked upon it and loved it.
+Somehow, you never wondered how many of them had been loved in return.
+
+"I'm so sorry, dear," Aunt Rachel, who in reality was a great-aunt, said.
+"What did she die of this time?"
+
+"She died of ... Brown Titus ... 'n now she's going to be buried in a
+grave as little as her bed."
+
+"In a what, dear?"
+
+"As little ... dread ... as little as my bed ... you say it, Sabrina."
+
+"She means, Aunt Rachel,
+
+"_Teach me to live that I may dread
+The Grave as little as my bed,_"
+
+Sabrina, the eldest, interpreted.
+
+"Ah!... But won't you play at cheerful things, dears?"
+
+"Yes, we will, presently, Aunt Rachel; gee up, horse!... Shall we go and
+ask the chair-woman if she's warm enough?"
+
+"Do, dears."
+
+Again the message was taken, and this time it seemed as if Annabel, the
+gipsy, was not warm enough, for she gathered up her loops of cane and
+brought the chair she was mending a little way into the hall-kitchen
+itself. She sat down on the square box they used to cover the sewing
+machine.
+
+"Thank you, lady dear," she murmured, lifting her handsome almond eyes to
+Aunt Rachel. Aunt Rachel did not see the long, furtive, curious glance.
+Her own eyes were closed, as if she was tired; her cheeks were smiling;
+one of them had dropped a little to one shoulder, as it might have
+dropped had she held in her arms a babe; and she was rocking, softly,
+slowly, the rocker of the chair making a little regular noise on the
+polished floor.
+
+The gipsy woman beckoned to one of the children.
+
+"Tell the lady, when she wakes, that I will tack a strip of felt to the
+rocker, and then it will make no noise at all," said the low and
+wheedling voice; and the child retired again.
+
+The interment of Flora proceeded....
+
+An hour later Flora had taken up the burden of Life again. It was as
+Angela, the youngest, was chastising her for some offence, that Sabrina,
+the eldest, looked with wondering eyes on the babe in the gipsy's sling.
+She approached on tiptoe.
+
+"May I look at it, please?" she asked timidly.
+
+The gipsy set one shoulder forward, and Sabrina put the shawl gently
+aside, peering at the dusky brown morsel within.
+
+"Sometime, perhaps--if I'm very careful--"
+
+Sabrina ventured diffidently, "--if I'm _very_ careful--may I hold it?"
+
+Before replying, the gipsy once more turned her almond eyes towards Aunt
+Rachel's chair. Aunt Rachel had been awakened for the conclusion of
+Flora's funeral, but her eyes were closed again now, and once more her
+cheek was dropped in that tender suggestive little gesture, and she
+rocked. But you could see that she was not properly asleep.... It was,
+somehow, less to Sabrina, still peering at the babe in the sling, than to
+Aunt Rachel, apparently asleep, that the gipsy seemed to reply.
+
+"You'll know some day, little missis, that a wean knows its own pair of
+arms," her seductive voice came.
+
+And Aunt Rachel heard. She opened her eyes with a start. The little
+regular noise of the rocker ceased. She turned her head quickly;
+tremulously she began to knit again; and, as her eyes rested on the
+sidelong eyes of the gipsy woman, there was an expression in them that
+almost resembled fright.
+
+
+II
+
+They began to deck the great hall-kitchen for Christmas, but the snow
+still lay thick over hill and valley, and the gipsies' caravans remained
+by the broken wall where the drifts had overtaken them. Though all the
+chairs were mended, Annabel still came daily to the farm, sat on the box
+they used to cover the sewing machine, and wove mats. As she wove them,
+Aunt Rachel knitted, and from time to time fragments of talk passed
+between the two women. It was always the white-haired lady who spoke
+first, and Annabel made all sorts of salutes and obeisances with her eyes
+before replying.
+
+"I have not seen your husband," Aunt Rachel said to Annabel one day. (The
+children at the other end of the apartment had converted a chest into an
+altar, and were solemnising the nuptials of the resurrected Flora and
+Jack, the raffish sailor-doll.)
+
+Annabel made roving play with her eyes. "He is up at the caravans, lady
+dear," she replied. "Is there anything Annabel can bid him do?"
+
+"Nothing, thank you," said Aunt Rachel.
+
+For a minute the gipsy watched Aunt Rachel, and then she got up from the
+sewing machine box and crossed the floor. She leaned so close towards her
+that she had to put up a hand to steady the babe at her back.
+
+"Lady dear," she murmured with irresistible softness, "your husband died,
+didn't he?"
+
+On Aunt Rachel's finger was a ring, but it was not a wedding ring. It was
+a hoop of pearls.
+
+"I have never had a husband," she said.
+
+The gipsy glanced at the ring. "Then that is--?"
+
+"That is a betrothal ring," Aunt Rachel replied.
+
+"Ah!..." said Annabel.
+
+Then, after a minute, she drew still closer. Her eyes were fixed on Aunt
+Rachel's, and the insinuating voice was very low.
+
+"Ah!... And did _it_ die too, lady dear?"
+
+Again came that quick, half-affrighted look into Aunt Rachel's face. Her
+eyes avoided those of the gipsy, sought them, and avoided them again.
+
+"Did what die?" she asked slowly and guardedly....
+
+The child at the gipsy's back did not need suck; nevertheless, Annabel's
+fingers worked at her bosom, and she moved the sling. As the child
+settled, Annabel gave Aunt Rachel a long look.
+
+"Why do you rock?" she asked slowly.
+
+Aunt Rachel was trembling. She did not reply. In a voice soft as sliding
+water the gipsy continued:
+
+"Lady dear, we are a strange folk to you, and even among us there are
+those who shuffle the pack of cards and read the palm when silver has
+been put upon it, knowing nothing... But some of us _see_--some of us
+_see_."
+
+It was more than a minute before Aunt Rachel spoke.
+
+"You are a woman, and you have your babe at your breast now.... Every
+woman sees the thing you speak of."
+
+But the gipsy shook her head. "You speak of seeing with the heart. I
+speak of eyes--these eyes."
+
+Again came a long pause. Aunt Rachel had given a little start, but had
+become quiet again. When at last she spoke it was in a voice scarcely
+audible.
+
+"That cannot be. I know what you mean, but it cannot be.... He died
+on the eve of his wedding. For my bridal clothes they made me black
+garments instead. It is long ago, and now I wear neither black nor white,
+but--" her hands made a gesture. Aunt Rachel always dressed as if to suit
+a sorrow that Time had deprived of bitterness, in such a tender and
+fleecy grey as one sees in the mists that lie like lawn over hedgerow
+and copse early of a midsummer's morning. "Therefore," she resumed, "your
+heart may see, but your eyes cannot see that which never was."
+
+But there came a sudden note of masterfulness into the gipsy's voice.
+
+"With my eyes--_these_ eyes," she repeated, pointing to them.
+
+Aunt Rachel kept her own eyes obstinately on her knitting needles. "None
+except I have seen it. It is not to be seen," she said.
+
+The gipsy sat suddenly erect.
+
+"It is not so. Keep still in your chair," she ordered, "and I will tell
+you when--"
+
+It was a curious thing that followed. As if all the will went out of
+her, Aunt Rachel sat very still; and presently her hands fluttered and
+dropped. The gipsy sat with her own hands folded over the mat on her
+knees. Several minutes passed; then, slowly, once more that sweetest of
+smiles stole over Aunt Rachel's cheeks. Once more her head dropped. Her
+hands moved. Noiselessly on the rockers that the gipsy had padded with
+felt the chair began to rock. Annabel lifted one hand.
+
+"_Dovo se li_" she said. "It is there."
+
+Aunt Rachel did not appear to hear her. With that ineffable smile still
+on her face, she rocked....
+
+Then, after some minutes, there crossed her face such a look as visits
+the face of one who, waking from sleep, strains his faculties to
+recapture some blissful and vanishing vision....
+
+"_Jal_--it is gone," said the gipsy woman.
+
+Aunt Rachel opened her eyes again. She repeated dully after Annabel:
+
+"It is gone."
+
+"Ghosts," the gipsy whispered presently, "are of the dead. Therefore it
+must have lived."
+
+But again Aunt Rachel shook her head. "It never lived."
+
+"You were young, and beautiful?..."
+
+Still the shake of the head. "He died on the eve of his wedding. They
+took my white garments away and gave me black ones. How then could
+it have lived?"
+
+"Without the kiss, no.... But sometimes a woman will lie through her
+life, and at the graveside still will lie.... Tell me the truth."
+
+But they were the same words that Aunt Rachel repeated: "He died on the
+eve of his wedding; they took away my wedding garments...." From her lips
+a lie could hardly issue. The gipsy's face became grave....
+
+She broke another long silence.
+
+"I believe," she said at last. "It is a new kind--but no more wonderful
+than the other. The other I have seen, now I have seen this also. Tell
+me, does it come to any other chair?"
+
+"It was his chair; he died in it," said Aunt Rachel.
+
+"And you--shall you die in it?"
+
+"As God wills."
+
+"Has ... _other life_ ... visited it long?"
+
+"Many years; but it is always small; it never grows."
+
+"To their mothers babes never grow. They remain ever babes.... None other
+has ever seen it?"
+
+"Except yourself, none. I sit here; presently it creeps into my arms; it
+is small and warm; I rock, and then... it goes."
+
+"Would it come to another chair?"
+
+"I cannot tell. I think not. It was his chair."
+
+Annabel mused. At the other end of the room Flora was now bestowed on
+Jack, the disreputable sailor. The gipsy's eyes rested on the bridal
+party....
+
+"Yet another might see it--"
+
+"None has."
+
+"No; but yet.... The door does not always shut behind us suddenly.
+Perhaps one who has toddled but a step or two over the threshold might,
+by looking back, catch a glimpse.... What is the name of the smallest
+one?"
+
+"Angela."
+
+"That means 'angel'... Look, the doll who died yesterday is now being
+married.... It may be that Life has not yet sealed the little one's eyes.
+Will you let Annabel ask her if she sees what it is you hold in your
+arms?"
+
+Again the voice was soft and wheedling....
+
+"No, Annabel," said Aunt Rachel faintly.
+
+"Will you rock again?"
+
+Aunt Rachel made no reply.
+
+"Rock..." urged the cajoling voice.
+
+But Aunt Rachel only turned the betrothal ring on her finger. Over at the
+altar Jack was leering at his new-made bride, past decency; and little
+Angela held the wooden horse's head, which had parted from its body.
+
+"Rock, and comfort yourself--" tempted the voice.
+
+Then slowly Aunt Rachel rose from her chair.
+
+"No, Annabel," she said gently. "You should not have spoken. When the
+snow melts you will go, and come no more; why then did you speak? It was
+mine. It was not meant to be seen by another. I no longer want it. Please
+go."
+
+The swarthy woman turned her almond eyes on her once more.
+
+"You cannot live without it," she said as she also rose....
+
+And as Jack and his bride left the church on the reheaded horse, Aunt
+Rachel walked with hanging head from the apartment.
+
+
+III
+
+Thenceforward, as day followed day, Aunt Rachel rocked no more; and with
+the packing and partial melting of the snow the gipsies up at the
+caravans judged it time to be off about their business. It was on the
+morning of Christmas Eve that they came down in a body to the Abbey
+Farm to express their thanks to those who had befriended them; but the
+bailiff was not there. He and the farm men had ceased work, and were
+down at the church, practising the carols. Only Aunt Rachel sat, still
+and knitting, in the black walnut chair; and the children played on the
+floor.
+
+A night in the toy-box had apparently bred discontent between Jack
+and Flora--or perhaps they sought to keep their countenances before
+the world; at any rate, they sat on opposite sides of the room, Jack
+keeping boon company with the lead soldiers, his spouse reposing, her
+lead-balanced eyes closed, in the broken clockwork motor-car. With the
+air of performing some vaguely momentous ritual, the children were
+kissing one another beneath the bunch of mistletoe that hung from the
+centre beam. In the intervals of kissing they told one another in
+whispers that Aunt Rachel was not very well, and Angela woke Flora to
+tell her that Aunt Rachel had Brown Titus also.
+
+"Stay you here; I will give the lady dear our thanks," said Annabel to
+the group of gipsies gathered about the porch; and she entered the
+great hall-kitchen. She approached the chair in which Aunt Rachel sat.
+
+There was obeisance in the bend of her body, but command in her long
+almond eyes, as she spoke.
+
+"Lady dear, you must rock or you cannot live."
+
+Aunt Rachel did not look up from her work.
+
+"Rocking, I should not live long," she replied.
+
+"We are leaving you."
+
+"All leave me."
+
+"Annabel fears she has taken away your comfort."
+
+"Only for a little while. The door closes behind us, but it opens again."
+
+"But for that little time, rock--"
+
+Aunt Rachel shook her head.
+
+"No. It is finished. Another has seen.... Say good-bye to your
+companions; they are very welcome to what they have had; and God speed
+you."
+
+"They thank you, lady dear.... Will you not forget that Annabel saw, and
+rock?"
+
+"No more."
+
+Annabel stooped and kissed the hand that bore the betrothal hoop of
+pearls. The other hand Aunt Rachel placed for a moment upon the smoky
+head of the babe in the sling. It trembled as it rested there, but the
+tremor passed, and Annabel, turning once at the porch, gave her a last
+look. Then she departed with her companions.
+
+That afternoon, Jack and Flora had shaken down to wedlock as married
+folk should, and sat together before the board spread with the dolls'
+tea-things. The pallid light in the great hall-kitchen faded; the candles
+were lighted; and then the children, first borrowing the stockings of
+their elders to hang at the bed's foot, were packed off early--for it was
+the custom to bring them down again at midnight for the carols. Aunt
+Rachel had their good-night kisses, not as she had them every night, but
+with the special ceremony of the mistletoe.
+
+Other folk, grown folk, sat with Aunt Rachel that evening; but the old
+walnut chair did not move upon its rockers. There was merry talk, but
+Aunt Rachel took no part in it. The board was spread with ale and cheese
+and spiced loaf for the carol-singers; and the time drew near for their
+coming.
+
+When at midnight, faintly on the air from the church below, there came
+the chiming of Christmas morning, all bestirred themselves.
+
+"They'll be here in a few minutes," they said; "somebody go and bring the
+children down;" and within a very little while subdued noises were heard
+outside, and the lifting of the latch of the yard gate. The children were
+in their nightgowns, hardly fully awake; a low voice outside was heard
+giving orders; and then there arose on the night the carol.
+
+"Hush!" they said to the wondering children; "listen!..."
+
+It was the Cherry Tree Carol that rose outside, of how sweet Mary, the
+Queen of Galilee, besought Joseph to pluck the cherries for her Babe, and
+Joseph refused; and the voices of the singers, that had begun
+hesitatingly, grew strong and loud and free.
+
+"... and Joseph wouldn't pluck the cherries," somebody was whispering to
+the tiny Angela....
+
+"_Mary said to Cherry Tree,
+  'Bow down to my knee,
+That I may pluck cherries
+  For my Babe and me._'"
+
+the carollers sang; and "Now listen, darling," the one who held Angela
+murmured....
+
+"_The uppermost spray then
+  Bowed down to her knee;
+'Thus you may see, Joseph,
+  These cherries are for me.'
+
+"'O, eat your cherries, Mary,
+  Give them your Babe now;
+O, eat your cherries, Mary,
+  That grew upon the bough._'"
+
+The little Angela, within the arms that held her, murmured, "It's the
+gipsies, isn't it, mother?"
+
+"No, darling. The gipsies have gone. It's the carol-singers, singing
+because Jesus was born."
+
+"But, mother ... it _is_ the gipsies, isn't it?... 'Cos look..."
+
+"Look where?"
+
+"At Aunt Rachel, mother ... The gipsy woman wouldn't go without her
+little baby, would she?"
+
+"No, she wouldn't do that."
+
+"Then has she _lent_ it to Aunt Rachel, like I lend my new toys
+sometimes?"
+
+The mother glanced across at Aunt Rachel, and then gathered the
+night-gowned figure more closely.
+
+"The darling's only half awake," she murmured.... "Poor Aunt Rachel's
+sleepy too...."
+
+Aunt Rachel, her head dropped, her hands lightly folded as if about some
+shape that none saw but herself, her face again ineffable with that
+sweet and peaceful smile, was once more rocking softly in her chair.
+
+
+
+
+HIC JACET
+
+A TALE OF ARTISTIC CONSCIENCE
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+As I lighted my guests down the stairs of my Chelsea lodgings, turned up
+the hall gas that they might see the steps at the front door, and shook
+hands with them, I bade them good night the more heartily that I was glad
+to see their backs. Lest this should seem but an inhospitable confession,
+let me state, first, that they had invited themselves, dropping in in
+ones and twos until seven or eight of them had assembled in my garret,
+and, secondly, that I was rather extraordinarily curious to know why, at
+close on midnight, the one I knew least well of all had seen fit to
+remain after the others had taken their departure. To these two
+considerations I must add a third, namely, that I had become tardily
+conscious that, if Andriaovsky had not lingered of himself, I should
+certainly have asked him to do so.
+
+It was to nothing more than a glance, swift and momentary, directed by
+Andriaovsky to myself while the others had talked, that I traced this
+desire to see more of the little Polish painter; but a glance derives its
+import from the circumstance under which it is given. That rapid turning
+of his eyes in my direction an hour before had held a hundred questions,
+implications, criticisms, incredulities, condemnations. It had been one
+of those uncovenanted gestures that hold the promise of the treasures of
+an eternal friendship. I wondered as I turned down the gas again and
+remounted the stairs what personal message and reproach in it had lumped
+me in with the others; and by the time I had reached my own door again a
+phrase had fitted itself in my mind to that quick, ironical turning of
+Andriaovsky's eyes: _"Et tu, Brute!..."_
+
+He was standing where I had left him, his small shabby figure in the
+attitude of a diminutive colossus on my hearthrug. About him were the
+recently vacated chairs, solemnly and ridiculously suggestive of still
+continuing the high and choice conversation that had lately finished. The
+same fancy had evidently taken Andriaovsky, for he was turning from chair
+to chair, his head a little on one side, mischievously and aggravatingly
+smiling. As one of them, the deep wicker chair that Jamison had occupied,
+suddenly gave a little creak of itself, as wicker will when released from
+a strain, his smile broadened to a grin. I had been on the point of
+sitting down in that chair, but I changed my mind and took another.
+
+"That's right," said Andriaovsky, in that wonderful English which he had
+picked up in less than three years, "don't sit in the wisdom-seat; you
+might profane it."
+
+I knew what he meant. I felt for my pipe and slowly filled it, not
+replying. Then, slowly wagging his head from side to side, with his eyes
+humorously and banteringly on mine, he uttered the very words I had
+mentally associated with that glance of his.
+
+_"Et tu, Brute!"_ he said, wagging away, so that with each wag the lenses
+of his spectacles caught the light of the lamp on the table.
+
+I too smiled as I felt for a match.
+
+"It _was_ rather much, wasn't it?" I said.
+
+But he suddenly stopped his wagging, and held up a not very clean
+forefinger. His whole face was altogether too confoundedly intelligent.
+
+"Oh no, you don't!" he said peremptorily. "No getting out of it like
+that the moment they've turned their backs! No running--what is it?--no
+running with the hare and hunting with the hounds! _You_ helped, you
+know!"
+
+I confess I fidgeted a little.
+
+"But hang it all, what could I do? They were in my place," I broke out.
+
+He chuckled, enjoying my discomfiture. Then his eyes fell on those absurd
+and solemn chairs again.
+
+"Look at 'em--the Art Shades in conference!" he chuckled. "That
+rush-seated one, it was talking half an hour ago about 'Scherzos in
+Silver and Grey!' ... Nice, fresh green stuff!"
+
+To shut him up I told him that he would find cigarettes and tobacco on
+the table.
+
+"'Scherzos in Silver and Grey'!" he chuckled again as he took a
+cigarette....
+
+All this, perhaps, needs some explanation. It had been the usual thing,
+usual in those days, twenty years ago--smarming about Art and the Arts
+and so forth. They--"we," as apparently Andriaovsky had lingered behind
+for the purpose of reminding me--had perhaps talked a little more
+soaringly than the ordinary, that was all. There had been Jamison in the
+wicker chair, full to the lips and running over with the Colour
+Suggestions of the late Edward Calvert; Gibbs, in a pulpy state of
+adoration of the less legitimate side of the painting of Watts; and
+Magnani, who had advanced that an Essential Oneness underlies all the
+Arts, and had triumphantly proved his thesis by analogy with the Law of
+the Co-relation of Forces. A book called Music and Morals had appeared
+about that time, and on it they--we--had risen to regions of kite-high
+lunacy about Colour Symphonies, orgies of formless colour thrown on a
+magic-lantern screen--vieux jeu enough at this time of day. A young
+newspaper man, too, had made mental notes of our adjectives, for use in
+his weekly (I nearly spelt it "weakly") half-column of Art Criticism;
+and--and here was Andriaovsky, grinning at the chairs, and mimicking
+it all with diabolical glee.
+
+"'Scherzos in Silver and Grey'--'Word Pastels'--' Lyrics in Stone!'"
+he chuckled. "And what was it the fat fellow said?' A Siren Song in
+Marble!' Phew!... Well, I'll get along. I shall just be in time to get
+a pint of bitter to wash it all down if I'm quick... Bah!" he broke out
+suddenly. "Good men build up Form and Forms--keep the Arts each after
+its kind--raise up the dikes so that we shan't all be swept away by night
+and nothingness--and these rats come nosing and burrowing and undermining
+it all!... _Et tu, Brute!_"
+
+"Well, when you've finished rubbing it in--" I grunted.
+
+"As if _you_ didn't know better!... Is that your way of getting back on
+'em, now that you've chucked drawing and gone in for writing books?
+Phew I... Well, I'll go and get my pint of beer--"
+
+But he didn't go for his pint of beer. Instead, he began to prowl about
+my room, pryingly, nosingly, touching things here and there. I watched
+him as he passed from one thing to another. He was very little, and very,
+very shabby. His trousers were frayed, and the sole of one of his boots
+flapped distressingly. His old bowler hat--he had not thought it
+necessary to wait until he got outside before thrusting it on the back of
+his head--was so limp in substance that I verily believed that had he run
+incautiously downstairs he would have found when he got to the bottom
+that its crown had sunk in of its own weight. In spite of his remark
+about the pint of beer, I doubt if he had the price of one in his pocket.
+
+"What's this, Brutus--a concertina?" he suddenly asked, stopping before
+the collapsible case in which I kept my rather old dress suit.
+
+I told him what it was, and he hoisted up his shoulders.
+
+"And these things?" he asked, moving to something else.
+
+They were a pair of boot-trees of which I had permitted myself the
+economy. I remember they cost me four shillings in the old Brompton
+Road.
+
+"And that's your bath, I suppose.... Dumb-bells too.... And--_oh, good
+Lord!_..."
+
+He had picked up, and dropped again as if it had been hot, somebody or
+other's card with the date of a "day" written across the corner of it....
+
+As I helped him on with his overcoat he made no secret of the condition
+of its armholes and lining. I don't for one moment suppose that the
+garment was his. I took a candle to light him down as soon as it should
+please him to depart.
+
+"Well, so long, and joy to you on the high road to success," he said with
+another grin for which I could have bundled him down the stairs....
+
+In later days I never looked to Andriaovsky for tact; but I stared at him
+for his lack of it that night. And as I stared I noticed for the first
+time the broad and low pylon of his forehead, his handsome mouth and
+chin, and the fire and wit and scorn that smouldered behind his cheap
+spectacles. I looked again; and his smallness, his malice, his pathetic
+little braggings about his poverty, seemed all to disappear. He had
+strolled back to my hearthrug, wishing, I have no doubt now, to be able
+to exclaim suddenly that it was too late for the pint of beer for which
+he hadn't the money, and to curse his luck; and the pigmy quality of his
+colossusship had somehow gone.
+
+As I watched him, a neighbouring clock struck the half-hour, and he
+did even as I had surmised--cursed the closing time of the English
+public-houses....
+
+I lighted him down. For one moment, under the hall gas, he almost dropped
+his jesting manner.
+
+"You _do_ know better, Harrison, you know," he said. "But, of course,
+you're going to be a famous author in almost no time. Oh, _ca se
+voit_! No garrets for _you_! It was a treat,' the way you handled those
+fellows--really ... Well don't forget us others when you're up there--I
+may want you to write my 'Life' some day...."
+
+I heard the slapping of the loose sole as he shuffled down the path. At
+the gate he turned for a moment.
+
+"Good night, Brutus," he called.
+
+When I had mounted to my garret again my eyes fell once more on that
+ridiculous assemblage of empty chairs, all solemnly talking to one
+another. I burst out into a laugh. Then I undressed, put my jacket on the
+hanger, took the morrow's boots from the trees and treed those I had
+removed, changed the pair of trousers under my mattress, and went, still
+laughing at the chairs, to bed.
+
+This was Michael Andriaovsky, the Polish painter, who died four weeks
+ago.
+
+
+I
+
+I knew the reason of Maschka's visit the moment she was announced. Even
+in the stressful moments of the funeral she had found time to whisper to
+me that she hoped to call upon me at an early date. I dismissed the
+amanuensis to whom I was dictating the last story of the fourth series of
+_Martin Renard_, gave a few hasty instructions to my secretary, and told
+the servant to show Miss Andriaovsky into the drawing-room, to ask her
+to be so good as to excuse me for five minutes, to order tea at once, and
+then to bring my visitor up to the library.
+
+A few minutes later she was shown into the room.
+
+She was dressed in the same plainly cut costume of dead black she
+had worn at the funeral, and had pushed up her heavy veil over the
+close-fitting cap of black fur that accentuated her Sclavonic appearance.
+I noticed again with distress the pallor of her face and the bistred
+rings that weeks of nursing had put under her dark eyes. I noticed also
+her resemblance, in feature and stature, to her brother. I placed a chair
+for her; the tea-tray followed her in; and without more than a murmured
+greeting she peeled off her gloves and prepared to preside at the tray.
+
+She had filled the cups, and I had handed her toast, before she spoke.
+Then:
+
+"I suppose you know what I've come about," she said.
+
+I nodded.
+
+"Long, long ago you promised it. Nobody else can do it. The only question
+is 'when.'"
+
+"That's the only question," I agreed.
+
+"We, naturally," she continued, after a glance in which her eyes mutely
+thanked me for my implied promise, "are anxious that it should be as soon
+as possible; but, of course--I shall quite understand--"
+
+She gave a momentary glance round my library. I helped her out.
+
+"You mean that I'm a very important person nowadays, and that you're
+afraid to trespass on my time. Never mind that. I shall find time
+for this. But tell me before we go any further exactly how you stand and
+precisely what it is you expect."
+
+Briefly she did so. It did not in the least surprise me to learn that her
+brother had died penniless.
+
+"And if you hadn't undertaken the 'Life,'" she said, "he might just as
+well not have worked in poverty all these years. You can, at least, see
+to his fame."
+
+I nodded again gravely, and ruminated for a moment. Then I spoke.
+
+"I can write it, fully and in detail, up to five years ago," I said. "You
+know what happened then. I tried my best to help him, but he never would
+let me. Tell me, Maschka, why he wouldn't sell me that portrait."
+
+I knew instantly, from her quick confusion, that her brother had spoken
+to her about the portrait he had refused to sell me, and had probably
+told her the reason for his refusal. I watched her as she evaded the
+question as well as she could.
+
+"You know how--queer--he was about who he sold his things to. And as for
+those five years in which you saw less of him, Schofield will tell you
+all you want to know."
+
+I relinquished the point. "Who's Schofield?" I asked instead.
+
+"He was a very good friend of Michael's--of both of us. You can talk
+quite freely to him. I want to say at the beginning that I should like
+him to be associated with you in this."
+
+I don't know how I divined on the spot her relation to Schofield, whoever
+he was. She told me that he too was a painter.
+
+"Michael thought very highly of his things," she said.
+
+"I don't know them," I replied.
+
+"You probably wouldn't," she returned....
+
+But I caught the quick drop of her eyes from their brief excursion round
+my library, and I felt something within me stiffen a little. It did not
+need Maschka Andriaovsky to remind me that I had not attained my position
+without--let us say--splitting certain differences; the looseness of
+the expression can be corrected hereafter. Life consists very largely of
+compromises. You doubtless know my name, whichever country or hemisphere
+you happen to live in, as that of the creator of Martin Renard, the
+famous and popular detective; and I was not at that moment disposed to
+apologise, either to Maschka or Schofield or anybody else, for having
+written the stories at the bidding of a gaping public. The moment the
+public showed that it wanted something better I was prepared to give it.
+In the meantime, I sat in my very comfortable library, securely shielded
+from distress by my balance at my banker's.
+
+"Well," I said after a moment, "let's see how we stand. And first
+as to what you're likely to get out of this. It goes without saying,
+of course, that by writing the 'Life' I can get you any amount of
+'fame'--advertisement, newspaper talk, and all the things that, it struck
+me, Michael always treated with especial scorn. My name alone, I say,
+will do that. But for anything else I'm by no means so sure. You see," I
+explained, "it doesn't follow that because I can sell hundreds of
+thousands of... you know what... that I can sell anything I've a mind to
+sign." I said it, confident that she had not lived all those years with
+her brother without having learned the axiomatic nature of it. To my
+discomfiture, she began to talk like a callow student.
+
+"I should have thought that it followed that if you could sell
+something--" she hesitated only for a moment, then courageously gave the
+other stuff its proper adjective, "--something rotten, you could have
+sold something good when you had the chance."
+
+"Then if you thought that you were wrong," I replied briefly and
+concisely.
+
+"_Michael_ couldn't, of course," she said, putting Michael out of the
+question with a little wave of her hand, "because Michael was--I mean,
+Michael wasn't a business man. You are."
+
+"I'm speaking as one," I replied. "I don't waste time in giving people
+what they don't want. That is business. I don't undertake your brother's
+'Life' as a matter of business, but as an inestimable privilege. I
+repeat, it doesn't follow that the public will buy it."
+
+"But--but--" she stammered, "the public will buy a _Pill_ if they see
+your name on the testimonial!"
+
+"A Pill--yes," I said sadly.... Genius and a Pill were, alas, different
+things. "But," I added more cheerfully, "you can never tell what the
+public will do. They _might_ buy it--there's no telling except by
+trying--"
+
+"Well, Schofield thinks they will," she informed me with decision.
+
+"I dare say he does, if he's an artist. They mostly do," I replied.
+
+"He doesn't think Michael will ever be popular," she emphasised the
+adjective slightly, "but he does think he has a considerable following if
+they could only be discovered."
+
+I sighed. All artists think that. They will accept any compromise except
+the one that is offered to them.... I tried to explain to Maschka that in
+this world we have to stand to the chances of all or nothing.
+
+"You've got to be one thing or the other--I don't know that it matters
+very much which," I said. "There's Michael's way, and there's... mine.
+That's all. However, we'll try it. All you can say to me, and more, I'll
+say to a publisher for you. But he'll probably wink at me."
+
+For a moment she was silent. Then she said: "Schofield rather fancies one
+publisher."
+
+"Oh? Who's he?" I asked.
+
+She mentioned a name. If I knew anything at all of business she might as
+well have offered _The Life of Michael Andriaovsky_ to The Religious
+Tract Society at once....
+
+"Hm!... And has Mr. Schofield any other suggestions?" I inquired.
+
+He had. Several. I saw that Schofield's position would have to be defined
+before we went any further.
+
+"Hm!" I said again. "Well, I shall have to rely on Schofield for those
+five years in which I saw little of Michael; but unless Schofield knows
+more of publishing than I do, and can enforce a better contract and a
+larger sum on account than I can, I really think, Maschka, that you'll do
+better to leave things to me. For one thing, it's only fair to me. My
+name hasn't much of an artistic value nowadays, but it has a very
+considerable commercial one, and my worth to publishers isn't as a writer
+of the Lives of Geniuses."
+
+I could see she didn't like it; but that couldn't be helped. It had to be
+so. Then, as we sat for a time in silence over the fire, I noticed again
+how like her brother she was. She was not, it was true, much like him as
+he had been on that last visit of mine to him ... and I sighed as I
+remembered that visit. The dreadful scene had come back to me....
+
+On account, I suppose, of the divergence of our paths, I had not even
+heard of his illness until almost the finish. Immediately I had hastened
+to the Hampstead "Home," only to find him already in the agony. He had
+not been too far gone to recognise me, however, for he had muttered
+something brokenly about "knowing better," that a spasm had interrupted.
+Besides myself, only Maschka had been there; and I had been thankful for
+the summons that had called her for a moment out of the room. I had still
+retained his already cold hand; his brow had worked with that dreadful
+struggle; and his eyes had been closed.
+
+But suddenly he had opened them, and the next moment had sat up on his
+pillow. He had striven to draw his hand from mine.
+
+"Who are you?" he had suddenly demanded, not knowing me.
+
+I had come close to him. "You know me, Andriaovsky--Harrison?" I had
+asked sorrowfully.
+
+I had been on the point of repeating my name but suddenly, after holding
+my eyes for a moment with a look the profundity and familiarity of which
+I cannot express, he had broken into the most ghastly haunting laugh I
+have ever heard.
+
+"_Harrison?_" the words had broken throatily from him.... "_Oh yes; I
+know you!... You shall very soon know that I know you if... if..._"
+
+The cough and rattle had come as Maschka had rushed into the room. In ten
+seconds Andriaovsky had fallen back, dead.
+
+
+II
+
+That same evening I began to make notes for Andriaovsky's "Life." On the
+following day, the last of the fourth series of the _Martin Renards_
+occupied me until I was thankful to get to bed. But thereafter I could
+call rather more of my time my own, and I began in good earnest to devote
+myself to the "Life."
+
+Maschka had spoken no more than the truth when she had said that of all
+men living none but I could write that "Life." His remaining behind in my
+Chelsea garret that evening after the others had left had been the
+beginning of a friendship that, barring that lapse of five years at the
+end, had been for twenty years one of completest intimacy. Whatever money
+there might or might not be in the book, I had seen _my_ opportunity in
+it--the opportunity to make it the vehicle for all the aspirations,
+faiths, enthusiasms, and exaltations we had shared; and I myself did not
+realise until I began to note them down one tithe of the subtle links and
+associations that had welded our souls together.
+
+Even the outward and visible signs of these had been wonderful. Setting
+out from one or other of the score of garrets and cheap lodgings we had
+in our time inhabited, we had wandered together, day after day, night
+after night, far down East, where, as we had threaded our way among the
+barrels of soused herrings and the stalls and barrows of unleavened
+bread, he had taught me scraps of Hebrew and Polish and Yiddish; up into
+the bright West, where he could never walk a quarter of a mile without
+meeting one of his extraordinary acquaintances--furred music-hall
+managers, hawkers of bootlaces, commercial magnates of his own Faith,
+touts, crossing-sweepers, painted women; into Soho, where he had names
+for the very horses on the cab-ranks and the dogs who slumbered under the
+counters of the sellers of French literature; out to the naphtha-lights
+and cries of the Saturday night street markets of Islington and the North
+End Road; into City churches on wintry afternoons, into the studios of
+famous artists full of handsomely dressed women, into the studios of
+artists not famous, at the ends of dark and break-neck corridors; to tea
+at the suburban homes of barmaids and chorus girls, to dinner in the
+stables of a cavalry-barracks, to supper in cabmen's shelters. He was
+possessed in some mysterious way of the passwords to doors in hoardings
+behind which excavations were in progress; he knew by name the butchers
+of the Deptford yards, the men in the blood-caked clothes, so inured to
+blood that they may not with safety to their lives swear at one another;
+he took me into an opium-cellar within a stone's-throw of Oxford Street,
+and into a roof-chamber to call upon certain friends of his ... well,
+they _said_ they were fire extinguishers, so I'd better not say they
+were bombs. Up, down; here, there; good report, but more frequently
+evil ... we had known this side of our London as well as two men may. And
+our other adventures and peregrinations, not of the body, but of the
+spirit ... but these must be spoken of in their proper place.
+
+I had arranged with Maschka that Schofield should bring me the whole of
+the work Andriaovsky had left behind him; and he arrived late one
+afternoon in a fourwheeler, with four great packages done up in brown
+paper. I found him to be a big, shaggy-browed, red-haired, raw-boned
+Lancashire man of five-and-thirty, given to confidential demonstrations
+at the length of a button-shank, quite unconscious of the gulf between
+his words and his right to employ them, and bent on asserting an equality
+that I did not dispute by a rather aggressive use of my surname.
+Andriaovsky had appointed him his executor, and he had ever the air of
+suspecting that the appointment was going to be challenged.
+
+"A'm glad to be associated with ye in this melancholy duty, Harrison," he
+said. "Now we won't waste words. Miss Andriaovsky has told me precisely
+how matters stand. I had, as ye know, the honour to be poor Michael's
+close friend for a period of five years, and my knowledge of him is
+entirely at your disposal."
+
+I answered that I should be seriously handicapped without it.
+
+"Just so. It is Miss Andriaovsky's desire that we should pull together.
+Now, in the firrst place, what is your idea about the forrm the book
+should take?"
+
+"In the first place, if you don't mind," I replied, "perhaps we'd better
+run over together the things you've brought. The daylight will be gone
+soon."
+
+"Just as ye like, Harrison," he said, "just as ye like. It's all the same
+to me...."
+
+I cleared a space about my writing-table at the window, and we turned to
+the artistic remains of Michael Andriaovsky.
+
+I was astonished, first, at the enormous quantity of the stuff, and next
+at its utter and complete revelation of the man. In a flash I realised
+how superb that portion at least of the book was going to be. And
+Schofield explained that the work he had brought represented but a
+fraction of the whole that was at our disposal.
+
+"Ye'll know with what foolish generosity poor Michael always gave his
+things away," he said. "Hallard has a grand set; so has Connolly; and
+from time to time he behaved varry handsomely to myself. Artists of varry
+considerable talents both Hallard and Connolly are; Michael thought
+varry highly of their abilities. They express the deepest interest in the
+shape your worrk will take; and that reminds me. I myself have drafted a
+rough scenario of the forrm it appeared to me the 'Life' might with
+advantage be cast in. A purely private opinion, ye'll understand,
+Harrison, which ye'll be entirely at liberty to disregard...."
+
+"Well, let's finish with the work first," I said.
+
+With boards, loose sheets, scraps of paper, notes, studies, canvases
+stretched and stripped from their stretchers, we paved half the library
+floor, Schofield keeping up all the time a running fire of "Grand,
+grand! A masterpiece! A gem, that, Harrison!" They were all that he said,
+and presently I ceased to hear his voice. The splendour of the work
+issued undimmed even from the severe test of Schofield's praise; and I
+thought again with pride how I, I, was the only man living who could
+adequately write that "Life."....
+
+"Aren't they grand? Aren't they great?" Schofield chanted monotonously.
+
+"They are," I replied, coming to a consciousness of his presence again.
+"But what's that?"
+
+Secretively he had kept one package until the last. He now removed its
+wrappings and set it against a chair.
+
+_"There!"_ he cried. "I'll thank ye, Harrison, for your opinion of
+_that!"_
+
+It was the portrait Andriaovsky had refused to sell me--a portrait of
+himself.
+
+The portrait was the climax of the display. The Lancastrian still talked;
+but I, profoundly moved, mechanically gathered up the drawings from the
+floor and returned them to their proper packages and folios. I was dining
+at home, alone, that evening, and for form's sake I asked this faithful
+dog of Andriaovsky's to share my meal; but he excused himself--he was
+dining with Hallard and Connolly. When the drawings were all put away,
+all save that portrait, he gave an inquisitive glance round my library.
+It was the same glance as Maschka had given when she had feared to
+intrude on my time; but Schofield did these things with a much more heavy
+hand. He departed, but not before telling me that even my mansion
+contained such treasures as it had never held before.
+
+That evening, after glancing at Schofield's "scenario," I carefully
+folded it up again for return to him, lest when the book should appear
+he should miss the pleasure of saying that I had had his guidance but
+had disregarded it; then I sat down at my writing-table and took out
+the loose notes I had made. I made other jottings, each on a blank sheet
+for subsequent amplification; and the sheets overspread the large
+leather-topped table and thrust one another up the standard of the
+incandescent with the pearly silk shade. The firelight shone low and
+richly in the dusky spaces of the large apartment; and the thick carpet
+and the double doors made the place so quiet that I could hear my watch
+ticking in my pocket.
+
+I worked for an hour; and then, for the purpose of making yet other
+notes, I rose, crossed the room, and took down the three or four
+illustrated books to which, in the earlier part of his career,
+Andriaovsky had put his name. I carried them to the table, and twinkled
+as I opened the first of them. It was a book of poems, and in making the
+designs for them Andriaovsky had certainly _not_ found for himself.
+Almost any one of the "Art Shades," as he had called them, could have
+done the thing equally well, and I twinkled again. I did not propose to
+have much mercy on _that_. Already Schofield's words had given birth to a
+suspicion in my mind--that Andriaovsky, in permitting these fellows,
+Hallard, Connolly, and the rest, to suppose that he "thought highly" of
+them and their work, had been giving play to that malicious humour of
+his; and they naturally did not see the joke. That joke, too, was between
+himself, dead, and me, preparing to write his "Life." As if he had been
+there to hear me, I chuckled, and spoke in a low voice.
+
+"You were pulling their legs, Michael, you know. A little rough on them
+you were. But there's a book here of yours that I'm going to tell the
+truth about. You and I won't pretend to one another. It's a rotten book,
+and both you and I know it...."
+
+I don't know what it was that caused me suddenly to see just then
+something that I had been looking at long enough without seeing--that
+portrait of himself that I had set leaning against the back of a chair at
+the end of my writing-table. It stood there, just within the soft
+penumbra of shadow cast by the silk-shaded light. The canvas had been
+enlarged, the seam of it clumsily sewn by Andriaovsky's own hand; but in
+that half-light the rough ridge of paint did not show, and I confess that
+the position and effect of the thing startled me for a moment. Had I
+cared to play a trick with my fancy I could have imagined the head
+wagging from side to side, with such rage and fire was it painted. He had
+had the temerity to dash a reflection across one of the glasses of his
+spectacles, concealing the eye behind it. The next moment I had given a
+short laugh.
+
+"So you're there, are you?... Well, I know you agree very heartily about
+that book of poems. Heigho! If I remember rightly, you made more money
+out of that book than out of the others put together. But I'm going
+to tell the truth about it. _I_ know better, you know...."
+
+Chancing, before I turned in that night, to reopen one of his folios, I
+came across a drawing, there by accident, I don't doubt, that confirmed
+me in my suspicion that Andriaovsky had had his quiet joke with
+Schofield, Hallard, Connolly and Co. It was a sketch of Schofield's,
+imitative, deplorable, a dreadful show-up of incapacity. Well enough
+"drawn," in a sense, it was ... and I remembered how Andriaovsky had ever
+urged that "drawing," of itself, did not exist. I winked at the portrait.
+I saw his point. He himself had no peer, and, rather than invite
+comparison with stars of the second magnitude, he chose his intimates
+from among the peddlers of the wares that had the least possible
+connection with his Art. He, too, had understood that the Compromise
+must be entirely accepted or totally refused; and while, in the
+divergence of our paths, he had done the one thing and I the other, we
+had each done it thoroughly, with vigour, and with persistence, and each
+could esteem the other, if not as a co-worker, at least as an honourable
+and out-and-out opposite.
+
+
+III
+
+Within a fortnight I was so deep in my task that, in the realest sense,
+the greater part of my life was in the past. The significance of those
+extraordinary peregrinations of ours had been in the opportunity they had
+afforded for a communion of brain and spirit of unusual rarity; and all
+this determined to my work with the accumulated force of its long
+penning-up. I have spoken of Andriaovsky's contempt for such as had the
+conception of their work that it was something they "did" as distinct
+from something they "were"; and unless I succeed in making it plain that,
+not as a mere figure of speech and loose hyperbole, but starkly and
+literally, Andriaovsky _was_ everything he did, my tale will be
+pointless.
+
+There was not one of the basic facts of life--of Faith, Honour,
+Truth-speaking, Falsehood, Betrayal, Sin--that he did not turn, not to
+moral interpretations, as others do, but to the holy purposes of his
+noble and passionate Art. For any man, Sin is only mortal when it is Sin
+against that which he knows to be immortally true; and the things
+Andriaovsky knew to be immortally true were the things that he had gone
+down into the depths in order to bring forth and place upon his paper or
+canvas. These things are not for the perusal of many. Unless you love the
+things that he loved with a fervour comparable in kind, if not in degree,
+with his own, you may not come near them. "Truth, 'the highest thing a
+man may keep,'" he said, "cannot be brought down; a man only attains it
+by proving his right to it"; and I think I need not further state his
+views on the democratisation of Art. Of any result from the elaborate
+processes of Art-education he held out no hope whatever. "It is in a man,
+or it isn't," he ever declared; "if it is, he must bring it out for
+himself; if it isn't, let him turn to something useful and have done with
+it." I need not press the point that in these things he was almost a
+solitary.
+
+He made of these general despotic principles the fiercest personal
+applications. I have heard his passionate outbreak of "Thief! Liar!
+Fool!" over a drawing when it has seemed to him that a man has not
+vouched with the safety of his immortal soul for the shapes and lines he
+has committed to it. I have seen him get into such a rage with the eyes
+of the artist upon him. I have heard the ice and vinegar of his words
+when a good man, for money, has consented to modify and emasculate
+his work; and there lingers in my memory his side of a telephone
+conversation in which he told a publisher who had suggested that he
+should do the same thing precisely what he thought of him. And on the
+other hand, he once walked from Aldgate to Putney Hill, with a loose heel
+on one of his boots, to see a man of whom he had seen but a single
+drawing. See him he did, too, in spite of the man's footman, his liveried
+parlourmaid, and the daunting effect of the electric brougham at the
+door.
+
+"He's a good man," he said to me afterwards, ruefully looking at the
+place where his boot-heel had been. "You've got to take your good where
+you find it. I don't care whether he's a rich amateur or skin-and-grief
+in a garret as long as he's got the stuff in him. Nobody else could have
+fetched me up from the East End this afternoon.... So long; see you in a
+week or so--"
+
+This was the only time I ever knew him break that sacred time in which he
+celebrated each year the Passover and the Feast of Tabernacles. I doubt
+whether this observance of the ritual of his Faith was of more essential
+importance to him than that other philosophical religion towards which he
+sometimes leaned. I have said what his real religion was.
+
+But to the "Life."
+
+With these things, and others, as a beginning, I began to add page to
+page, phase to phase; and, in a time the shortness of which astonished
+myself, I had pretty well covered the whole of the first ten years of our
+friendship. Maschka called rather less, and Schofield rather more
+frequently, than I could have wished; and my surmise that he, at least,
+was in love with her, quickly became a certainty. This was to be seen
+when they called together.
+
+It was when they came together that something else also became apparent.
+This was their slightly derisive attitude towards the means by which I
+had attained my success. It was not the less noticeable that it took the
+form of compliments on the outward and visible results. Singly I could
+manage them; together they were inclined to get a little out of hand.
+
+I would have taxed them fairly and squarely with this, singly or
+together, but for one thing--the beautiful ease with which the "Life" was
+proceeding. Never had I felt so completely _en rapport_ with my subject.
+So beautifully was the thing running that I had had the idle fancy of
+some actual urge from Andriaovsky himself; and each night, before sitting
+down to work, I set his portrait at my desk's end, as if it had been some
+kind of an observance. The most beautiful result of all was, that I felt
+what I had not felt for five years--that I too was not "doing" my work,
+but actually living and being it. At times I took up the sheets I had
+written as ignorant of their contents as if they had proceeded from
+another pen--so freshly they came to me. And once, I vow, I found, in my
+own handwriting, a Polish name, that I might (it is true) have
+subconsciously heard at some time or other, but that stirred no chord in
+my memory even when I saw it written. Maschka checked and confirmed it
+afterwards; and I did not tell her by what odd circumstance it had issued
+from my pen.
+
+The day did come, however, when I found I must have it out with Schofield
+about this superciliousness I have mentioned. The _Falchion_ had just
+begun to print the third series of my _Martin Renard_; and this had been
+made the occasion of another of Schofield's ponderous compliments. I
+acknowledged it with none too much graciousness; and then he said:
+
+"I've na doubt, Harrison, that by this time the famous sleuth-hound of
+crime has become quite a creature of flesh and blood to ye."
+
+It was the tone as much as the words that riled me; and I replied that
+his doubts or the lack of them were a privacy with which I did not wish
+to meddle. From being merely a bore the fellow was rapidly becoming
+insolent.
+
+"But I opine he'll get wearisome now and then, and in that case poor
+Michael's 'Life' will come as a grand relaxation," he next observed.
+
+If I meant to have it out, here was my opportunity.
+
+"I should have thought you'd have traced a closer connection than that
+between the two things," I remarked.
+
+He shot a quick glance at me from beneath his shaggy russet brows.
+
+"How so? I see varry little connection," he said suspiciously.
+
+"There's this connection--that while you speak with some freedom of what
+I do, you are quite willing to take advantage of it when it serves
+your turn."
+
+"'Advantage,' Harrison?" he said slowly.
+
+"Of the advertisement _Martin Renard_ gives you. I must point out that
+you condone a thing when you accept the benefit of it. Either you
+shouldn't have come to me at all, or you should deny yourself the
+gratification of these slurs."
+
+"Slurrrrs?" he repeated loweringly.
+
+"Both of you--you and Miss Andriaovsky, or Maschka as I call her, _tout
+court_. Don't suppose I don't know as well as you do the exact worth of
+my 'sleuth-hound,' as you call him. You didn't come to me solely because
+I knew Andriaovsky well; you came because I've got the ear of the
+public also; and I tell you plainly that, however much you dislike it,
+Michael's fame as far as I'm of any use to him, depends on the
+popularity of _Martin Renard."_
+
+He shook his big head. "This is what I feared," he said.
+
+"More," I continued, "you can depend upon it that Michael, wherever he
+is, knows all about that."
+
+"Ay, ay," he said sagely, "I misdoubt your own artistic soul's only to be
+saved by the writing of poor Michael's 'Life,' Harrison."
+
+"Leave that to me and Michael; we'll settle that. In the meantime, if you
+don't like it, write and publish the 'Life' yourself."
+
+He bent his brows on me.
+
+"It's precisely what I wanted to do from the varry first," he said. "If
+you'd cared to accept my symposium in the spirit in which it was offered,
+I cannot see that the 'Life' would have suffered. But now, when you're
+next in need of my services, ye'll mebbe send for me."
+
+He took up his hat. I assured him, and let him take it in what sense he
+liked, that I would do so; and he left me.
+
+Not for one single moment did I intend that they should bounce me like
+that. With or without their sanction and countenance, I intended to write
+and publish that "Life." Schofield--in my own house too--had had the
+advantage that a poor and ill-dressed man has over one who is not poor
+and ill-dressed; but my duty first of all was neither to him nor to
+Maschka, but to my friend.
+
+The worst of it was, however, that I had begun dimly to suspect that
+the Lancastrian had hit at least one nail on the head. "Your artistic
+soul's only to be saved by writing poor Michael's 'Life,'" he had
+informed me... and it was truer than I found it pleasant to believe.
+Perhaps, after all, my first duty was not to Andriaovsky, but to myself.
+I could have kicked myself that the fool had been perspicacious enough to
+see it, but that did not alter the fact. I saw that in the sense in which
+Andriaovsky understood Sin, I had sinned....
+
+My only defence lay in the magnitude of my sin. I had sinned
+thoroughly, out-and-out, and with a will. It had been the only
+respectable way--Andriaovsky's own way when he had cut the company
+of an Academician to hobnob with a vagabond. I had at least instituted
+no comparison, lowered no ideal, was innocent of the accursed attitude
+of facing-both-ways that degrades all lovely and moving things. I was, by
+a paradox, too black a sinner not to hope for redemption....
+
+I fell into a long musing on these things....
+
+Had any of the admirers of _Martin Renard_ entered the library of his
+author that night he would have seen an interesting thing. He would
+have seen the creator of that idol of clerks and messenger-lads and
+fourth-form boys frankly putting the case before a portrait propped up on
+a chair. He would have heard that popular author haranguing, pleading,
+curiously on his defence, turning the thing this way and that.
+
+"If _you'd_ gone over, Michael," that author argued, "you'd have done
+precisely the same thing. If I'd stuck it out, we were, after all, of a
+kind; We've got to be one thing or the other--isn't that so, Andriaovsky?
+Since I made up my mind, I've faced only one way--only one way. I've kept
+your ideal and theirs entirely separate and distinct. Not one single
+beautiful phrase will you find in the _Martin Renards;_ I've cut 'em
+out, every one. I may have ceased to worship, but I've profaned no
+temple.... And think what I _might_ have done--what they all do! They
+deal out the slush, but with an apologetic glance at the Art Shades;
+_you_ know the style!--'Oh, Harrison; he does that detective rubbish, but
+that's not Harrison; if Harrison liked to drop that he could be a fine
+artist!'--I _haven't_ done that. I _haven't_ run with the hare and hunted
+with the hounds. I _am_ just Harrison, who does that detective
+rubbish!... These other chaps, Schofield and Connolly, _they're_ the real
+sinners, Michael--the fellows who can't make up their minds to be one
+thing or the other ('artists of considerable abilities'--ha! ha!).... Of
+course you know Maschka's going to marry that chap? What'll _they_ do, do
+you think? He'll scrape up a few pounds out of the stew where I find
+thousands, marry her, and they'll set up a salon and talk the stuff the
+chairs talked that night, you remember!... But you wait until I finish
+your 'Life.'..."
+
+I laid it all before him, almost as if I sought to propitiate him. I
+might have been courting his patronage for his own "Life." Then, with a
+start, I came to, to find myself talking nonsense to the portrait that
+years before Andriaovsky had refused to sell me.
+
+
+IV
+
+The first check I experienced in the hitherto so easy flow of the "Life"
+came at the chapter that dealt with Andriaovsky's attitude towards
+"professionalism" in Art. He was inflexible on this point; there ought
+not to be professional artists. When it was pointed out that his position
+involved a premium upon the rich amateur, he merely replied that riches
+had nothing to do with the question, and that the starver in the garret
+was not excused for his poverty's sake from the observance of the
+implacable conditions. He spoke literally of the "need" to create,
+usually in the French term, _besogne_; and he was inclined to regard the
+imposition of this need on a man rather as a curse laid upon him than as
+a privilege and a pleasure. But I must not enlarge upon this further than
+to observe that this portion of his "Life" which I was approaching
+coincided in point of time with that period of my own life at which I had
+been confronted with the alternative of starving for Art's sake or
+becoming rich by supplying a clamorous trade demand.
+
+It came, this check I have spoken of, one night, as I was in the very
+middle of a sentence; and though I have cudgelled my brains in seeking
+how best I can describe it, I am reduced to the simple statement that it
+was as arresting, as sharp, actual and impossible to resist, as if my
+hand had been seized and pinned down in its passage across the paper. I
+can even see again the fragment of the sentence I had written: "... _and
+the mere contemplation of a betrayal so essential--_" Then came that
+abrupt and remarkable stop. It was such an experience as I had formerly
+known only in nightmare.
+
+I sat there looking blankly and stupidly at my own hand. And not only was
+my hand arrested, but my brain also had completely ceased to work. For
+the life of me I could not recall the conclusion of the sentence I had
+planned a moment before.
+
+I looked at my hand, and looked again; and as I looked I remembered
+something I had been reading only a few days before--a profoundly
+unsettling description of an experiment in auto-suggestion. The
+experiment had consisted of the placing of a hand upon a table, and the
+laying upon it the conjuration that, the Will notwithstanding, it should
+not move. And as I watched my own hand, pale on the paper in the pearly
+light, I knew that, by some consent to the nullification of the Will that
+did not proceed from, the Self I was accustomed to regard as my own, that
+injunction was already placed upon it. My conscious and deliberate Will
+was powerless. I could only sit there and wait until whatever inhibition
+had arrested my writing hand should permit it to move forward again.
+
+It must have been several minutes before such a tingling of the nerves as
+announces that the blood is once more returning to a cramped member
+warned me that I was about to be released. Warily I awaited my moment;
+then I plucked my hand to myself again with a suddenness that caused a
+little blot of ink to spurt from my fountain-pen on to the surface of the
+paper. I drew a deep breath. I was free again. And with the freedom came
+a resolve--that whatever portion of myself had been responsible for this
+prank should not repeat it if I could possibly prevent it.
+
+But scarcely had I come, as I may say (and not without a little gush of
+alarm now that it was over), to myself, when I was struck by a thought.
+It was a queer wild sort of thought. It fetched me out of my chair and
+set me striding across the library to a lower shelf in the farthest
+corner. This shelf was the shelf on which I kept my letter-files. I
+stooped and ran my fingers along the backs of the dusty row. I drew out
+the file for 1900, and brought it back to my writing-table. My contracts,
+I ought to say, reposed in a deed-box at my agent's office; but my files
+contained, in the form of my agent's letters, a sufficient record of my
+business transactions.
+
+I opened the file concertina-wise, and turned to the section lettered
+"R." I drew out the correspondence that related to the sale of the first
+series of the _Martin Renards_. As I did so I glanced at the movable
+calendar on my table. The date was January 20th.
+
+The file contained no letters for January of any significance whatever.
+
+The thought that had half formed in my brain immediately became nonsense.
+I replaced the letters in their compartment, and took the file back to
+its shelf again. For some minutes I paced the library irresolutely; then
+I decided I would work no more that night. When I gathered together my
+papers I was careful to place that with the half-finished sentence on the
+top, so that with the first resting of my eyes upon it on the morrow my
+memory might haply be refreshed.
+
+I tried again to finish that sentence on the morrow. With certain
+modifications that I need not particularise here, my experience was the
+same as on the previous night.
+
+It was the same when I made the attempt on the day after that.
+
+At ten o'clock of the night of the fourth day I completed the sentence
+without difficulty. I just sat down in my chair and wrote it.
+
+With equal ease I finished the chapter on professional artists.
+
+It was not likely that Schofield would have refrained from telling
+Maschka of our little difference on our last meeting; and within a week
+of the date I have just mentioned I learned that she knew all about it.
+And, as the circumstances of my learning this were in a high degree
+unusual, I will relate them with such clearness as I am able.
+
+I ought first to say, however, that the selection of the drawings that
+were to illustrate the book having been made (the drawings for which my
+own text was to serve as commentary would be the better expression), the
+superintendence of their production had been left to Schofield. He,
+Maschka, and I passed the proofs in consultation. The blocks were almost
+ready; and the reason for their call that evening was to consider the
+possibility of having all ready for production in the early spring--a
+possibility which was contingent on the state of advancement of my own
+share of the book.
+
+That evening I had experienced my second check. (I omit those that had
+immediately succeeded the first one, as resembling that one so closely in
+the manner of their coming.) It had not come by any means so completely
+and definitively as the former one, but it had sufficed to make my
+progress, both mentally and mechanically, so sluggish and struggling
+a performance that for the time being I had given up the attempt, and was
+once more regarding with a sort of perturbed stupor my hand that held the
+pen. Andriaovsky's portrait stood in its usual place, on the chair at the
+end of my writing-table; but I had eyes for nothing but that refractory
+hand of mine.
+
+Now it is true that during the past weeks I had studied Andriaovsky's
+portrait thoroughly enough to be able to call up the vivid mental image
+of it at will; but that did not entirely account for the changed aspect
+with which it now presented itself to that uncomprehended sense within
+us that makes of these shadows such startling realities. Flashing and
+life-like as was the presentation on the canvas (mind you, I was not
+looking at it, but all the time at my own hand), it was dead paint by
+comparison with that _mental image_ which I saw (if I may so use a term
+of which custom has restricted the meaning to one kind of seeing) as
+plainly as I ever saw Andriaovsky in his life. I know now that it was
+by virtue of that essential essence that bound us heart and brain and
+soul together that I so saw him, eyes glittering, head sardonically
+wagging, fine mouth shaping phrases of insight and irony. And the strange
+thing was, that I could not have located this so living image by
+confining it to any portion of the space within the four walls of my
+library. It was before me, behind me, within my head, about me, _was me_,
+invading and possessing the "me" that sat at the table. At one moment
+the eyes mockingly invited me to go on with my work; the next, a frown
+had seated itself on that massive pylon of his forehead; and then
+suddenly his countenance changed entirely.... A wave of horror broke
+over me. He was suddenly as I had seen him that last time in the
+Hampstead "Home"--sitting up on his pillow, looking into my eyes with
+that terrible look of profundity and familiarity, and asking me who I
+was.... _"Harrison--ha ha!... You shall very soon know that I know you,
+if ..."_
+
+It is but by the accidence of our limited experience that sounds are loud
+or soft to that inner ear of us; these words were at one and the same
+time a dreadful thunder and a voice interstellarly inaccessible and
+withdrawn. They, too, were before, behind, without, and within. And
+incorporated (I know not how else to express it) with these words were
+other words, in the English I knew, in the Hebrew in which he had quoted
+them from the sacred Books of his People, in all languages, in no
+language save that essential communication of which languages are but the
+inessential husk and medium--words that told me that though I took the
+Wings of the Morning and fled into the uttermost parts of the earth, yea,
+though I made my bed in Hell, I could not escape him....
+
+He had kept his word. I _did_ know that he knew who and what I was....
+
+I cannot tell whether my lips actually shaped the question that even in
+that moment burst from me.
+
+"But Form--and Forms? It _is_ then true that all things are but aspects
+of One thing?..."
+
+"Yes--in death," the voice seemed to reply.
+
+My next words, I know, were actually spoken aloud.
+
+"Then tell me--tell me--_do you not wish me to write it?"_
+
+Suddenly I leapt out of my chair with a gulping cry. A voice _had_
+spoken....
+
+"Of course we wish you to write it...."
+
+For one instant of time my vision seemed to fold on itself like smoke;
+then it was gone. The face into which I was wildly staring was Maschka's,
+and behind her stood Schofield. They had been announced, but I had heard
+nothing of it.
+
+"Were you thinking of _not_ writing it?" she demanded, while Schofield
+scowled at me.
+
+"No--no--," I stammered, as I got up and tardily placed them chairs.
+
+Schofield did not speak, but he did not remove his eyes from me. Somehow
+I could not meet them.
+
+"Well," she said, "Jack had already told me that you seemed in two minds
+about it. That's what we've called about--to know definitely what it is
+you propose to do."
+
+I saw that she had also called, if necessary, to quarrel. I began to
+recover a little.
+
+"Did you tell her that?" I demanded of Schofield. "If you did,
+you--misinterpreted me."
+
+In my house, he ignored the fact that I was in the room. He replied to
+Maschka.
+
+"I understood Mr. Harrison to say definitely, and in those words, that if
+I didn't like the way in which he was writing Michael's 'Life,' I might
+write and publish one myself," he said.
+
+"I did say that," I admitted; "but I never said that whatever _you_ did I
+should not go on with mine."
+
+"Yours!" cried Maschka. "What right have _you_ in my brother's 'Life'?"
+
+I quickly told her.
+
+"I have the right to write my recollections of him, and, subject to
+certain provisions of the Law, to base anything on them I think fit," I
+replied.
+
+"But," she cried aghast, "there can't be _two_ 'Lives'!..."
+
+"It's news to me that two were contemplated," I returned. "The point is,
+that I can get mine published, and you can't."
+
+Schofield's harsh voice sounded suddenly--but again to Maschka, not to
+me.
+
+"Ye might remind Mr. Harrison that others have capabilities in business
+besides himself. Beyond a doubt our sales will be comparatively small,
+but they'll be to such as have not made the great refusal."
+
+Think of it!... I almost laughed.
+
+"Oh!... Been trying it?" I inquired.
+
+He made no reply.
+
+"Well, those who have made the refusal have at least had something to
+refuse," I said mildly. Then, realising that this was mere quarrelling, I
+returned to the point. "Anyhow, there's no question of refusing to write
+the 'Life.' I admit that during the last fortnight I've met with certain
+difficulties; but the task isn't so easy as perhaps it looks.... I'm
+making progress."
+
+"I suppose," she said hesitatingly, after a pause, "that you don't care
+to show it as far as it is written?"
+
+For a moment I also hesitated. I thought I saw where she was. Thanks to
+that Lancashire jackanapes, there was division between us; and I had
+pretty well made up my mind, not only that he thought himself quite
+capable of writing Andriaovsky's "Life," himself, but that he had
+actually made an attempt in that direction. They had come in the
+suspicion that I was throwing them over, and, though that suspicion was
+removed, Maschka wished, if there was any throwing over to be done, to do
+it herself. In a word, she wanted to compare me with Schofield.
+
+"To see it as far as it is written," I repeated slowly.... "Well, you
+may. That is, you, Michael's sister, may. But on the condition that
+you neither show it to anybody else nor speak of it to anybody else."
+
+"Ah!" she said.... "And only on those conditions?"
+
+"Only on those conditions."
+
+I saw a quick glance between them. "Shall we tell him?" it seemed to
+say....
+
+"Including the man Michael's sister is going to marry?" she said
+abruptly.
+
+My attitude was deeply apologetic, but, "Including anybody whomsoever," I
+answered.
+
+"Then," she said, rising, "we won't bother. But will you at least let us
+know, soon, when we may expect your text?"
+
+"I will let you know," I replied slowly, "one week from to-day."
+
+On that assurance they left; and when they had gone I crossed once more
+to the lower shelf that contained my letter-files. I turned up the file
+for 1900 once more. During their visit I had had an idea.
+
+I ran through the letters, and then replaced them....
+
+Yes, I ought to be able to let them know within the week.
+
+
+V
+
+Against the day when I myself shall come to die, there are in the
+pigeon-holes of the newspaper libraries certain biographical records
+that deal roughly with the outward facts of my life; and these,
+supplemented by documents I shall place in the hands of my executors,
+will tell the story of how I leaped at a bound into wealth and fame with
+the publication of _The Cases of Martin Renard_. I will set down as much
+of that story as has its bearing on my present tale.
+
+_Martin Renard_ was not immediately accepted by the first editor to whom
+it was offered. It does not suffice that in order to be popular a thing
+shall be merely good--or bad; it must be bad--or good--in a particular
+way. For taking the responsibility when they happen to miss that
+particular way editors are paid their salaries. When they happen to hit
+it they grow fat on circulation-money: Since it becomes me ill to quarrel
+with the way in which any man earns his money, I content myself with
+merely stating the fact.
+
+By the time the fourth editor had refused my series I was about at my
+last gasp. To write the things at all I had had to sink four months in
+time; and debts, writs and pawnshops were my familiars. I was little
+better off than Andriaovsky at his very worst. I had read the first of
+the _Martin Renards_ to him, by the way; the gigantic outburst of mirth
+with which he had received it had not encouraged me to read him a second.
+I wrote the others in secret.
+
+I wrote the things in the spring and summer of 1900; and by the last day
+of September I was confident that I had at last sold them. Except by a
+flagrant breach of faith, the editor in whose desk they reposed could
+hardly decline them. As it subsequently happened, I have now nothing but
+gratitude for him that he did, after all, decline them; for I had a
+duplicate copy "on offer" in another quarter.
+
+He declined them, I say; and I was free to possess my soul again among my
+writs, debts and pawnshops.
+
+But four days later I received the alternative offer. It was from the
+_Falchion_. The _Falchion_, as you may remember, has since run no less
+than five complete series of _Martin Renards_. It bought "both sides,"
+that is to say, both British and American serial rights. Of the twelve
+_Martin Renards_ I had written, my wise agent had offered the _Falchion_
+six only. On his advice I accepted the offer.
+
+Instantaneously with the publication of those six stories came my
+success. In two continents I was "home"--home in the hearts of the
+public. I had my small cheque--it was not much more than a hundred
+pounds--but "Wait," said my agent; "let's see what we can do with the
+other six...."
+
+Precisely what he did with them only he and I know; but I don't mind
+saying that £3000 did not buy my first serial rights. Then came second
+and third rights, and after them the book rights, British, American, and
+Colonial. Then came the translation rights. In French, my creation is, of
+course, as in English, _Martin Renard_; in German he is Martin Fuchs; and
+by a similar process you can put him--my translators have put him--into
+Italian, Swedish, Norwegian, Russian, and three-fourths of the tongues of
+Europe. And this was the first series only. It was only with the second
+series that the full splendour of my success appeared. My very imitators
+grew rich; my agent's income from his comparatively small percentage on
+my royalties was handsome; and he chuckled and bade me wait for the
+dramatic rights and the day when the touring companies should get to
+business....
+
+I had "got there."
+
+And I remember, sadly enough now, my first resolution when the day came
+when I was able to survey the situation with anything approaching calm.
+It was, "Enough." For the rest of my days I need not know poverty again.
+Thenceforward I need not, unless I chose, do any but worthy work. _Martin
+Renard_ had served his purpose handsomely, and I intended to have nothing
+more to do with him.
+
+Then came that dazzling offer for the second series....
+
+I accepted it.
+
+I accepted the third likewise; and I have told you about the fourth....
+
+I have tried to kill _Martin Renard_. He was killing me. I have, in
+the pages of the _Falchion_, actually killed him; but I have had to
+resuscitate him. I cannot escape from him....
+
+I am not setting down one word more of this than bears directly on my
+tale of Andriaovsky's "Life." For those days, when my whole future had
+hung in the balance, _were the very days covered by that portion of
+Andriaovsky's life at which I had now arrived_. I had reached, and was
+hesitating at, our point of divergence. Those checks and releases which I
+had at first found so unaccountable corresponded with the vicissitudes of
+the _Martin Renard_ negotiations.
+
+The actual dates did not, of course, coincide--I had quickly discovered
+the falsity of that scent. Neither did the intervals between them, with
+the exception of those few days in which I had been unable to complete
+that half-written sentence--the few days immediately prior to my
+(parallel) acceptance by the _Falchion_. But, by that other reckoning
+of time, of mental and spiritual experience, _they tallied exactly_.
+The gambling chances of five years ago meant present stumblings and
+haltings; the breach of faith of an editor long since meant a present
+respite; and another week should bring me to that point of my so
+strangely reduplicated experience that, allowing for the furious mental
+rate at which I was now living, would make another node with that other
+point in the more slowly lived past that had marked my acceptance of the
+offer for the second half-dozen of the _Martin Renards_.
+
+It had been on this hazardous calculation that I had made my promise to
+Maschka.
+
+I passed that week in a state of constantly increasing apprehension.
+True, I worked at the "Life," even assiduously; but it was plain sailing,
+mere cataloguing of certain of Andriaovsky's works, a chapter I had
+deliberately planned _pour mieux sauter_--to enhance the value of the
+penultimate and final chapters. These were the real crux of the "Life."
+These were what I was reserving myself for. These were to show that only
+his body was dead, and that his spirit still lived and his work was
+still being done wherever a man could be found whose soul burned within
+him with the same divine ardour.
+
+But I was now realising, day by day, hour by hour more clearly, what I
+was incurring. I was penning nothing less than my own artistic damnation.
+Self-condemned, indeed, I had been this long time; but I was now making
+the world a party to the sentence. The crowning of Andriaovsky involved
+my own annihilation; his "Life" would be my "Hic Jacet." And yet I was
+prepared, nay, resolved, to write it. I had started, and I would go
+forward. I would not be spewed with the lukewarm out of the mouth of that
+Spirit from which proceeds all that is bright and pure and true. The
+vehemence with which I had rejected its divine bidding should at least be
+correspondent with my adoration of it. The snivelling claims of the
+Schofields I spurned. If, as they urged, "an artist must live," he must
+live royally or starve with a tight mouth. No complaining....
+
+And one other claim I urged in the teeth of this Spirit, which, if it
+was a human Spirit at all, it could not disregard. Those pigeon-holed
+obituaries of mine will proclaim to the world, one and all, the virtues
+of my public life. In spite of my royal earnings, I am not a rich man. I
+have not accepted wealth without accepting the personal responsibility
+for it. Sick men and women in more than one hospital lie in wards
+provided by _Martin Renard_ and myself; and I am not dishonoured in my
+Institution at Poplar. Those vagrant wanderings with Andriaovsky have
+enabled me to know the poor and those who help the poor. My personal
+labours in the administration of the Institute are great, for outside
+the necessary routine I leave little to subordinates. I have declined
+honours offered to me for my "services to Literature," and I have never
+encouraged a youth, of parts or lacking them, to make of Literature a
+profession. And so on and so forth. All this, and more, you will read
+when the day comes; and I don't doubt the _Falchion_ will publish my
+memoir in mourning borders...
+
+But to resume.
+
+I finished the chapter I have mentioned. Maschka and her fiancé kept
+punctiliously away. Then, before sitting down to the penultimate
+chapter, I permitted myself the relaxation of a day in the country.
+
+I can't tell you precisely where I went; I only know it was somewhere in
+Buckinghamshire, and that, ordering the car to await me a dozen miles
+farther on, I set out to walk. Nor can I tell you what I saw during that
+walk; I don't think I saw anything. There was a red wintry disc of a sun,
+I remember, and a land grey with rime; and that is all. I was entirely
+occupied with the attempt I was about to make. I think that even then
+I had the sense of doom, for I know not how otherwise I should have
+found myself several times making little husbandings of my force, as if
+conscious that I should need it all. For I was determined, as never in my
+life have I been determined, to write that "Life." And I intended, not to
+wait to be challenged, but to challenge.... I met the car, returning in
+search of me; and I dined at a restaurant, went home to bed, and slept
+dreamlessly.
+
+On the morrow I deliberately refrained from work until the evening. My
+challenge to Andriaovsky and the Powers he represented should be boldly
+delivered at the very gates of their own Hour. Not until half-past eight,
+with the curtains drawn, the doors locked, and orders given that on no
+account whatever was I to be disturbed, did I switch on the pearly light,
+place Andriaovsky's portrait in its now accustomed place, and draw my
+chair up to my writing-table.
+
+
+VI
+
+But before I could resume the "Life" at the point at which I had left it,
+I felt that there were certain preliminaries to be settled. It was not
+that I wished to sound a parley with any view of coming to terms; I had
+determined what the terms were to be. As a boxer who leaps from his
+corner the moment the signal is given, astounding with suddenness his
+less prompt antagonist, so I should be ready when the moment came. But I
+wished the issue to be defined. I did not propose to submit the whole of
+my manhood to the trial. I was merely asserting my right to speak of
+certain things which, if one chose to exaggerate their importance by a
+too narrow and exclusive consideration of them, I might conceivably be
+thought to have betrayed.
+
+I drew a sheet of paper towards me, and formally made out my claim. It
+occupied not more than a dozen lines, and its nature has already been
+sufficiently indicated. I put my pen down again, leaned back in my chair,
+and waited.
+
+I waited, but nothing happened. It seemed that if this was my attempt to
+justify myself, the plea was certainly not disallowed. But neither had I
+any sign that it was allowed; and presently it occurred to me that
+possibly I had couched it in terms too general. Perhaps a more particular
+claim would meet with a different reception.
+
+During the earlier stages of the book's progress I had many times
+deliberated on the desirability of a Preface that should state succinctly
+what I considered to be my qualifications for the task. Though I had
+finally decided against any such statement, the form of the Preface might
+nevertheless serve for the present occasion. I took another sheet of
+paper, headed it "Preface," and began once more to write.
+
+I covered the page; I covered a second; and half-way down the third I
+judged my statement to be sufficient. Again I laid down my pen, leaned
+back, and waited.
+
+The Preface also produced no result whatever.
+
+Again I considered; and then I saw more clearly. It came to me that, both
+in the first statement and in the Preface, I was merely talking to
+myself. I was convincing myself, and losing both time and strength in
+doing so. The Power with which I sought to come to grips was treating my
+vapourings with high disregard. To be snubbed thus by Headquarters
+would never, never do....
+
+Then I saw more clearly still. It seemed that my _right to challenge_
+was denied. I was not an adversary, with the rights and honours of an
+adversary, but a trangressor, whose trangression had already several
+times been sharply visited, and would be visited once more the moment it
+was repeated. I might, in a sense, please myself whether I brought myself
+into Court; but, once there, I was not the arraigner in the box, but the
+arraigned in the dock.
+
+And I rebelled hotly. Did I sit there, ready for the struggle, only to be
+told that there could be no struggle? Did that vengeful Angel of the Arts
+ignore my very existence?... By Yea and Nay I swore that he should take
+notice of me! Once before, a mortal had wrestled a whole night with an
+angel, and though he had been worsted, it had not been before he had
+compelled the Angel to reveal himself! And so would I...
+
+Challenge, title to challenge, tentatives, preliminaries, I suddenly cast
+them all aside. We would have it in deeds, not in further words. I opened
+a drawer, took out the whole of the "Life" so far written, and began to
+read. I wanted to grasp once more the plan of it in its entirety.
+
+Page after page, I read on, with deepening attention. Quickly I ran
+through half of it. Then I began to concentrate myself still more
+closely. There would come a point at which I should be flush with the
+stream of it again, again feel the force of its current; I felt myself
+drawing nearer to that point; when I should reach it I would go ahead
+without a pause...
+
+I read to the end of Chapter Fifteen, the last completed chapter. Then
+instantly I took my pen and wrote, "Chapter Sixteen...."
+
+I felt the change at the very first word.
+
+       *        *        *        *        *
+
+I will not retraverse any ground I have covered before. If I have not
+already made clear my former sensations of the petrefaction of hand and
+brain, I despair of being able to do so any better now. Suffice it that
+once more I felt that inhibition, and that once more I was aware of the
+ubiquitous presence of the image of the dead artist. Once more I heard
+those voices, near as thunder and yet interstellarly remote, crying that
+solemn warning, that though I took the Wings of the Morning, made my bed
+in Hell, or cried aloud upon the darkness to cover me, there was one
+Spirit from which I could not hope to escape. I felt the slight crawling
+of my flesh on my bones as I listened.
+
+But there was now a difference. On the former occasion, to hear again
+those last horrible words of his, "_You shall very soon know I know who
+you are if_..." had been the signal for the total unnerving of me and for
+that uncontrollable cry, "_Don't you then want me to write it_?" But now
+I intended to write it if I could. In order that I might tell him so I
+was now seeking him out, in what heights or depths I knew not, at what
+peril to myself I cared not. I cared not, since I now felt that I could
+not continue to live unless I pressed to the uttermost attempt. And I
+must repeat, and repeat again, and yet repeat, that in that hour
+Andriaovsky was immanent about me, in the whole of me, in the last fibre
+and cell of me, in all my thoughts, from my consciousness that I was
+sitting there at my own writing-table to my conception of God Himself.
+
+It may seem strange--whether it does so or not will depend on the kind
+ of man you yourself are--that as long as I was content to recognise this
+immanence of Andriaovsky's enlarged and liberated spirit, _and not to
+dispute with it_, I found nothing but mildness and benignity in my
+hazardous experience. More, I felt that, in that clear region to which
+in my intensified state of consciousness I was lifted, I was able to move
+(I must trust you to understand the word aright) without restraint, nay,
+with an amplitude and freedom of movement past setting down, as long as
+I was satisfied to possess my soul in quiescence. The state itself was
+inimical neither to my safety nor to my sanity. I was conscious of it
+as a transposition into another register of the scale of life. And, as
+in this life we move in ignorance and safety only by accepting the
+hair-balance of stupendous forces, so now I felt that my safety depended
+on my observation of the conditions that governed that region of light
+and clarity and Law.
+
+Of clarity and Law; save in the terms of the great abstractions I may not
+speak of it. And that is well-nigh equal to saying that I may not speak
+of it at all. The hand that would have written of it lay (I never for one
+moment ceased to be conscious) heavy as stone on a writing-table in some
+spot quite accidental in my new sense of locality; the tongue that would
+have spoken of it seemed to slumber in my mouth. And I knew that both
+dumbness and stillness were proper. Their opposites would have convicted
+me (the flat and earthly comparison must be allowed) of intrusion into
+some Place of beauty and serenity for which the soilure of my birth
+disqualified me.
+
+For beauty and serenity, austerity and benignity and peace, were the
+conditions of that Place. To other Places belonged the wingy and robed
+and starry and golden things that made the heavens of other lives than
+that which I had shared with Andriaovsky; here, white and shapely Truth
+alone reigned. None questioned, for all knew; none sinned, for sin was
+already judged and punished in its committal; none demonstrated, for
+all things were evident; and those eager to justify themselves were
+permitted no farther than the threshold....
+
+And it was to justify, to challenge, to maintain a right, that I was
+there. I was there to wrestle, if needs be, with the Angel of that Place,
+to vanquish him or to compel him to reveal himself. I had not been
+summoned; I had thrust myself there unbidden. There was a moment in which
+I noticed that my writing-table was a little more than ordinarily removed
+from me, but very little, not more than if I had been looking over the
+shoulder of another writer at it; and I saw my chapter heading. At the
+sight of it something of the egotism that had prompted me to write it
+stirred in me again; everywhere was Andriaovsky's calm face, priest and
+Angel himself; and I became conscious that I was trying to write a
+phrase. I also became conscious that I was being pitifully warned not to
+do so...
+
+Suddenly my whole being was flooded with a frightful pang of pain.
+
+It was not local. It was no more to be located than the other immanences
+of which I have spoken. It was Pain, pure, essential, dissociated; and
+with the coming of it that fair Place had grown suddenly horrible and
+black.
+
+And I knew that the shock came _of my own resistance_, and that it would
+cease to afflict me the moment I ceased to resist.
+
+I did cease. Instantly the pain passed. But as when a knife is plucked
+from a wound, so only with its passing did I shriek aloud....
+
+For I know not how many minutes I sat in stupefaction. Then, as with
+earthly pains, that are assuaged with the passing of accidental time, the
+memory of it softened a little. Blunderingly and only half consciously, I
+cast about to collect my dispersed force.
+
+For--already I was conscious of it--there still remained one claim that
+even in thought I had not advanced. I would, were I permitted, still
+write that "Life," but, since it was decreed so, I would no longer urge
+that in writing it I justified myself. So I might but write it, I would
+embrace my own portion, the portion of doom; yea, though it should be a
+pressing of the searing-iron to my lips, I would embrace it; my name
+should not appear. For the mere sake of the man I had loved I would write
+it, in self-scorn and abasement, humbly craving not to be denied....
+
+_"Oh, let me but do for Love of you what a sinful man can!"_ I
+groaned....
+
+A moment later I had again striven to do so. So do we all, when we
+think that out of a poor human Love we can alter the Laws by which our
+state exists. And with such a hideous anguish as was again mine are we
+visited....
+
+And I knew now what that anguish was. It was the twining of body from
+spirit that is called the bitterness of Death; for not all of the body
+are the pangs of that severance. With that terrible sword of impersonal
+Pain the God of Peace makes sorrowful war that Peace may come again. With
+its flame He ringed the bastions of Heaven when Satan made assault. Only
+on the Gorgon-image of that Pain in the shield may weak man look; and
+its blaze and ire had permeated with deadly nearness the "everywhere"
+where I was...
+
+"_Oh, not for Love? Not even for Love?_" broke the agonised question from
+me....
+
+The next moment I had ceased, and ceased for ever, to resist.
+Instantaneously the terrible flashing of that sword became no more
+than the play of lightning one sees far away in the wide cloudfields
+on a peaceful summer's twilight. I felt a gentle and overpowering
+sleep coming over me; and as it folded me about I saw, with the last
+look of my eyes, my own figure, busily writing at the table.
+
+Had I, then, prevailed? Had Pain so purged me that I was permitted to
+finish my task? And had my tortured cry, "Oh, not even for Love?"
+been heard?
+
+I did not know.
+
+       *        *        *        *        *
+
+I came to myself to find that my head had fallen on my desk. The light
+still shone within its pearly shade, and in the penumbra of its shadow
+the portrait of Andriaovsky occupied its accustomed place. About me were
+my papers, and my pen lay where it had fallen from my hand.
+
+At first I did not look at my papers. I merely saw that the uppermost of
+them was written on. But presently I took it up, and looked at it
+stupidly. Then, with no memory at all of how I had come to write what was
+upon it, I put it down again.
+
+It was indeed a completion.
+
+But it was not of Andriaovsky's "Life" that it was the completion. As you
+may or may not know, Andriaovsky's "Life" is written by "his friend John
+Schofield." I had been allowed to write, but it was my own condemnation
+that, in sadness and obedience, in the absence of wrath but also in the
+absence of mercy, I had written. By the Law I had broken I was broken in
+my turn. It was the draft for the fifth series of _The Cases of Martin
+Renard_.
+
+No, not for Love--not even for Love....
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14168 ***
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #14168 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14168)
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Widdershins, by Oliver Onions
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Widdershins
+
+Author: Oliver Onions
+
+Release Date: November 26, 2004  [eBook #14168]
+[Most recently updated: October 24, 2006]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WIDDERSHINS***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan, and the Project Gutenberg
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+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.
+
+And _this_ was to have been his Beatrice, his vision! As Elsie she was to
+have gone into the furnace of his art, and she was to have come out the
+Woman all men desire! Her thoughts were to have been culled from his own
+finest, her form from his dearest dreams, and her setting wherever he
+could find one fit for her worth. He had brooded long before making the
+attempt; then one day he had felt her stir within him as a mother feels
+a quickening, and he had begun to write; and so he had added chapter to
+chapter....
+
+And those fifteen sodden chapters were what he had produced!
+
+Again he sat, softly moving his finger....
+
+Then he bestirred himself.
+
+She must go, all fifteen chapters of her. That was settled. For what was
+to take her place his mind was a blank; but one thing at a time; a man
+is not excused from taking the wrong course because the right one is not
+immediately revealed to him. Better would come if it was to come;
+in the meantime--
+
+He rose, fetched the fifteen chapters, and read them over before he
+should drop them into the fire.
+
+But instead of putting them into the fire he let them fall from his hand.
+He became conscious of the dripping of the tap again. It had a tinkling
+gamut of four or five notes, on which it rang irregular changes, and it
+was foolishly sweet and dulcimer-like. In his mind Oleron could see the
+gathering of each drop, its little tremble on the lip of the tap, and the
+tiny percussion of its fall, "Plink--plunk," minimised almost to
+inaudibility. Following the lowest note there seemed to be a brief
+phrase, irregularly repeated; and presently Oleron found himself waiting
+for the recurrence of this phrase. It was quite pretty....
+
+But it did not conduce to wakefulness, and Oleron dozed over his fire.
+
+When he awoke again the fire had burned low and the flames of the candles
+were licking the rims of the Sheffield sticks. Sluggishly he rose,
+yawned, went his nightly round of door-locks and window-fastenings, and
+passed into his bedroom. Soon he slept soundly.
+
+But a curious little sequel followed on the morrow. Mrs. Barrett usually
+tapped, not at his door, but at the wooden wall beyond which lay Oleron's
+bed; and then Oleron rose, put on his dressing-gown, and admitted her. He
+was not conscious that as he did so that morning he hummed an air; but
+Mrs. Barrett lingered with her hand on the door-knob and her face a
+little averted and smiling.
+
+"De-ar me!" her soft falsetto rose. "But that will be a very o-ald tune,
+Mr. Oleron! I will not have heard it this for-ty years!"
+
+"What tune?" Oleron asked.
+
+"The tune, indeed, that you was humming, sir."
+
+Oleron had his thumb in the flap of a letter. It remained there.
+
+"_I_ was humming?... Sing it, Mrs. Barrett."
+
+Mrs. Barrett prut-prutted.
+
+"I have no voice for singing, Mr. Oleron; it was Ann Pugh was the singer
+of our family; but the tune will be very o-ald, and it is called 'The
+Beckoning Fair One.'"
+
+"Try to sing it," said Oleron, his thumb still in the envelope; and Mrs.
+Barrett, with much dimpling and confusion, hummed the air.
+
+"They do say it was sung to a harp, Mr. Oleron, and it will be very
+o-ald," she concluded.
+
+"And _I_ was singing that?"
+
+"Indeed you wass. I would not be likely to tell you lies."
+
+With a "Very well--let me have breakfast," Oleron opened his letter; but
+the trifling circumstance struck him as more odd than he would have
+admitted to himself. The phrase he had hummed had been that which he had
+associated with the falling from the tap on the evening before.
+
+
+V
+
+Even more curious than that the commonplace dripping of an ordinary
+water-tap should have tallied so closely with an actually existing air
+was another result it had, namely, that it awakened, or seemed to awaken,
+in Oleron an abnormal sensitiveness to other noises of the old house. It
+has been remarked that silence obtains its fullest and most impressive
+quality when it is broken by some minute sound; and, truth to tell, the
+place was never still. Perhaps the mildness of the spring air operated on
+its torpid old timbers; perhaps Oleron's fires caused it to stretch its
+old anatomy; and certainly a whole world of insect life bored and
+burrowed in its baulks and joists. At any rate, Oleron had only to sit
+quiet in his chair and to wait for a minute or two in order to become
+aware of such a change in the auditory scale as comes upon a man who,
+conceiving the midsummer woods to be motionless and still, all at once
+finds his ear sharpened to the crepitation of a myriad insects.
+
+And he smiled to think of man's arbitrary distinction between that which
+has life and that which has not. Here, quite apart from such recognisable
+sounds as the scampering of mice, the falling of plaster behind his
+panelling, and the popping of purses or coffins from his fire, was a
+whole house talking to him had he but known its language. Beams settled
+with a tired sigh into their old mortices; creatures ticked in the walls;
+joints cracked, boards complained; with no palpable stirring of the air
+window-sashes changed their positions with a soft knock in their frames.
+And whether the place had life in this sense or not, it had at all events
+a winsome personality. It needed but an hour of musing for Oleron to
+conceive the idea that, as his own body stood in friendly relation to his
+soul, so, by an extension and an attenuation, his habitation might
+fantastically be supposed to stand in some relation to himself. He even
+amused himself with the far-fetched fancy that he might so identify
+himself with the place that some future tenant, taking possession, might
+regard it as in a sense haunted. It would be rather a joke if he, a
+perfectly harmless author, with nothing on his mind worse than a novel he
+had discovered he must begin again, should turn out to be laying the
+foundation of a future ghost!...
+
+In proportion, however, as he felt this growing attachment to the fabric
+of his abode, Elsie Bengough, from being merely unattracted, began to
+show a dislike of the place that was more and more marked. And she did
+not scruple to speak of her aversion.
+
+"It doesn't belong to to-day at all, and for you especially it's bad,"
+she said with decision. "You're only too ready to let go your hold on
+actual things and to slip into apathy; _you_ ought to be in a place
+with concrete floors and a patent gas-meter and a tradesmen's lift. And
+it would do you all the good in the world if you had a job that made you
+scramble and rub elbows with your fellow-men. Now, if I could get you a
+job, for, say, two or three days a week, one that would allow you heaps
+of time for your proper work--would you take it?"
+
+Somehow, Oleron resented a little being diagnosed like this. He thanked
+Miss Bengough, but without a smile.
+
+"Thank you, but I don't think so. After all each of us has his own life
+to live," he could not refrain from adding.
+
+"His own life to live!... How long is it since you were out, Paul?"
+
+"About two hours."
+
+"I don't mean to buy stamps or to post a letter. How long is it since you
+had anything like a stretch?"
+
+"Oh, some little time perhaps. I don't know."
+
+"Since I was here last?"
+
+"I haven't been out much."
+
+"And has _Romilly_ progressed much better for your being cooped up?"
+
+"I think she has. I'm laying the foundations of her. I shall begin the
+actual writing presently."
+
+It seemed as if Miss Bengough had forgotten their tussle about the first
+_Romilly_. She frowned, turned half away, and then quickly turned again.
+
+"Ah!... So you've still got that ridiculous idea in your head?"
+
+"If you mean," said Oleron slowly, "that I've discarded the old
+_Romilly_, and am at work on a new one, you're right. I have still got
+that idea in my head."
+
+Something uncordial in his tone struck her; but she was a fighter. His
+own absurd sensitiveness hardened her. She gave a "Pshaw!" of impatience.
+
+"Where is the old one?" she demanded abruptly.
+
+"Why?" asked Oleron.
+
+"I want to see it. I want to show some of it to you. I want, if you're
+not wool-gathering entirely, to bring you back to your senses."
+
+This time it was he who turned his back. But when he turned round again
+he spoke more gently.
+
+"It's no good, Elsie. I'm responsible for the way I go, and you must
+allow me to go it--even if it should seem wrong to you. Believe me, I
+am giving thought to it.... The manuscript? I was on the point of burning
+it, but I didn't. It's in that window-seat, if you must see it."
+
+Miss Bengough crossed quickly to the window-seat, and lifted the lid.
+Suddenly she gave a little exclamation, and put the back of her hand
+to her mouth. She spoke over her shoulder:
+
+"You ought to knock those nails in, Paul," she said.
+
+He strode to her side.
+
+"What? What is it? What's the matter?" he asked. "I did knock them
+in--or, rather, pulled them out."
+
+"You left enough to scratch with," she replied, showing her hand. From
+the upper wrist to the knuckle of the little finger a welling red wound
+showed.
+
+"Good--Gracious!" Oleron ejaculated.... "Here, come to the bathroom and
+bathe it quickly--"
+
+He hurried her to the bathroom, turned on warm water, and bathed and
+cleansed the bad gash. Then, still holding the hand, he turned cold water
+on it, uttering broken phrases of astonishment and concern.
+
+"Good Lord, how did that happen! As far as I knew I'd ... is this water
+too cold? Does that hurt? I can't imagine how on earth ... there; that'll
+do--"
+
+"No--one moment longer--I can bear it," she murmured, her eyes closed....
+
+Presently he led her back to the sitting-room and bound the hand in one
+of his handkerchiefs; but his face did not lose its expression of
+perplexity. He had spent half a day in opening and making serviceable the
+three window-boxes, and he could not conceive how he had come to leave an
+inch and a half of rusty nail standing in the wood. He himself had opened
+the lids of each of them a dozen times and had not noticed any nail; but
+there it was....
+
+"It shall come out now, at all events," he muttered, as he went for a
+pair of pincers. And he made no mistake about it that time.
+
+Elsie Bengough had sunk into a chair, and her face was rather white; but
+in her hand was the manuscript of _Romilly_. She had not finished with
+_Romilly_ yet. Presently she returned to the charge.
+
+"Oh, Paul, it will be the greatest mistake you ever, _ever_ made if you
+do not publish this!" she said.
+
+He hung his head, genuinely distressed. He couldn't get that incident of
+the nail out of his head, and _Romilly_ occupied a second place in his
+thoughts for the moment. But still she insisted; and when presently he
+spoke it was almost as if he asked her pardon for something.
+
+"What can I say, Elsie? I can only hope that when you see the new
+version, you'll see how right I am. And if in spite of all you _don't_
+like her, well ..." he made a hopeless gesture. "Don't you see that I
+_must_ be guided by my own lights?"
+
+She was silent.
+
+"Come, Elsie," he said gently. "We've got along well so far; don't let us
+split on this."
+
+The last words had hardly passed his lips before he regretted them. She
+had been nursing her injured hand, with her eyes once more closed; but
+her lips and lids quivered simultaneously. Her voice shook as she spoke.
+
+"I can't help saying it, Paul, but you are so greatly changed."
+
+"Hush, Elsie," he murmured soothingly; "you've had a shock; rest for a
+while. How could I change?"
+
+"I don't know, but you are. You've not been yourself ever since you came
+here. I wish you'd never seen the place. It's stopped your work, it's
+making you into a person I hardly know, and it's made me horribly anxious
+about you.... Oh, how my hand is beginning to throb!"
+
+"Poor child!" he murmured. "Will you let me take you to a doctor and have
+it properly dressed?"
+
+"No--I shall be all right presently--I'll keep it raised----"
+
+She put her elbow on the back of her chair, and the bandaged hand rested
+lightly on his shoulder.
+
+At that touch an entirely new anxiety stirred suddenly within him.
+Hundreds of times previously, on their jaunts and excursions, she had
+slipped her hand within his arm as she might have slipped it into the arm
+of a brother, and he had accepted the little affectionate gesture as a
+brother might have accepted it. But now, for the first time, there rushed
+into his mind a hundred startling questions. Her eyes were still closed,
+and her head had fallen pathetically back; and there was a lost and
+ineffable smile on her parted lips. The truth broke in upon him. Good
+God!... And he had never divined it!
+
+And stranger than all was that, now that he did see that she was lost in
+love of him, there came to him, not sorrow and humility and abasement,
+but something else that he struggled in vain against--something entirely
+strange and new, that, had he analysed it, he would have found to be
+petulance and irritation and resentment and ungentleness. The sudden
+selfish prompting mastered him before he was aware. He all but gave it
+words. What was she doing there at all? Why was she not getting on with
+her own work? Why was she here interfering with his? Who had given her
+this guardianship over him that lately she had put forward so
+assertively?--"Changed?" It was she, not himself, who had changed....
+
+But by the time she had opened her eyes again he had overcome his
+resentment sufficiently to speak gently, albeit with reserve.
+
+"I wish you would let me take you to a doctor."
+
+She rose.
+
+"No, thank you, Paul," she said. "I'll go now. If I need a dressing I'll
+get one; take the other hand, please. Good-bye--"
+
+He did not attempt to detain her. He walked with her to the foot of the
+stairs. Half-way along the narrow alley she turned.
+
+"It would be a long way to come if you happened not to be in," she said;
+"I'll send you a postcard the next time."
+
+At the gate she turned again.
+
+"Leave here, Paul," she said, with a mournful look. "Everything's wrong
+with this house."
+
+Then she was gone.
+
+Oleron returned to his room. He crossed straight to the window-box. He
+opened the lid and stood long looking at it. Then he closed it again and
+turned away.
+
+"That's rather frightening," he muttered. "It's simply not possible that
+I should not have removed that nail...."
+
+
+VI
+
+Oleron knew very well what Elsie had meant when she had said that her
+next visit would be preceded by a postcard. She, too, had realised that
+at last, at last he knew--knew, and didn't want her. It gave him a
+miserable, pitiful pang, therefore, when she came again within a week,
+knocking at the door unannounced. She spoke from the landing; she did not
+intend to stay, she said; and he had to press her before she would so
+much as enter.
+
+Her excuse for calling was that she had heard of an inquiry for short
+stories that he might be wise to follow up. He thanked her. Then, her
+business over, she seemed anxious to get away again. Oleron did not seek
+to detain her; even he saw through the pretext of the stories; and he
+accompanied her down the stairs.
+
+But Elsie Bengough had no luck whatever in that house. A second accident
+befell her. Half-way down the staircase there was the sharp sound of
+splintering wood, and she checked a loud cry. Oleron knew the woodwork to
+be old, but he himself had ascended and descended frequently enough
+without mishap....
+
+Elsie had put her foot through one of the stairs.
+
+He sprang to her side in alarm.
+
+"Oh, I say! My poor girl!"
+
+She laughed hysterically.
+
+"It's my weight--I know I'm getting fat--"
+
+"Keep still--let me clear these splinters away," he muttered between his
+teeth.
+
+She continued to laugh and sob that it was her weight--she was getting
+fat--
+
+He thrust downwards at the broken boards. The extrication was no easy
+matter, and her torn boot showed him how badly the foot and ankle
+within it must be abraded.
+
+"Good God--good God!" he muttered over and over again.
+
+"I shall be too heavy for anything soon," she sobbed and laughed.
+
+But she refused to reascend and to examine her hurt.
+
+"No, let me go quickly--let me go quickly," she repeated.
+
+"But it's a frightful gash!"
+
+"No--not so bad--let me get away quickly--I'm--I'm not wanted."
+
+At her words, that she was not wanted, his head dropped as if she had
+given him a buffet.
+
+"Elsie!" he choked, brokenly and shocked.
+
+But she too made a quick gesture, as if she put something violently
+aside.
+
+"Oh, Paul, not _that_--not _you_--of course I do mean that too in a
+sense--oh, you know what I mean!... But if the other can't be, spare
+me this now! I--I wouldn't have come, but--but--oh, I did, I _did_ try to
+keep away!"
+
+It was intolerable, heartbreaking; but what could he do--what could he
+say? He did not love her...
+
+"Let me go--I'm not wanted--let me take away what's left of me--"
+
+"Dear Elsie--you are very dear to me--"
+
+But again she made the gesture, as of putting something violently aside.
+
+"No, not that--not anything less--don't offer me anything less--leave me
+a little pride--"
+
+"Let me get my hat and coat--let me take you to a doctor," he muttered.
+
+But she refused. She refused even the support of his arm. She gave
+another unsteady laugh.
+
+"I'm sorry I broke your stairs, Paul.... You will go and see about the
+short stories, won't you?"
+
+He groaned.
+
+"Then if you won't see a doctor, will you go across the square and let
+Mrs. Barrett look at you? Look, there's Barrett passing now--"
+
+The long-nosed Barrett was looking curiously down the alley, but as
+Oleron was about to call him he made off without a word. Elsie seemed
+anxious for nothing so much as to be clear of the place, and finally
+promised to go straight to a doctor, but insisted on going alone.
+
+"Good-bye," she said.
+
+And Oleron watched her until she was past the hatchet-like "To Let"
+boards, as if he feared that even they might fall upon her and maim her.
+
+That night Oleron did not dine. He had far too much on his mind. He
+walked from room to room of his flat, as if he could have walked away
+from Elsie Bengough's haunting cry that still rang in his ears. "I'm
+not wanted--don't offer me anything less--let me take away what's left
+of me--"
+
+Oh, if he could only have persuaded himself that he loved her!
+
+He walked until twilight fell, then, without lighting candles, he stirred
+up the fire and flung himself into a chair.
+
+Poor, poor Elsie!...
+
+But even while his heart ached for her, it was out of the question.
+If only he had known! If only he had used common observation! But
+those walks, those sisterly takings of the arm--what a fool he had
+been!... Well, it was too late now. It was she, not he, who must now
+act--act by keeping away. He would help her all he could. He himself
+would not sit in her presence. If she came, he would hurry her out again
+as fast as he could.... Poor, poor Elsie!
+
+His room grew dark; the fire burned dead; and he continued to sit,
+wincing from time to time as a fresh tortured phrase rang again in his
+ears.
+
+Then suddenly, he knew not why, he found himself anxious for her in a new
+sense--uneasy about her personal safety. A horrible fancy that even then
+she might be looking over an embankment down into dark water, that she
+might even now be glancing up at the hook on the door, took him. Women
+had been known to do those things.... Then there would be an inquest, and
+he himself would be called upon to identify her, and would be asked how
+she had come by an ill-healed wound on the hand and a bad abrasion of the
+ankle. Barrett would say that he had seen her leaving his house....
+
+Then he recognised that his thoughts were morbid. By an effort of will he
+put them aside, and sat for a while listening to the faint creakings
+and tickings and rappings within his panelling.... If only he could have
+married her!... But he couldn't. Her face had risen before him again
+as he had seen it on the stairs, drawn with pain and ugly and swollen
+with tears. Ugly--yes, positively blubbered; if tears were women's
+weapons, as they were said to be, such tears were weapons turned against
+themselves ... suicide again....
+
+Then all at once he found himself attentively considering her two
+accidents.
+
+Extraordinary they had been, both of them. He _could not_ have left that
+old nail standing in the wood; why, he had fetched tools specially from
+the kitchen; and he was convinced that that step that had broken beneath
+her weight had been as sound as the others. It was inexplicable. If these
+things could happen, anything could happen. There was not a beam nor a
+jamb in the place that might not fall without warning, not a plank that
+might not crash inwards, not a nail that might not become a dagger. The
+whole place was full of life even now; as he sat there in the dark he
+heard its crowds of noises as if the house had been one great
+microphone....
+
+Only half conscious that he did so, he had been sitting for some time
+identifying these noises, attributing to each crack or creak or knock its
+material cause; but there was one noise which, again not fully conscious
+of the omission, he had not sought to account for. It had last come some
+minutes ago; it came again now--a sort of soft sweeping rustle that
+seemed to hold an almost inaudibly minute crackling. For half a minute or
+so it had Oleron's attention; then his heavy thoughts were of Elsie
+Bengough again.
+
+He was nearer to loving her in that moment than he had ever been. He
+thought how to some men their loved ones were but the dearer for those
+poor mortal blemishes that tell us we are but sojourners on earth, with a
+common fate not far distant that makes it hardly worth while to do
+anything but love for the time remaining. Strangling sobs, blearing
+tears, bodies buffeted by sickness, hearts and mind callous and hard with
+the rubs of the world--how little love there would be were these things a
+barrier to love! In that sense he did love Elsie Bengough. What her
+happiness had never moved in him her sorrow almost awoke....
+
+Suddenly his meditation went. His ear had once more become conscious
+of that soft and repeated noise--the long sweep with the almost
+inaudible crackle in it. Again and again it came, with a curious
+insistence and urgency. It quickened a little as he became increasingly
+attentive ... it seemed to Oleron that it grew louder....
+
+All at once he started bolt upright in his chair, tense and listening.
+The silky rustle came again; he was trying to attach it to something....
+
+The next moment he had leapt to his feet, unnerved and terrified. His
+chair hung poised for a moment, and then went over, setting the
+fire-irons clattering as it fell. There was only one noise in the world
+like that which had caused him to spring thus to his feet....
+
+The next time it came Oleron felt behind him at the empty air with his
+hand, and backed slowly until he found himself against the wall.
+
+"God in Heaven!" The ejaculation broke from Oleron's lips. The sound had
+ceased.
+
+The next moment he had given a high cry.
+
+"What is it? What's there? _Who's_ there?"
+
+A sound of scuttling caused his knees to bend under him for a moment; but
+that, he knew, was a mouse. That was not something that his stomach
+turned sick and his mind reeled to entertain. That other sound, the like
+of which was not in the world, had now entirely ceased; and again he
+called....
+
+He called and continued to call; and then another terror, a terror of the
+sound of his own voice, seized him. He did not dare to call again. His
+shaking hand went to his pocket for a match, but found none. He thought
+there might be matches on the mantelpiece--
+
+He worked his way to the mantelpiece round a little recess, without for a
+moment leaving the wall. Then his hand encountered the mantelpiece, and
+groped along it. A box of matches fell to the hearth. He could just see
+them in the firelight, but his hand could not pick them up until he had
+cornered them inside the fender.
+
+Then he rose and struck a light.
+
+The room was as usual. He struck a second match. A candle stood on the
+table. He lighted it, and the flame sank for a moment and then burned up
+clear. Again he looked round.
+
+There was nothing.
+
+There was nothing; but there had been something, and might still be
+something. Formerly, Oleron had smiled at the fantastic thought that,
+by a merging and interplay of identities between himself and his
+beautiful room, he might be preparing a ghost for the future; it had not
+occurred to him _that there might have been a similar merging and
+coalescence in the past_. Yet with this staggering impossibility he was
+now face to face. Something did persist in the house; it had a tenant
+other than himself; and that tenant, whatsoever or whosoever, had
+appalled Oleron's soul by producing the sound of a woman brushing her
+hair.
+
+
+VII
+
+Without quite knowing how he came to be there Oleron found himself
+striding over the loose board he had temporarily placed on the step
+broken by Miss Bengough. He was hatless, and descending the stairs. Not
+until later did there return to him a hazy memory that he had left the
+candle burning on the table, had opened the door no wider than was
+necessary to allow the passage of his body, and had sidled out, closing
+the door softly behind him. At the foot of the stairs another shock
+awaited him. Something dashed with a flurry up from the disused cellars
+and disappeared out of the door. It was only a cat, but Oleron gave a
+childish sob.
+
+He passed out of the gate, and stood for a moment under the "To Let"
+boards, plucking foolishly at his lip and looking up at the glimmer
+of light behind one of his red blinds. Then, still looking over his
+shoulder, he moved stumblingly up the square. There was a small
+public-house round the corner; Oleron had never entered it; but he
+entered it now, and put down a shilling that missed the counter by
+inches.
+
+"B--b--bran--brandy," he said, and then stooped to look for the shilling.
+
+He had the little sawdusted bar to himself; what company there
+was--carters and labourers and the small tradesmen of the
+neighbourhood--was gathered in the farther compartment, beyond the space
+where the white-haired landlady moved among her taps and bottles. Oleron
+sat down on a hardwood settee with a perforated seat, drank half his
+brandy, and then, thinking he might as well drink it as spill it,
+finished it.
+
+Then he fell to wondering which of the men whose voices he heard across
+the public-house would undertake the removal of his effects on the
+morrow.
+
+In the meantime he ordered more brandy.
+
+For he did not intend to go back to that room where he had left the
+candle burning. Oh no! He couldn't have faced even the entry and the
+staircase with the broken step--certainly not that pith-white,
+fascinating room. He would go back for the present to his old
+arrangement, of workroom and separate sleeping-quarters; he would
+go to his old landlady at once--presently--when he had finished his
+brandy--and see if she could put him up for the night. His glass was
+empty now....
+
+He rose, had it refilled, and sat down again.
+
+And if anybody asked his reason for removing again? Oh, he had reason
+enough--reason enough! Nails that put themselves back into wood again
+and gashed people's hands, steps that broke when you trod on them, and
+women who came into a man's place and brushed their hair in the dark,
+were reasons enough! He was querulous and injured about it all. He had
+taken the place for himself, not for invisible women to brush their
+hair in; that lawyer fellow in Lincoln's Inn should be told so, too,
+before many hours were out; it was outrageous, letting people in for
+agreements like that!
+
+A cut-glass partition divided the compartment where Oleron sat from the
+space where the white-haired landlady moved; but it stopped seven or
+eight inches above the level of the counter. There was no partition at
+the farther bar. Presently Oleron, raising his eyes, saw that faces were
+watching him through the aperture. The faces disappeared when he looked
+at them.
+
+He moved to a corner where he could not be seen from the other bar; but
+this brought him into line with the white-haired landlady.
+
+She knew him by sight--had doubtless seen him passing and repassing; and
+presently she made a remark on the weather. Oleron did not know what he
+replied, but it sufficed to call forth the further remark that the winter
+had been a bad one for influenza, but that the spring weather seemed to
+be coming at last.... Even this slight contact with the commonplace
+steadied Oleron a little; an idle, nascent wonder whether the landlady
+brushed her hair every night, and, if so, whether it gave out those
+little electric cracklings, was shut down with a snap; and Oleron was
+better....
+
+With his next glass of brandy he was all for going back to his flat. Not
+go back? Indeed, he would go back! They should very soon see whether he
+was to be turned out of his place like that! He began to wonder why he
+was doing the rather unusual thing he was doing at that moment, unusual
+for him--sitting hatless, drinking brandy, in a public-house. Suppose he
+were to tell the white-haired landlady all about it--to tell her that a
+caller had scratched her hand on a nail, had later had the bad luck to
+put her foot through a rotten stair, and that he himself, in an old house
+full of squeaks and creaks and whispers, had heard a minute noise and had
+bolted from it in fright--what would she think of him? That he was mad,
+of course.... Pshaw! The real truth of the matter was that he hadn't been
+doing enough work to occupy him. He had been dreaming his days away,
+filling his head with a lot of moonshine about a new _Romilly_ (as if the
+old one was not good enough), and now he was surprised that the devil
+should enter an empty head!
+
+Yes, he would go back. He would take a walk in the air first--he hadn't
+walked enough lately--and then he would take himself in hand, settle
+the hash of that sixteenth chapter of _Romilly_ (fancy, he had actually
+been fool enough to think of destroying fifteen chapters!) and
+thenceforward he would remember that he had obligations to his fellow-men
+and work to do in the world. There was the matter in a nutshell.
+
+He finished his brandy and went out.
+
+He had walked for some time before any other bearing of the matter than
+that on himself occurred to him. At first, the fresh air had increased
+the heady effect of the brandy he had drunk; but afterwards his mind grew
+clearer than it had been since morning. And the clearer it grew, the less
+final did his boastful self-assurances become, and the firmer his
+conviction that, when all explanations had been made, there remained
+something that could not be explained. His hysteria of an hour before had
+passed; he grew steadily calmer; but the disquieting conviction remained.
+A deep fear took possession of him. It was a fear for Elsie.
+
+For something in his place was inimical to her safety. Of themselves, her
+two accidents might not have persuaded him of this; but she herself had
+said it. "_I'm not wanted here_..." And she had declared that there was
+something wrong with the place. She had seen it before he had. Well and
+good. One thing stood out clearly: namely, that if this was so, she must
+be kept away for quite another reason than that which had so confounded
+and humiliated Oleron. Luckily she had expressed her intention of staying
+away; she must be held to that intention. He must see to it.
+
+And he must see to it all the more that he now saw his first impulse,
+never to set foot in the place again, was absurd. People did not do that
+kind of thing. With Elsie made secure, he could not with any respect to
+himself suffer himself to be turned out by a shadow, nor even by a danger
+merely because it was a danger. He had to live somewhere, and he would
+live there. He must return.
+
+He mastered the faint chill of fear that came with the decision, and
+turned in his walk abruptly. Should fear grow on him again he would,
+perhaps, take one more glass of brandy....
+
+But by the time he reached the short street that led to the square he was
+too late for more brandy. The little public-house was still lighted, but
+closed, and one or two men were standing talking on the kerb. Oleron
+noticed that a sudden silence fell on them as he passed, and he noticed
+further that the long-nosed Barrett, whom he passed a little lower down,
+did not return his good-night. He turned in at the broken gate, hesitated
+merely an instant in the alley, and then mounted his stairs again.
+
+Only an inch of candle remained in the Sheffield stick, and Oleron did
+not light another one. Deliberately he forced himself to take it up and
+to make the tour of his five rooms before retiring. It was as he returned
+from the kitchen across his little hall that he noticed that a letter lay
+on the floor. He carried it into his sitting-room, and glanced at the
+envelope before opening it.
+
+It was unstamped, and had been put into the door by hand. Its handwriting
+was clumsy, and it ran from beginning to end without comma or period.
+Oleron read the first line, turned to the signature, and then finished
+the letter.
+
+It was from the man Barrett, and it informed Oleron that he, Barrett,
+would be obliged if Mr. Oleron would make other arrangements for the
+preparing of his breakfasts and the cleaning-out of his place. The sting
+lay in the tail, that is to say, the postscript. This consisted of a text
+of Scripture. It embodied an allusion that could only be to Elsie
+Bengough....
+
+A seldom-seen frown had cut deeply into Oleron's brow. So! That was it!
+Very well; they would see about that on the morrow.... For the rest, this
+seemed merely another reason why Elsie should keep away....
+
+Then his suppressed rage broke out....
+
+The foul-minded lot! The devil himself could not have given a leer at
+anything that had ever passed between Paul Oleron and Elsie Bengough,
+yet this nosing rascal must be prying and talking!...
+
+Oleron crumpled the paper up, held it in the candle flame, and then
+ground the ashes under his heel.
+
+One useful purpose, however, the letter had served: it had created in
+Oleron a wrathful blaze that effectually banished pale shadows.
+Nevertheless, one other puzzling circumstance was to close the day. As he
+undressed, he chanced to glance at his bed. The coverlets bore an impress
+as if somebody had lain on them. Oleron could not remember that he
+himself had lain down during the day--off-hand, he would have said that
+certainly he had not; but after all he could not be positive. His
+indignation for Elsie, acting possibly with the residue of the brandy in
+him, excluded all other considerations; and he put out his candle, lay
+down, and passed immediately into a deep and dreamless sleep, which, in
+the absence of Mrs. Barrett's morning call, lasted almost once round the
+clock.
+
+
+VIII
+
+To the man who pays heed to that voice within him which warns him that
+twilight and danger are settling over his soul, terror is apt to appear
+an absolute thing, against which his heart must be safeguarded in a twink
+unless there is to take place an alteration in the whole range and scale
+of his nature. Mercifully, he has never far to look for safeguards. Of
+the immediate and small and common and momentary things of life, of
+usages and observances and modes and conventions, he builds up
+fortifications against the powers of darkness. He is even content that,
+not terror only, but joy also, should for working purposes be placed in
+the category of the absolute things; and the last treason he will commit
+will be that breaking down of terms and limits that strikes, not at one
+man, but at the welfare of the souls of all.
+
+In his own person, Oleron began to commit this treason. He began to
+commit it by admitting the inexplicable and horrible to an increasing
+familiarity. He did it insensibly, unconsciously, by a neglect of the
+things that he now regarded it as an impertinence in Elsie Bengough to
+have prescribed. Two months before, the words "a haunted house," applied
+to his lovely bemusing dwelling, would have chilled his marrow; now,
+his scale of sensation becoming depressed, he could ask "Haunted by
+what?" and remain unconscious that horror, when it can be proved to be
+relative, by so much loses its proper quality. He was setting aside the
+landmarks. Mists and confusion had begun to enwrap him.
+
+And he was conscious of nothing so much as of a voracious
+inquisitiveness. He wanted _to know_. He was resolved to know. Nothing
+but the knowledge would satisfy him; and craftily he cast about for means
+whereby he might attain it.
+
+He might have spared his craft. The matter was the easiest imaginable. As
+in time past he had known, in his writing, moments when his thoughts
+had seemed to rise of themselves and to embody themselves in words not to
+be altered afterwards, so now the questions he put himself seemed to be
+answered even in the moment of their asking. There was exhilaration in
+the swift, easy processes. He had known no so such joy in his own power
+since the days when his writing had been a daily freshness and a delight
+to him. It was almost as if the course he must pursue was being dictated
+to him.
+
+And the first thing he must do, of course, was to define the problem. He
+defined it in terms of mathematics. Granted that he had not the place to
+himself; granted that the old house had inexpressibly caught and engaged
+his spirit; granted that, by virtue of the common denominator of the
+place, this unknown co-tenant stood in some relation to himself: what
+next? Clearly, the nature of the other numerator must be ascertained.
+
+And how? Ordinarily this would not have seemed simple, but to Oleron it
+was now pellucidly clear. The key, _of course_, lay in his half-written
+novel--or rather, in both _Romillys_, the old and the proposed new one.
+
+A little while before Oleron would have thought himself mad to have
+embraced such an opinion; now he accepted the dizzying hypothesis without
+a quiver.
+
+He began to examine the first and second _Romillys_.
+
+From the moment of his doing so the thing advanced by leaps and bounds.
+Swiftly he reviewed the history of the _Romilly_ of the fifteen chapters.
+He remembered clearly now that he had found her insufficient on the very
+first morning on which he had sat down to work in his new place. Other
+instances of his aversion leaped up to confirm his obscure investigation.
+There had come the night when he had hardly forborne to throw the whole
+thing into the fire; and the next morning he had begun the planning of
+the new _Romilly_. It had been on that morning that Mrs. Barrett,
+overhearing him humming a brief phrase that the dripping of a tap the
+night before had suggested, had informed him that he was singing some air
+he had never in his life heard before, called "The Beckoning Fair
+One."...
+
+The Beckoning Fair One!...
+
+With scarcely a pause in thought he continued:
+
+The first _Romilly_ having been definitely thrown over, the second had
+instantly fastened herself upon him, clamouring for birth in his brain.
+He even fancied now, looking back, that there had been something like
+passion, hate almost, in the supplanting, and that more than once a stray
+thought given to his discarded creation had--(it was astonishing how
+credible Oleron found the almost unthinkable idea)--had offended the
+supplanter.
+
+Yet that a malignancy almost homicidal should be extended to his
+fiction's poor mortal prototype....
+
+In spite of his inuring to a scale in which the horrible was now a thing
+to be fingered and turned this way and that, a "Good God!" broke from
+Oleron.
+
+This intrusion of the first _Romilly's_ prototype into his thought
+again was a factor that for the moment brought his inquiry into the
+nature of his problem to a termination; the mere thought of Elsie was
+fatal to anything abstract. For another thing, he could not yet think of
+that letter of Barrett's, nor of a little scene that had followed it,
+without a mounting of colour and a quick contraction of the brow. For,
+wisely or not, he had had that argument out at once. Striding across the
+square on the following morning, he had bearded Barrett on his own
+doorstep. Coming back again a few minutes later, he had been strongly of
+opinion that he had only made matters worse. The man had been vagueness
+itself. He had not been to be either challenged or browbeaten into
+anything more definite than a muttered farrago in which the words
+"Certain things ... Mrs. Barrett ... respectable house ... if the cap
+fits ... proceedings that shall be nameless," had been constantly
+repeated.
+
+"Not that I make any charge--" he had concluded.
+
+"Charge!" Oleron had cried.
+
+"I 'ave my idears of things, as I don't doubt you 'ave yours--"
+
+"Ideas--mine!" Oleron had cried wrathfully, immediately dropping his
+voice as heads had appeared at windows of the square. "Look you here, my
+man; you've an unwholesome mind, which probably you can't help, but a
+tongue which you can help, and shall! If there is a breath of this
+repeated ..."
+
+"I'll not be talked to on my own doorstep like this by anybody,..."
+Barrett had blustered....
+
+"You shall, and I'm doing it ..."
+
+"Don't you forget there's a Gawd above all, Who 'as said..."
+
+"You're a low scandalmonger!..."
+
+And so forth, continuing badly what was already badly begun. Oleron had
+returned wrathfully to his own house, and thenceforward, looking out
+of his windows, had seen Barrett's face at odd times, lifting blinds or
+peering round curtains, as if he sought to put himself in possession of
+Heaven knew what evidence, in case it should be required of him.
+
+The unfortunate occurrence made certain minor differences in Oleron's
+domestic arrangements. Barrett's tongue, he gathered, had already been
+busy; he was looked at askance by the dwellers of the square; and he
+judged it better, until he should be able to obtain other help, to make
+his purchases of provisions a little farther afield rather than at the
+small shops of the immediate neighbourhood. For the rest, housekeeping
+was no new thing to him, and he would resume his old bachelor habits....
+
+Besides, he was deep in certain rather abstruse investigations, in which
+it was better that he should not be disturbed.
+
+He was looking out of his window one midday rather tired, not very well,
+and glad that it was not very likely he would have to stir out of doors,
+when he saw Elsie Bengough crossing the square towards his house. The
+weather had broken; it was a raw and gusty day; and she had to force
+her way against the wind that set her ample skirts bellying about her
+opulent figure and her veil spinning and streaming behind her.
+
+Oleron acted swiftly and instinctively. Seizing his hat, he sprang to the
+door and descended the stairs at a run. A sort of panic had seized him.
+She must be prevented from setting foot in the place. As he ran along the
+alley he was conscious that his eyes went up to the eaves as if something
+drew them. He did not know that a slate might not accidentally fall....
+
+He met her at the gate, and spoke with curious volubleness.
+
+"This is really too bad, Elsie! Just as I'm urgently called away! I'm
+afraid it can't be helped though, and that you'll have to think me an
+inhospitable beast." He poured it out just as it came into his head.
+
+She asked if he was going to town.
+
+"Yes, yes--to town," he replied. "I've got to call on--on Chambers. You
+know Chambers, don't you? No, I remember you don't; a big man you once
+saw me with.... I ought to have gone yesterday, and--" this he felt to be
+a brilliant effort--"and he's going out of town this afternoon. To
+Brighton. I had a letter from him this morning."
+
+He took her arm and led her up the square. She had to remind him that his
+way to town lay in the other direction.
+
+"Of course--how stupid of me!" he said, with a little loud laugh. "I'm so
+used to going the other way with you--of course; it's the other way to
+the bus. Will you come along with me? I am so awfully sorry it's happened
+like this...."
+
+They took the street to the bus terminus.
+
+This time Elsie bore no signs of having gone through interior struggles.
+If she detected anything unusual in his manner she made no comment, and
+he, seeing her calm, began to talk less recklessly through silences. By
+the time they reached the bus terminus, nobody, seeing the pallid-faced
+man without an overcoat and the large ample-skirted girl at his side,
+would have supposed that one of them was ready to sink on his knees for
+thankfulness that he had, as he believed, saved the other from a wildly
+unthinkable danger.
+
+They mounted to the top of the bus, Oleron protesting that he should not
+miss his overcoat, and that he found the day, if anything, rather
+oppressively hot. They sat down on a front seat.
+
+Now that this meeting was forced upon him, he had something else to say
+that would make demands upon his tact. It had been on his mind for some
+time, and was, indeed, peculiarly difficult to put. He revolved it for
+some minutes, and then, remembering the success of his story of a sudden
+call to town, cut the knot of his difficulty with another lie.
+
+"I'm thinking of going away for a little while, Elsie," he said.
+
+She merely said, "Oh?"
+
+"Somewhere for a change. I need a change. I think I shall go to-morrow,
+or the day after. Yes, to-morrow, I think."
+
+"Yes," she replied.
+
+"I don't quite know how long I shall be," he continued. "I shall have to
+let you know when I am back."
+
+"Yes, let me know," she replied in an even tone.
+
+The tone was, for her, suspiciously even. He was a little uneasy.
+
+"You don't ask me where I'm going," he said, with a little cumbrous
+effort to rally her.
+
+She was looking straight before her, past the bus-driver.
+
+"I know," she said.
+
+He was startled. "How, you know?"
+
+"You're not going anywhere," she replied.
+
+He found not a word to say. It was a minute or so before she continued,
+in the same controlled voice she had employed from the start.
+
+"You're not going anywhere. You weren't going out this morning. You only
+came out because I appeared; don't behave as if we were strangers, Paul."
+
+A flush of pink had mounted to his cheeks. He noticed that the wind had
+given her the pink of early rhubarb. Still he found nothing to say.
+
+"Of course, you ought to go away," she continued. "I don't know whether
+you look at yourself often in the glass, but you're rather noticeable.
+Several people have turned to look at you this morning. So, of course,
+you ought to go away. But you won't, and I know why."
+
+He shivered, coughed a little, and then broke silence.
+
+"Then if you know, there's no use in continuing this discussion," he said
+curtly.
+
+"Not for me, perhaps, but there is for you," she replied. "Shall I tell
+you what I know?"
+
+"No," he said in a voice slightly raised.
+
+"No?" she asked, her round eyes earnestly on him.
+
+"No."
+
+Again he was getting out of patience with her; again he was conscious of
+the strain. Her devotion and fidelity and love plagued him; she was only
+humiliating both herself and him. It would have been bad enough had he
+ever, by word or deed, given her cause for thus fastening herself on
+him ... but there; that was the worst of that kind of life for a woman.
+Women such as she, business women, in and out of offices all the time,
+always, whether they realised it or not, made comradeship a cover for
+something else. They accepted the unconventional status, came and
+went freely, as men did, were honestly taken by men at their own
+valuation--and then it turned out to be the other thing after all, and
+they went and fell in love. No wonder there was gossip in shops and
+squares and public houses! In a sense the gossipers were in the right of
+it. Independent, yet not efficient; with some of womanhood's graces
+forgone, and yet with all the woman's hunger and need; half
+sophisticated, yet not wise; Oleron was tired of it all....
+
+And it was time he told her so.
+
+"I suppose," he said tremblingly, looking down between his knees, "I
+suppose the real trouble is in the life women who earn their own living
+are obliged to lead."
+
+He could not tell in what sense she took the lame generality; she merely
+replied, "I suppose so."
+
+"It can't be helped," he continued, "but you do sacrifice a good deal."
+
+She agreed: a good deal; and then she added after a moment, "What, for
+instance?"
+
+"You may or may not be gradually attaining a new status, but you're in a
+false position to-day."
+
+It was very likely, she said; she hadn't thought of it much in that
+light--
+
+"And," he continued desperately, "you're bound to suffer. Your most
+innocent acts are misunderstood; motives you never dreamed of are
+attributed to you; and in the end it comes to--" he hesitated a moment
+and then took the plunge, "--to the sidelong look and the leer."
+
+She took his meaning with perfect ease. She merely shivered a little as
+she pronounced the name.
+
+"Barrett?"
+
+His silence told her the rest.
+
+Anything further that was to be said must come from her. It came as the
+bus stopped at a stage and fresh passengers mounted the stairs.
+
+"You'd better get down here and go back, Paul," she said. "I understand
+perfectly--perfectly. It isn't Barrett. You'd be able to deal with
+Barrett. It's merely convenient for you to say it's Barrett. I know what
+it is ... but you said I wasn't to tell you that. Very well. But before
+you go let me tell you why I came up this morning."
+
+In a dull tone he asked her why. Again she looked straight before her as
+she replied:
+
+"I came to force your hand. Things couldn't go on as they have been
+going, you know; and now that's all over."
+
+"All over," he repeated stupidly.
+
+"All over. I want you now to consider yourself, as far as I'm concerned,
+perfectly free. I make only one reservation."
+
+He hardly had the spirit to ask her what that was.
+
+"If _I_ merely need _you_," she said, "please don't give that a thought;
+that's nothing; I shan't come near for that. But," she dropped her voice,
+"if _you're_ in need of _me_, Paul--I shall know if you are, _and you
+will be_--then I shall come at no matter what cost. You understand that?"
+
+He could only groan.
+
+"So that's understood," she concluded. "And I think that's all. Now go
+back. I should advise you to walk back, for you're shivering--good-bye--"
+
+She gave him a cold hand, and he descended. He turned on the edge of the
+kerb as the bus started again. For the first time in all the years he had
+known her she parted from him with no smile and no wave of her long arm.
+
+
+IX
+
+He stood on the kerb plunged in misery, looking after her as long as she
+remained in sight; but almost instantly with her disappearance he felt
+the heaviness lift a little from his spirit. She had given him his
+liberty; true, there was a sense in which he had never parted with it,
+but now was no time for splitting hairs; he was free to act, and all was
+clear ahead. Swiftly the sense of lightness grew on him: it became a
+positive rejoicing in his liberty; and before he was halfway home he had
+decided what must be done next.
+
+The vicar of the parish in which his dwelling was situated lived within
+ten minutes of the square. To his house Oleron turned his steps. It was
+necessary that he should have all the information he could get about this
+old house with the insurance marks and the sloping "To Let" boards, and
+the vicar was the person most likely to be able to furnish it. This last
+preliminary out of the way, and--aha! Oleron chuckled--things might be
+expected to happen!
+
+But he gained less information than he had hoped for. The house, the
+vicar said, was old--but there needed no vicar to tell Oleron that; it
+was reputed (Oleron pricked up his ears) to be haunted--but there were
+few old houses about which some such rumour did not circulate among the
+ignorant; and the deplorable lack of Faith of the modern world, the vicar
+thought, did not tend to dissipate these superstitions. For the rest,
+his manner was the soothing manner of one who prefers not to make
+statements without knowing how they will be taken by his hearer. Oleron
+smiled as he perceived this.
+
+"You may leave my nerves out of the question," he said. "How long has the
+place been empty?"
+
+"A dozen years, I should say," the vicar replied.
+
+"And the last tenant--did you know him--or her?" Oleron was conscious of
+a tingling of his nerves as he offered the vicar the alternative of sex.
+
+"Him," said the vicar. "A man. If I remember rightly, his name was
+Madley; an artist. He was a great recluse; seldom went out of the place,
+and--" the vicar hesitated and then broke into a little gush of candour
+"--and since you appear to have come for this information, and since it
+is better that the truth should be told than that garbled versions should
+get about, I don't mind saying that this man Madley died there, under
+somewhat unusual circumstances. It was ascertained at the post-mortem
+that there was not a particle of food in his stomach, although he was
+found to be not without money. And his frame was simply worn out. Suicide
+was spoken of, but you'll agree with me that deliberate starvation is, to
+say the least, an uncommon form of suicide. An open verdict was
+returned."
+
+"Ah!" said Oleron.... "Does there happen to be any comprehensive history
+of this parish?"
+
+"No; partial ones only. I myself am not guiltless of having made a number
+of notes on its purely ecclesiastical history, its registers and so
+forth, which I shall be happy to show you if you would care to see them;
+but it is a large parish, I have only one curate, and my leisure, as you
+will readily understand ..."
+
+The extent of the parish and the scantiness of the vicar's leisure
+occupied the remainder of the interview, and Oleron thanked the vicar,
+took his leave, and walked slowly home.
+
+He walked slowly for a reason, twice turning away from the house within a
+stone's-throw of the gate and taking another turn of twenty minutes or
+so. He had a very ticklish piece of work now before him; it required the
+greatest mental concentration; it was nothing less than to bring his
+mind, if he might, into such a state of unpreoccupation and receptivity
+that he should see the place as he had seen it on that morning when,
+his removal accomplished, he had sat down to begin the sixteenth chapter
+of the first _Romilly_.
+
+For, could he recapture that first impression, he now hoped for far more
+from it. Formerly, he had carried no end of mental lumber. Before the
+influence of the place had been able to find him out at all, it had had
+the inertia of those dreary chapters to overcome. No results had shown.
+The process had been one of slow saturation, charging, filling up to a
+brim. But now he was light, unburdened, rid at last both of that
+_Romilly_ and of her prototype. Now for the new unknown, coy, jealous,
+bewitching, Beckoning Fair!...
+
+At half-past two of the afternoon he put his key into the Yale lock,
+entered, and closed the door behind him....
+
+His fantastic attempt was instantly and astonishingly successful. He
+could have shouted with triumph as he entered the room; it was as if he
+had _escaped_ into it. Once more, as in the days when his writing had had
+a daily freshness and wonder and promise for him, he was conscious of
+that new ease and mastery and exhilaration and release. The air of the
+place seemed to hold more oxygen; as if his own specific gravity had
+changed, his very tread seemed less ponderable. The flowers in the bowls,
+the fair proportions of the meadowsweet-coloured panels and mouldings,
+the polished floor, and the lofty and faintly starred ceiling, fairly
+laughed their welcome. Oleron actually laughed back, and spoke aloud.
+
+"Oh, you're pretty, pretty!" he flattered it.
+
+Then he lay down on his couch.
+
+He spent that afternoon as a convalescent who expected a dear visitor
+might have spent it--in a delicious vacancy, smiling now and then as
+if in his sleep, and ever lifting drowsy and contented eyes to his
+alluring surroundings. He lay thus until darkness came, and, with
+darkness, the nocturnal noises of the old house....
+
+But if he waited for any specific happening, he waited in vain.
+
+He waited similarly in vain on the morrow, maintaining, though with less
+ease, that sensitised-plate-like condition of his mind. Nothing occurred
+to give it an impression. Whatever it was which he so patiently wooed, it
+seemed to be both shy and exacting.
+
+Then on the third day he thought he understood. A look of gentle drollery
+and cunning came into his eyes, and he chuckled.
+
+"Oho, oho!... Well, if the wind sits in _that_ quarter we must see what
+else there is to be done. What is there, now?... No, I won't send for
+Elsie; we don't need a wheel to break the butterfly on; we won't go to
+those lengths, my butterfly...."
+
+He was standing musing, thumbing his lean jaw, looking aslant; suddenly
+he crossed to his hall, took down his hat, and went out.
+
+"My lady is coquettish, is she? Well, we'll see what a little neglect
+will do," he chuckled as he went down the stairs.
+
+He sought a railway station, got into a train, and spent the rest of the
+day in the country. Oh, yes: Oleron thought _he_ was the man to deal with
+Fair Ones who beckoned, and invited, and then took refuge in shyness and
+hanging back!
+
+He did not return until after eleven that night.
+
+"_Now_, my Fair Beckoner!" he murmured as he walked along the alley and
+felt in his pocket for his keys....
+
+Inside his flat, he was perfectly composed, perfectly deliberate,
+exceedingly careful not to give himself away. As if to intimate that he
+intended to retire immediately, he lighted only a single candle; and as
+he set out with it on his nightly round he affected to yawn. He went
+first into his kitchen. There was a full moon, and a lozenge of
+moonlight, almost peacock-blue by contrast with his candle-frame, lay on
+the floor. The window was uncurtained, and he could see the reflection of
+the candle, and, faintly, that of his own face, as he moved about. The
+door of the powder-closet stood a little ajar, and he closed it before
+sitting down to remove his boots on the chair with the cushion made of
+the folded harp-bag. From the kitchen he passed to the bathroom. There,
+another slant of blue moonlight cut the windowsill and lay across the
+pipes on the wall. He visited his seldom-used study, and stood for a
+moment gazing at the silvered roofs across the square. Then, walking
+straight through his sitting-room, his stockinged feet making no noise,
+he entered his bedroom and put the candle on the chest of drawers. His
+face all this time wore no expression save that of tiredness. He had
+never been wilier nor more alert.
+
+His small bedroom fireplace was opposite the chest of drawers on which
+the mirror stood, and his bed and the window occupied the remaining
+sides of the room. Oleron drew down his blind, took off his coat, and
+then stooped to get his slippers from under the bed.
+
+He could have given no reason for the conviction, but that the
+manifestation that for two days had been withheld was close at hand he
+never for an instant doubted. Nor, though he could not form the faintest
+guess of the shape it might take, did he experience fear. Startling or
+surprising it might be; he was prepared for that; but that was all; his
+scale of sensation had become depressed. His hand moved this way and that
+under the bed in search of his slippers....
+
+But for all his caution and method and preparedness, his heart all at
+once gave a leap and a pause that was almost horrid. His hand had found
+the slippers, but he was still on his knees; save for this circumstance
+he would have fallen. The bed was a low one; the groping for the slippers
+accounted for the turn of his head to one side; and he was careful to
+keep the attitude until he had partly recovered his self-possession. When
+presently he rose there was a drop of blood on his lower lip where he had
+caught at it with his teeth, and his watch had jerked out of the pocket
+of his waistcoat and was dangling at the end of its short leather
+guard....
+
+Then, before the watch had ceased its little oscillation, he was himself
+again.
+
+In the middle of his mantelpiece there stood a picture, a portrait of his
+grandmother; he placed himself before this picture, so that he could see
+in the glass of it the steady flame of the candle that burned behind him
+on the chest of drawers. He could see also in the picture-glass the
+little glancings of light from the bevels and facets of the objects about
+the mirror and candle. But he could see more. These twinklings and
+reflections and re-reflections did not change their position; but there
+was one gleam that had motion. It was fainter than the rest, and it moved
+up and down through the air. It was the reflection of the candle on
+Oleron's black vulcanite comb, and each of its downward movements was
+accompanied by a silky and crackling rustle.
+
+Oleron, watching what went on in the glass of his grandmother's portrait,
+continued to play his part. He felt for his dangling watch and began
+slowly to wind it up. Then, for a moment ceasing to watch, he began to
+empty his trousers pockets and to place methodically in a little row on
+the mantelpiece the pennies and halfpennies he took from them. The
+sweeping, minutely electric noise filled the whole bedroom, and had
+Oleron altered his point of observation he could have brought the dim
+gleam of the moving comb so into position that it would almost have
+outlined his grandmother's head.
+
+Any other head of which it might have been following the outline was
+invisible.
+
+Oleron finished the emptying of his pockets; then, under cover of another
+simulated yawn, not so much summoning his resolution as overmastered by
+an exhorbitant curiosity, he swung suddenly round. That which was being
+combed was still not to be seen, but the comb did not stop. It had
+altered its angle a little, and had moved a little to the left. It was
+passing, in fairly regular sweeps, from a point rather more than five
+feet from the ground, in a direction roughly vertical, to another point a
+few inches below the level of the chest of drawers.
+
+Oleron continued to act to admiration. He walked to his little washstand
+in the corner, poured out water, and began to wash his hands. He removed
+his waistcoat, and continued his preparations for bed. The combing did
+not cease, and he stood for a moment in thought. Again his eyes twinkled.
+The next was very cunning--
+
+"Hm!... _I think I'll read for a quarter of an hour_," he said aloud....
+
+He passed out of the room.
+
+He was away a couple of minutes; when he returned again the room was
+suddenly quiet. He glanced at the chest of drawers; the comb lay still,
+between the collar he had removed and a pair of gloves. Without
+hesitation Oleron put out his hand and picked it up. It was an ordinary
+eighteenpenny comb, taken from a card in a chemist's shop, of a substance
+of a definite specific gravity, and no more capable of rebellion against
+the Laws by which it existed than are the worlds that keep their orbits
+through the void. Oleron put it down again; then he glanced at the bundle
+of papers he held in his hand. What he had gone to fetch had been the
+fifteen chapters of the original _Romilly_.
+
+"Hm!" he muttered as he threw the manuscript into a chair.... "As I
+thought.... She's just blindly, ragingly, murderously jealous."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the night after that, and on the following night, and for many nights
+and days, so many that he began to be uncertain about the count of them,
+Oleron, courting, cajoling, neglecting, threatening, beseeching, eaten
+out with unappeased curiosity and regardless that his life was becoming
+one consuming passion and desire, continued his search for the unknown
+co-numerator of his abode.
+
+
+X
+
+As time went on, it came to pass that few except the postman mounted
+Oleron's stairs; and since men who do not write letters receive few, even
+the postman's tread became so infrequent that it was not heard more than
+once or twice a week. There came a letter from Oleron's publishers,
+asking when they might expect to receive the manuscript of his new book;
+he delayed for some days to answer it, and finally forgot it. A second
+letter came, which also he failed to answer. He received no third.
+
+The weather grew bright and warm. The privet bushes among the
+chopper-like notice-boards flowered, and in the streets where Oleron did
+his shopping the baskets of flower-women lined the kerbs. Oleron
+purchased flowers daily; his room clamoured for flowers, fresh and
+continually renewed; and Oleron did not stint its demands. Nevertheless,
+the necessity for going out to buy them began to irk him more and more,
+and it was with a greater and ever greater sense of relief that he
+returned home again. He began to be conscious that again his scale of
+sensation had suffered a subtle change--a change that was not restoration
+to its former capacity, but an extension and enlarging that once more
+included terror. It admitted it in an entirely new form. _Lux orco,
+tenebrae Jovi_. The name of this terror was agoraphobia. Oleron had begun
+to dread air and space and the horror that might pounce upon the
+unguarded back.
+
+Presently he so contrived it that his food and flowers were delivered
+daily at his door. He rubbed his hands when he had hit upon this
+expedient. That was better! Now he could please himself whether he went
+out or not....
+
+Quickly he was confirmed in his choice. It became his pleasure to remain
+immured.
+
+But he was not happy--or, if he was, his happiness took an extraordinary
+turn. He fretted discontentedly, could sometimes have wept for mere
+weakness and misery; and yet he was dimly conscious that he would not
+have exchanged his sadness for all the noisy mirth of the world outside.
+And speaking of noise: noise, much noise, now caused him the acutest
+discomfort. It was hardly more to be endured than that new-born fear that
+kept him, on the increasingly rare occasions when he did go out, sidling
+close to walls and feeling friendly railings with his hand. He moved from
+room to room softly and in slippers, and sometimes stood for many seconds
+closing a door so gently that not a sound broke the stillness that was in
+itself a delight. Sunday now became an intolerable day to him, for, since
+the coming of the fine weather, there had begun to assemble in the square
+under his windows each Sunday morning certain members of the sect to
+which the long-nosed Barrett adhered. These came with a great drum and
+large brass-bellied instruments; men and women uplifted anguished voices,
+struggling with their God; and Barrett himself, with upraised face and
+closed eyes and working brows, prayed that the sound of his voice might
+penetrate the ears of all unbelievers--as it certainly did Oleron's. One
+day, in the middle of one of these rhapsodies, Oleron sprang to his blind
+and pulled it down, and heard as he did so his own name made the subject
+of a fresh torrent of outpouring.
+
+And sometimes, but not as expecting a reply, Oleron stood still and
+called softly. Once or twice he called "Romilly!" and then waited; but
+more often his whispering did not take the shape of a name.
+
+There was one spot in particular of his abode that he began to haunt with
+increasing persistency. This was just within the opening of his bedroom
+door. He had discovered one day that by opening every door in his place
+(always excepting the outer one, which he only opened unwillingly) and by
+placing himself on this particular spot, he could actually see to a
+greater or less extent into each of his five rooms without changing his
+position. He could see the whole of his sitting-room, all of his bedroom
+except the part hidden by the open door, and glimpses of his kitchen,
+bathroom, and of his rarely used study. He was often in this place,
+breathless and with his finger on his lip. One day, as he stood there, he
+suddenly found himself wondering whether this Madley, of whom the vicar
+had spoken, had ever discovered the strategic importance of the bedroom
+entry.
+
+Light, moreover, now caused him greater disquietude than did darkness.
+Direct sunlight, of which, as the sun passed daily round the house, each
+of his rooms had now its share, was like a flame in his brain; and even
+diffused light was a dull and numbing ache. He began, at successive hours
+of the day, one after another, to lower his crimson blinds. He made short
+and daring excursions in order to do this; but he was ever careful to
+leave his retreat open, in case he should have sudden need of it.
+Presently this lowering of the blinds had become a daily methodical
+exercise, and his rooms, when he had been his round, had the blood-red
+half-light of a photographer's darkroom.
+
+One day, as he drew down the blind of his little study and backed in good
+order out of the room again, he broke into a soft laugh.
+
+"_That_ bilks Mr. Barrett!" he said; and the baffling of Barrett
+continued to afford him mirth for an hour.
+
+But on another day, soon after, he had a fright that left him trembling
+also for an hour. He had seized the cord to darken the window over the
+seat in which he had found the harp-bag, and was standing with his back
+well protected in the embrasure, when he thought he saw the tail of a
+black-and-white check skirt disappear round the corner of the house. He
+could not be sure--had he run to the window of the other wall, which was
+blinded, the skirt must have been already past--but he was _almost_ sure
+that it was Elsie. He listened in an agony of suspense for her tread on
+the stairs....
+
+But no tread came, and after three or four minutes he drew a long breath
+of relief.
+
+"By Jove, but that would have compromised me horribly!" he muttered....
+
+And he continued to mutter from time to time, "Horribly
+compromising ... _no_ woman would stand that ... not _any_ kind of
+woman ... oh, compromising in the extreme!"
+
+Yet he was not happy. He could not have assigned the cause of the fits of
+quiet weeping which took him sometimes; they came and went, like the
+fitful illumination of the clouds that travelled over the square; and
+perhaps, after all, if he was not happy, he was not unhappy. Before
+he could be unhappy something must have been withdrawn, and nothing had
+yet been withdrawn from him, for nothing had been granted. He was waiting
+for that granting, in that flower-laden, frightfully enticing apartment
+of his, with the pith-white walls tinged and subdued by the crimson
+blinds to a blood-like gloom.
+
+He paid no heed to it that his stock of money was running perilously low,
+nor that he had ceased to work. Ceased to work? He had not ceased to
+work. They knew very little about it who supposed that Oleron had ceased
+to work! He was in truth only now beginning to work. He was preparing
+such a work ... such a work ... such a Mistress was a-making in the
+gestation of his Art ... let him but get this period of probation and
+poignant waiting over and men should see.... How _should_ men know her,
+this Fair One of Oleron's, until Oleron himself knew her? Lovely radiant
+creations are not thrown off like How-d'ye-do's. The men to whom it is
+committed to father them must weep wretched tears, as Oleron did, must
+swell with vain presumptuous hopes, as Oleron did, must pursue, as Oleron
+pursued, the capricious, fair, mocking, slippery, eager Spirit that, ever
+eluding, ever sees to it that the chase does not slacken. Let Oleron but
+hunt this Huntress a little longer... he would have her sparkling
+and panting in his arms yet.... Oh no: they were very far from the truth
+who supposed that Oleron had ceased to work!
+
+And if all else was falling away from Oleron, gladly he was letting it
+go. So do we all when our Fair Ones beckon. Quite at the beginning we
+wink, and promise ourselves that we will put Her Ladyship through her
+paces, neglect her for a day, turn her own jealous wiles against her,
+flout and ignore her when she comes wheedling; perhaps there lurks within
+us all the time a heartless sprite who is never fooled; but in the end
+all falls away. She beckons, beckons, and all goes....
+
+And so Oleron kept his strategic post within the frame of his bedroom
+door, and watched, and waited, and smiled, with his finger on his
+lips.... It was his duteous service, his worship, his troth-plighting,
+all that he had ever known of Love. And when he found himself, as he now
+and then did, hating the dead man Madley, and wishing that he had never
+lived, he felt that that, too, was an acceptable service....
+
+But, as he thus prepared himself, as it were, for a Marriage, and moped
+and chafed more and more that the Bride made no sign, he made a discovery
+that he ought to have made weeks before.
+
+It was through a thought of the dead Madley that he made it. Since that
+night when he had thought in his greenness that a little studied neglect
+would bring the lovely Beckoner to her knees, and had made use of her own
+jealousy to banish her, he had not set eyes on those fifteen discarded
+chapters of _Romilly_. He had thrown them back into the window-seat,
+forgotten their very existence. But his own jealousy of Madley put him in
+mind of hers of her jilted rival of flesh and blood, and he remembered
+them.... Fool that he had been! Had he, then, expected his Desire to
+manifest herself while there still existed the evidence of his divided
+allegiance? What, and she with a passion so fierce and centred that it
+had not hesitated at the destruction, twice attempted, of her rival? Fool
+that he had been!...
+
+But if _that_ was all the pledge and sacrifice she required she should
+have it--ah, yes, and quickly!
+
+He took the manuscript from the window-seat, and brought it to the fire.
+
+He kept his fire always burning now; the warmth brought out the last
+vestige of odour of the flowers with which his room was banked. He did
+not know what time it was; long since he had allowed his clock to run
+down--it had seemed a foolish measurer of time in regard to the
+stupendous things that were happening to Oleron; but he knew it was late.
+He took the _Romilly_ manuscript and knelt before the fire.
+
+But he had not finished removing the fastening that held the sheets
+together before he suddenly gave a start, turned his head over his
+shoulder, and listened intently. The sound he had heard had not been
+loud--it had been, indeed, no more than a tap, twice or thrice
+repeated--but it had filled Oleron with alarm. His face grew dark as
+it came again.
+
+He heard a voice outside on his landing.
+
+"Paul!... Paul!..."
+
+It was Elsie's voice.
+
+"Paul!... I know you're in... I want to see you...."
+
+He cursed her under his breath, but kept perfectly still. He did not
+intend to admit her.
+
+"Paul!... You're in trouble.... I believe you're in danger... at least
+come to the door!..."
+
+Oleron smothered a low laugh. It somehow amused him that she, in such
+danger herself, should talk to him of _his_ danger!... Well, if she was,
+serve her right; she knew, or said she knew, all about it....
+
+"Paul!... Paul!..."
+
+"_Paul!... Paul!_..." He mimicked her under his breath.
+
+"Oh, Paul, it's _horrible_!..."
+
+Horrible, was it? thought Oleron. Then let her get away....
+
+"I only want to help you, Paul.... I didn't promise not to come if you
+needed me...."
+
+He was impervious to the pitiful sob that interrupted the low cry. The
+devil take the woman! Should he shout to her to go away and not come
+back? No: let her call and knock and sob. She had a gift for sobbing; she
+mustn't think her sobs would move him. They irritated him, so that he set
+his teeth and shook his fist at her, but that was all. Let her sob.
+
+"_Paul!... Paul!_..."
+
+With his teeth hard set, he dropped the first page of _Romilly_ into the
+fire. Then he began to drop the rest in, sheet by sheet.
+
+For many minutes the calling behind his door continued; then suddenly it
+ceased. He heard the sound of feet slowly descending the stairs. He
+listened for the noise of a fall or a cry or the crash of a piece of the
+handrail of the upper landing; but none of these things came. She was
+spared. Apparently her rival suffered her to crawl abject and beaten
+away. Oleron heard the passing of her steps under his window; then she
+was gone.
+
+He dropped the last page into the fire, and then, with a low laugh rose.
+He looked fondly round his room.
+
+"Lucky to get away like that," he remarked. "She wouldn't have got away
+if I'd given her as much as a word or a look! What devils these women
+are!... But no; I oughtn't to say that; one of 'em showed
+forbearance...."
+
+Who showed forbearance? And what was forborne? Ah, Oleron
+knew!... Contempt, no doubt, had been at the bottom of it, but that
+didn't matter: the pestering creature had been allowed to go unharmed.
+Yes, she was lucky; Oleron hoped she knew it....
+
+And now, now, now for his reward!
+
+Oleron crossed the room. All his doors were open; his eyes shone as he
+placed himself within that of his bedroom.
+
+Fool that he had been, not to think of destroying the manuscript
+sooner!...
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+How, in a houseful of shadows, should he know his own Shadow? How, in a
+houseful of noises, distinguish the summons he felt to be at hand? Ah,
+trust him! He would know! The place was full of a jugglery of dim lights.
+The blind at his elbow that allowed the light of a street lamp to
+struggle vaguely through--the glimpse of greeny blue moonlight seen
+through the distant kitchen door--the sulky glow of the fire under the
+black ashes of the burnt manuscript--the glimmering of the tulips and the
+moon-daisies and narcissi in the bowls and jugs and jars--these did not
+so trick and bewilder his eyes that he would not know his Own! It was he,
+not she, who had been delaying the shadowy Bridal; he hung his head for a
+moment in mute acknowledgment; then he bent his eyes on the deceiving,
+puzzling gloom again. He would have called her name had he known it--but
+now he would not ask her to share even a name with the other....
+
+His own face, within the frame of the door, glimmered white as the
+narcissi in the darkness....
+
+A shadow, light as fleece, seemed to take shape in the kitchen (the time
+had been when Oleron would have said that a cloud had passed over the
+unseen moon). The low illumination on the blind at his elbow grew dimmer
+(the time had been when Oleron would have concluded that the lamplighter
+going his rounds had turned low the flame of the lamp). The fire settled,
+letting down the black and charred papers; a flower fell from a bowl,
+and lay indistinct upon the floor; all was still; and then a stray
+draught moved through the old house, passing before Oleron's face....
+
+Suddenly, inclining his head, he withdrew a little from the door-jamb.
+The wandering draught caused the door to move a little on its hinges.
+Oleron trembled violently, stood for a moment longer, and then, putting
+his hand out to the knob, softly drew the door to, sat down on the
+nearest chair, and waited, as a man might await the calling of his name
+that should summon him to some weighty, high and privy Audience....
+
+
+XI
+
+One knows not whether there can be human compassion for anemia of the
+soul. When the pitch of Life is dropped, and the spirit is so put over
+and reversed that that only is horrible which before was sweet and
+worldly and of the day, the human relation disappears. The sane soul
+turns appalled away, lest not merely itself, but sanity should suffer.
+We are not gods. We cannot drive out devils. We must see selfishly
+to it that devils do not enter into ourselves.
+
+And this we must do even though Love so transfuse us that we may well
+deem our nature to be half divine. We shall but speak of honour and duty
+in vain. The letter dropped within the dark door will lie unregarded, or,
+if regarded for a brief instant between two unspeakable lapses, left and
+forgotten again. The telegram will be undelivered, nor will the whistling
+messenger (wiselier guided than he knows to whistle) be conscious as he
+walks away of the drawn blind that is pushed aside an inch by a finger
+and then fearfully replaced again. No: let the miserable wrestle with his
+own shadows; let him, if indeed he be so mad, clip and strain and enfold
+and couch the succubus; but let him do so in a house into which not an
+air of Heaven penetrates, nor a bright finger of the sun pierces the
+filthy twilight. The lost must remain lost. Humanity has other business
+to attend to.
+
+For the handwriting of the two letters that Oleron, stealing noiselessly
+one June day into his kitchen to rid his sitting-room of an armful of
+fetid and decaying flowers, had seen on the floor within his door, had
+had no more meaning for him than if it had belonged to some dim and
+faraway dream. And at the beating of the telegraph-boy upon the door,
+within a few feet of the bed where he lay, he had gnashed his teeth and
+stopped his ears. He had pictured the lad standing there, just beyond his
+partition, among packets of provisions and bundles of dead and dying
+flowers. For his outer landing was littered with these. Oleron had feared
+to open his door to take them in. After a week, the errand lads had
+reported that there must be some mistake about the order, and had left no
+more. Inside, in the red twilight, the old flowers turned brown and fell
+and decayed where they lay.
+
+Gradually his power was draining away. The Abomination fastened on
+Oleron's power. The steady sapping sometimes left him for many hours
+of prostration gazing vacantly up at his red-tinged ceiling, idly
+suffering such fancies as came of themselves to have their way with him.
+Even the strongest of his memories had no more than a precarious hold
+upon his attention. Sometimes a flitting half-memory, of a novel to be
+written, a novel it was important that he should write, tantalised him
+for a space before vanishing again; and sometimes whole novels, perfect,
+splendid, established to endure, rose magically before him. And sometimes
+the memories were absurdly remote and trivial, of garrets he had
+inhabited and lodgings that had sheltered him, and so forth. Oleron had
+known a good deal about such things in his time, but all that was now
+past. He had at last found a place which he did not intend to leave until
+they fetched him out--a place that some might have thought a little on
+the green-sick side, that others might have considered to be a little too
+redolent of long-dead and morbid things for a living man to be mewed up
+in, but ah, so irresistible, with such an authority of its own, with such
+an associate of its own, and a place of such delights when once a man had
+ceased to struggle against its inexorable will! A novel? Somebody ought
+to write a novel about a place like that! There must be lots to write
+about in a place like that if one could but get to the bottom of it! It
+had probably already been painted, by a man called Madley who had lived
+there ... but Oleron had not known this Madley--had a strong feeling
+that he wouldn't have liked him--would rather he had lived somewhere
+else--really couldn't stand the fellow--hated him, Madley, in fact. (Aha!
+That was a joke!). He seriously doubted whether the man had led the life
+he ought; Oleron was in two minds sometimes whether he wouldn't tell that
+long-nosed guardian of the public morals across the way about him; but
+probably he knew, and had made his praying hullabaloos for him also.
+That was his line. Why, Oleron himself had had a dust-up with him about
+something or other ... some girl or other ... Elsie Bengough her name
+was, he remembered....
+
+Oleron had moments of deep uneasiness about this Elsie Bengough. Or
+rather, he was not so much uneasy about her as restless about the things
+she did. Chief of these was the way in which she persisted in thrusting
+herself into his thoughts; and, whenever he was quick enough, he sent her
+packing the moment she made her appearance there. The truth was that she
+was not merely a bore; she had always been that; it had now come to the
+pitch when her very presence in his fancy was inimical to the full
+enjoyment of certain experiences.... She had no tact; really ought to
+have known that people are not at home to the thoughts of everybody all
+the time; ought in mere politeness to have allowed him certain seasons
+quite to himself; and was monstrously ignorant of things if she did not
+know, as she appeared not to know, that there were certain special hours
+when a man's veins ran with fire and daring and power, in which ... well,
+in which he had a reasonable right to treat folk as he had treated that
+prying Barrett--to shut them out completely.... But no: up she popped,
+the thought of her, and ruined all. Bright towering fabrics, by the side
+of which even those perfect, magical novels of which he dreamed were dun
+and grey, vanished utterly at her intrusion. It was as if a fog should
+suddenly quench some fair-beaming star, as if at the threshold of some
+golden portal prepared for Oleron a pit should suddenly gape, as if a
+bat-like shadow should turn the growing dawn to mirk and darkness
+again.... Therefore, Oleron strove to stifle even the nascent thought
+of her.
+
+Nevertheless, there came an occasion on which this woman Bengough
+absolutely refused to be suppressed. Oleron could not have told exactly
+when this happened; he only knew by the glimmer of the street lamp on his
+blind that it was some time during the night, and that for some time she
+had not presented herself.
+
+He had no warning, none, of her coming; she just came--was there. Strive
+as he would, he could not shake off the thought of her nor the image of
+her face. She haunted him.
+
+But for her to come at that moment of all moments!... Really, it was past
+belief! How she could endure it, Oleron could not conceive! Actually, to
+look on, as it were, at the triumph of a Rival.... Good God! It was
+monstrous! tact--reticence--he had never credited her with an
+overwhelming amount of either: but he had never attributed mere--oh,
+there was no word for it! Monstrous--monstrous! Did she intend
+thenceforward.... Good God! To look on!...
+
+Oleron felt the blood rush up to the roots of his hair with anger against
+her.
+
+"Damnation take her!" he choked....
+
+But the next moment his heat and resentment had changed to a cold sweat
+of cowering fear. Panic-stricken, he strove to comprehend what he had
+done. For though he knew not what, he knew he had done something,
+something fatal, irreparable, blasting. Anger he had felt, but not _this_
+blaze of ire that suddenly flooded the twilight of his consciousness with
+a white infernal light. _That_ appalling flash was not his--not his
+_that_ open rift of bright and searing Hell--not his, not his! His had
+been the hand of a child, preparing a puny blow; but what was _this
+other_ horrific hand that was drawn back to strike in the same place? Had
+_he_ set that in motion? Had _he_ provided the spark that had touched off
+the whole accumulated power of that formidable and relentless place? He
+did not know. He only knew that that poor igniting particle in himself
+was blown out, that--Oh, impossible!--a clinging kiss (how else to
+express it?) had changed on his very lips to a gnashing and a removal,
+and that for very pity of the awful odds he must cry out to her against
+whom he had lately raged to guard herself ... guard herself....
+
+"_Look out!_" he shrieked aloud....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The revulsion was instant. As if a cold slow billow had broken over him,
+he came to to find that he was lying in his bed, that the mist and horror
+that had for so long enwrapped him had departed, that he was Paul Oleron,
+and that he was sick, naked, helpless, and unutterably abandoned and
+alone. His faculties, though weak, answered at last to his calls upon
+them; and he knew that it must have been a hideous nightmare that had
+left him sweating and shaking thus.
+
+Yes, he was himself, Paul Oleron, a tired novelist, already past the
+summit of his best work, and slipping downhill again empty-handed from it
+all. He had struck short in his life's aim. He had tried too much, had
+over-estimated his strength, and was a failure, a failure....
+
+It all came to him in the single word, enwrapped and complete; it needed
+no sequential thought; he was a failure. He had missed....
+
+And he had missed not one happiness, but two. He had missed the ease of
+this world, which men love, and he had missed also that other shining
+prize for which men forgo ease, the snatching and holding and triumphant
+bearing up aloft of which is the only justification of the mad adventurer
+who hazards the enterprise. And there was no second attempt. Fate has no
+morrow. Oleron's morrow must be to sit down to profitless, ill-done,
+unrequired work again, and so on the morrow after that, and the morrow
+after that, and as many morrows as there might be....
+
+He lay there, weakly yet sanely considering it....
+
+And since the whole attempt had failed, it was hardly worth while to
+consider whether a little might not be saved from the general wreck. No
+good would ever come of that half-finished novel. He had intended that it
+should appear in the autumn; was under contract that it should appear; no
+matter; it was better to pay forfeit to his publishers than to waste what
+days were left. He was spent; age was not far off; and paths of wisdom
+and sadness were the properest for the remainder of the journey....
+
+If only he had chosen the wife, the child the faithful friend at the
+fireside, and let them follow an _ignis fatuus_ that list!...
+
+In the meantime it began to puzzle him exceedingly what he should be so
+weak, that his room should smell so overpoweringly of decaying vegetable
+matter, and that his hand, chancing to stray to his face in the darkness,
+should encounter a beard.
+
+"Most extraordinary!" he began to mutter to himself. "Have I been ill? Am
+I ill now? And if so, why have they left me alone?... Extraordinary!..."
+
+He thought he heard a sound from the kitchen or bathroom. He rose a
+little on his pillow, and listened.... Ah! He was not alone, then! It
+certainly would have been extraordinary if they had left him ill and
+alone--Alone? Oh no. He would be looked after. He wouldn't be left, ill,
+to shift for himself. If everybody else had forsaken him, he could trust
+Elsie Bengough, the dearest chum he had, for that ... bless her faithful
+heart!
+
+But suddenly a short, stifled, spluttering cry rang sharply out:
+
+"_Paul!_"
+
+It came from the kitchen.
+
+And in the same moment it flashed upon Oleron, he knew not how, that two,
+three, five, he knew not how many minutes before, another sound, unmarked
+at the time but suddenly transfixing his attention now, had striven to
+reach his intelligence. This sound had been the slight touch of metal on
+metal--just such a sound as Oleron made when he put his key into the
+lock.
+
+"Hallo!... Who's that?" he called sharply from his bed.
+
+He had no answer.
+
+He called again. "Hallo!... Who's there?... Who is it?"
+
+This time he was sure he heard noises, soft and heavy, in the kitchen.
+
+"This is a queer thing altogether," he muttered. "By Jove, I'm as weak as
+a kitten too.... Hallo, there! Somebody called, didn't they?... Elsie! Is
+that you?..."
+
+Then he began to knock with his hand on the wall at the side of his bed.
+
+"Elsie!... Elsie!... You called, didn't you?... Please come here, whoever
+it is!..."
+
+There was a sound as of a closing door, and then silence. Oleron began to
+get rather alarmed.
+
+"It may be a nurse," he muttered; "Elsie'd have to get me a nurse, of
+course. She'd sit with me as long as she could spare the time, brave
+lass, and she'd get a nurse for the rest.... But it was awfully like her
+voice.... Elsie, or whoever it is!... I can't make this out at all. I
+must go and see what's the matter...."
+
+He put one leg out of bed. Feeling its feebleness, he reached with his
+hand for the additional support of the wall....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But before putting out the other leg he stopped and considered, picking
+at his new-found beard. He was suddenly wondering whether he _dared_ go
+into the kitchen. It was such a frightfully long way; no man knew what
+horror might not leap and huddle on his shoulders if he went so far;
+when a man has an overmastering impulse to get back into bed he ought to
+take heed of the warning and obey it. Besides, why should he go? What
+was there to go for? If it was that Bengough creature again, let her look
+after herself; Oleron was not going to have things cramp themselves on
+his defenceless back for the sake of such a spoilsport as _she_!... If
+she was in, let her let herself out again, and the sooner the better for
+her! Oleron simply couldn't be bothered. He had his work to do. On the
+morrow, he must set about the writing of a novel with a heroine so
+winsome, capricious, adorable, jealous, wicked, beautiful, inflaming, and
+altogether evil, that men should stand amazed. She was coming over him
+now; he knew by the alteration of the very air of the room when she was
+near him; and that soft thrill of bliss that had begun to stir in him
+never came unless she was beckoning, beckoning....
+
+He let go the wall and fell back into bed again as--oh, unthinkable!--the
+other half of that kiss that a gnash had interrupted was placed (how else
+convey it?) on his lips, robbing him of very breath....
+
+
+XII
+
+In the bright June sunlight a crowd filled the square, and looked up at
+the windows of the old house with the antique insurance marks in its
+walls of red brick and the agents' notice-boards hanging like wooden
+choppers over the paling. Two constables stood at the broken gate of the
+narrow entrance-alley, keeping folk back. The women kept to the outskirts
+of the throng, moving now and then as if to see the drawn red blinds of
+the old house from a new angle, and talking in whispers. The children
+were in the houses, behind closed doors.
+
+A long-nosed man had a little group about him, and he was telling some
+story over and over again; and another man, little and fat and wide-eyed,
+sought to capture the long-nosed man's audience with some relation in
+which a key figured.
+
+"... and it was revealed to me that there'd been something that very
+afternoon," the long-nosed man was saying. "I was standing there, where
+Constable Saunders is--or rather, I was passing about my business, when
+they came out. There was no deceiving me, oh, no deceiving _me! I_ saw
+her face...."
+
+"What was it like, Mr. Barrett?" a man asked.
+
+"It was like hers whom our Lord said to, 'Woman, doth any man accuse
+thee?'--white as paper, and no mistake! Don't tell _me_!... And so I
+walks straight across to Mrs. Barrett, and 'Jane,' I says, 'this must
+stop, and stop at once; we are commanded to avoid evil,' I says, 'and it
+must come to an end now; let him get help elsewhere.'
+
+"And she says to me, 'John,' she says, 'it's four-and-sixpence a
+week'--them was her words.
+
+"'Jane,' I says, 'if it was forty-six thousand pounds it should
+stop'... and from that day to this she hasn't set foot inside that gate."
+
+There was a short silence: then,
+
+"Did Mrs. Barrett ever..._ see_ anythink, like?" somebody vaguely
+inquired.
+
+Barrett turned austerely on the speaker.
+
+"What Mrs. Barrett saw and Mrs. Barrett didn't see shall not pass these
+lips; even as it is written, keep thy tongue from speaking evil," he
+said.
+
+Another man spoke.
+
+"He was pretty near canned up in the _Waggon and Horses_ that night,
+weren't he, Jim?"
+
+"Yes, 'e 'adn't 'alf copped it...."
+
+"Not standing treat much, neither; he was in the bar, all on his own...."
+
+"So 'e was; we talked about it...."
+
+The fat, scared-eyed man made another attempt.
+
+"She got the key off of me--she 'ad the number of it--she come into my
+shop of a Tuesday evening...."
+
+Nobody heeded him.
+
+"Shut your heads," a heavy labourer commented gruffly, "she hasn't been
+found yet. 'Ere's the inspectors; we shall know more in a bit."
+
+Two inspectors had come up and were talking to the constables who guarded
+the gate. The little fat man ran eagerly forward, saying that she had
+bought the key of him. "I remember the number, because of it's being
+three one's and three three's--111333!" he exclaimed excitedly.
+
+An inspector put him aside.
+
+"Nobody's been in?" he asked of one of the constables.
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Then you, Brackley, come with us; you, Smith, keep the gate. There's a
+squad on its way."
+
+The two inspectors and the constable passed down the alley and entered
+the house. They mounted the wide carved staircase.
+
+"This don't look as if he'd been out much lately," one of the inspectors
+muttered as he kicked aside a litter of dead leaves and paper that lay
+outside Oleron's door. "I don't think we need knock--break a pane,
+Brackley."
+
+The door had two glazed panels; there was a sound of shattered glass; and
+Brackley put his hand through the hole his elbow had made and drew back
+the latch.
+
+"Faugh!"... choked one of the inspectors as they entered. "Let some light
+and air in, quick. It stinks like a hearse--"
+
+The assembly out in the square saw the red blinds go up and the windows
+of the old house flung open.
+
+"That's better," said one of the inspectors, putting his head out of a
+window and drawing a deep breath.... "That seems to be the bedroom in
+there; will you go in, Simms, while I go over the rest?..."
+
+They had drawn up the bedroom blind also, and the waxy-white, emaciated
+man on the bed had made a blinker of his hand against the torturing
+flood of brightness. Nor could he believe that his hearing was not
+playing tricks with him, for there were two policemen in his room,
+bending over him and asking where "she" was. He shook his head.
+
+"This woman Bengough... goes by the name of Miss Elsie Bengough... d'ye
+hear? Where is she?... No good, Brackley; get him up; be careful with
+him; I'll just shove _my_ head out of the window, I think...."
+
+The other inspector had been through Oleron's study and had found
+nothing, and was now in the kitchen, kicking aside an ankle-deep mass of
+vegetable refuse that cumbered the floor. The kitchen window had no
+blind, and was over-shadowed by the blank end of the house across the
+alley. The kitchen appeared to be empty.
+
+But the inspector, kicking aside the dead flowers, noticed that a
+shuffling track that was not of his making had been swept to a cupboard
+in the corner. In the upper part of the door of the cupboard was a square
+panel that looked as if it slid on runners. The door itself was closed.
+
+The inspector advanced, put out his hand to the little knob, and slid the
+hatch along its groove.
+
+Then he took an involuntary step back again.
+
+Framed in the aperture, and falling forward a little before it jammed
+again in its frame, was something that resembled a large lumpy pudding,
+done up in a pudding-bag of faded browny red frieze.
+
+"Ah!" said the inspector.
+
+To close the hatch again he would have had to thrust that pudding back
+with his hand; and somehow he did not quite like the idea of touching
+it. Instead, he turned the handle of the cupboard itself. There was
+weight behind it, so much weight that, after opening the door three or
+four inches and peering inside, he had to put his shoulder to it in order
+to close it again. In closing it he left sticking out, a few inches from
+the floor, a triangle of black and white check skirt.
+
+He went into the small hall.
+
+"All right!" he called.
+
+They had got Oleron into his clothes. He still used his hands as
+blinkers, and his brain was very confused. A number of things were
+happening that he couldn't understand. He couldn't understand the
+extraordinary mess of dead flowers there seemed to be everywhere; he
+couldn't understand why there should be police officers in his room; he
+couldn't understand why one of these should be sent for a four-wheeler
+and a stretcher; and he couldn't understand what heavy article they
+seemed to be moving about in the kitchen--his kitchen....
+
+"What's the matter?" he muttered sleepily....
+
+Then he heard a murmur in the square, and the stopping of a four-wheeler
+outside. A police officer was at his elbow again, and Oleron wondered
+why, when he whispered something to him, he should run off a string of
+words--something about "used in evidence against you." They had lifted
+him to his feet, and were assisting him towards the door....
+
+No, Oleron couldn't understand it at all.
+
+They got him down the stairs and along the alley. Oleron was aware of
+confused angry shoutings; he gathered that a number of people wanted to
+lynch somebody or other. Then his attention became fixed on a little fat
+frightened-eyed man who appeared to be making a statement that an officer
+was taking down in a notebook.
+
+"I'd seen her with him ... they was often together ... she came into my
+shop and said it was for him ... I thought it was all right ... 111333
+the number was," the man was saying.
+
+The people seemed to be very angry; many police were keeping them back;
+but one of the inspectors had a voice that Oleron thought quite kind and
+friendly. He was telling somebody to get somebody else into the cab
+before something or other was brought out; and Oleron noticed that a
+four-wheeler was drawn up at the gate. It appeared that it was himself
+who was to be put into it; and as they lifted him up he saw that the
+inspector tried to stand between him and something that stood behind the
+cab, but was not quick enough to prevent Oleron seeing that this
+something was a hooded stretcher. The angry voices sounded like a sea;
+something hard, like a stone, hit the back of the cab; and the inspector
+followed Oleron in and stood with his back to the window nearer the side
+where the people were. The door they had put Oleron in at remained open,
+apparently till the other inspector should come; and through the opening
+Oleron had a glimpse of the hatchet-like "To Let" boards among the
+privet-trees. One of them said that the key was at Number Six....
+
+Suddenly the raging of voices was hushed. Along the entrance-alley
+shuffling steps were heard, and the other inspector appeared at the
+cab door.
+
+"Right away," he said to the driver.
+
+He entered, fastened the door after him, and blocked up the second window
+with his back. Between the two inspectors Oleron slept peacefully. The
+cab moved down the square, the other vehicle went up the hill. The
+mortuary lay that way.
+
+
+
+
+PHANTAS
+
+
+     _"For, barring all pother,
+      With this, or the other,
+Still Britons are Lords of the Main._"
+
+
+THE CHAPTER OF ADMIRALS
+
+
+I
+
+As Abel Keeling lay on the galleon's deck, held from rolling down it only
+by his own weight and the sun-blackened hand that lay outstretched upon
+the planks, his gaze wandered, but ever returned to the bell that hung,
+jammed with the dangerous heel-over of the vessel, in the small
+ornamental belfry immediately abaft the mainmast. The bell was of cast
+bronze, with half-obliterated bosses upon it that had been the heads of
+cherubs; but wind and salt spray had given it a thick incrustation of
+bright, beautiful, lichenous green. It was this colour that Abel
+Keeling's eyes liked.
+
+For wherever else on the galleon his eyes rested they found only
+whiteness--the whiteness of extreme eld. There were slightly varying
+degrees in her whiteness; here she was of a white that glistened like
+salt-granules, there of a greyish chalky white, and again her whiteness
+had the yellowish cast of decay; but everywhere it was the mild,
+disquieting whiteness of materials out of which the life had departed.
+Her cordage was bleached as old straw is bleached, and half her ropes
+kept their shape little more firmly than the ash of a string keeps its
+shape after the fire has passed; her pallid timbers were white and clean
+as bones found in sand; and even the wild frankincense with which (for
+lack of tar, at her last touching of land) she had been pitched, had
+dried to a pale hard gum that sparkled like quartz in her open seams. The
+sun was yet so pale a buckler of silver through the still white mists
+that not a cord or timber cast a shadow; and only Abel Keeling's face and
+hands were black, carked and cinder-black from exposure to his pitiless
+rays.
+
+The galleon was the _Mary of the Tower_, and she had a frightful list to
+starboard. So canted was she that her mainyard dipped one of its steel
+sickles into the glassy water, and, had her foremast remained, or more
+than the broken stump of her bonaventure mizzen, she must have turned
+over completely. Many days ago they had stripped the mainyard of its
+course, and had passed the sail under the Mary's bottom, in the hope that
+it would stop the leak. This it had partly done as long as the galleon
+had continued to glide one way; then, without coming about, she had begun
+to glide the other, the ropes had parted, and she had dragged the sail
+after her, leaving a broad tarnish on the silver sea.
+
+For it was broadside that the galleon glided, almost imperceptibly, ever
+sucking down. She glided as if a loadstone drew her, and, at first, Abel
+Keeling had thought it was a loadstone, pulling at her iron, drawing her
+through the pearly mists that lay like face-cloths to the water and hid
+at a short distance the tarnish left by the sail. But later he had known
+that it was no loadstone drawing at her iron. The motion was due--must
+be due--to the absolute deadness of the calm in that silent, sinister,
+three-miles-broad waterway. With the eye of his mind he saw that
+loadstone now as he lay against a gun-truck, all but toppling down the
+deck. Soon that would happen again which had happened for five days past.
+He would hear again the chattering of monkeys and the screaming of
+parrots, the mat of green and yellow weeds would creep in towards the
+Mary over the quicksilver sea, once more the sheer wall of rock would
+rise, and the men would run....
+
+But no; the men would not run this time to drop the fenders. There were
+no men left to do so, unless Bligh was still alive. Perhaps Bligh was
+still alive. He had walked half-way down the quarter-deck steps a little
+before the sudden nightfall of the day before, had then fallen and lain
+for a minute (dead, Abel Keeling had supposed, watching him from his
+place by the gun-truck), and had then got up again and tottered forward
+to the forecastle, his tall figure swaying and his long arms waving. Abel
+Keeling had not seen him since. Most likely, he had died in the
+forecastle during the night. If he had not been dead he would have come
+aft again for water....
+
+At the remembrance of the water Abel Keeling lifted his head. The strands
+of lean muscle about his emaciated mouth worked, and he made a little
+pressure of his sun-blackened hand on the deck, as if to verify its
+steepness and his own balance. The mainmast was some seven or eight yards
+away.... He put one stiff leg under him and began, seated as he was, to
+make shuffling movements down the slope.
+
+To the mainmast, near the belfry, was affixed his contrivance for
+catching water. It consisted of a collar of rope set lower at one side
+than at the other (but that had been before the mast had steeved so many
+degrees away from the zenith), and tallowed beneath. The mists lingered
+later in that gully of a strait than they did on the open ocean, and the
+collar of rope served as a collector for the dews that condensed on the
+mast. The drops fell into a small earthen pipkin placed on the deck
+beneath it.
+
+Abel Keeling reached the pipkin and looked into it. It was nearly a third
+full of fresh water. Good. If Bligh, the mate, was dead, so much the more
+water for Abel Keeling, master of the _Mary of the Tower_. He dipped two
+fingers into the pipkin and put them into his mouth. This he did several
+times. He did not dare to raise the pipkin to his black and broken lips
+for dread of a remembered agony, he could not have told how many days
+ago, when a devil had whispered to him, and he had gulped down the
+contents of the pipkin in the morning, and for the rest of the day had
+gone waterless.... Again he moistened his fingers and sucked them; then
+he lay sprawling against the mast, idly watching the drops of water
+as they fell.
+
+It was odd how the drops formed. Slowly they collected at the edge of the
+tallowed collar, trembled in their fullness for an instant, and fell,
+another beginning the process instantly. It amused Abel Keeling to watch
+them. Why (he wondered) were all the drops the same size? What cause and
+compulsion did they obey that they never varied, and what frail tenuity
+held the little globules intact? It must be due to some Cause.... He
+remembered that the aromatic gum of the wild frankincense with which they
+had parcelled the seams had hung on the buckets in great sluggish gouts,
+obedient to a different compulsion; oil was different again, and so were
+juices and balsams. Only quicksilver (perhaps the heavy and motionless
+sea put him in mind of quicksilver) seemed obedient to no law.... Why was
+it so?
+
+Bligh, of course, would have had his explanation: it was the Hand of God.
+That sufficed for Bligh, who had gone forward the evening before, and
+whom Abel Keeling now seemed vaguely and as at a distance to remember as
+the deep-voiced fanatic who had sung his hymns as, man by man, he had
+committed the bodies of the ship's company to the deep. Bligh was that
+sort of man; accepted things without question; was content to take things
+as they were and be ready with the fenders when the wall of rock rose out
+of the opalescent mists. Bligh, too, like the waterdrops, had his Law,
+that was his and nobody else's....
+
+There floated down from some rotten rope up aloft a flake of scurf, that
+settled in the pipkin. Abel Keeling watched it dully as it settled
+towards the pipkin's rim. When presently he again dipped his fingers into
+the vessel the water ran into a little vortex, drawing the flake with it.
+The water settled again; and again the minute flake determined towards
+the rim and adhered there, as if the rim had power to draw it....
+
+It was exactly so that the galleon was gliding towards the wall of rock,
+the yellow and green weeds, and the monkeys and parrots. Put out into
+mid-water again (while there had been men to put her out) she had glided
+to the other wall. One force drew the chip in the pipkin and the ship
+over the tranced sea. It was the Hand of God, said Bligh....
+
+Abel Keeling, his mind now noting minute things and now clouded with
+torpor, did not at first hear a voice that was quakingly lifted up
+over by the forecastle--a voice that drew nearer, to an accompaniment of
+swirling water.
+
+_"O Thou, that Jonas in the fish
+  Three days didst keep from pain,
+Which was a figure of Thy death
+  And rising up again--"_
+
+It was Bligh, singing one of his hymns:
+
+_"O Thou, that Noah keptst from flood
+  And Abram, day by day,
+As he along through Egypt passed
+  Didst guide him in the way--"_
+
+The voice ceased, leaving the pious period uncompleted. Bligh was alive,
+at any rate.... Abel Keeling resumed his fitful musing.
+
+Yes, that was the Law of Bligh's life, to call things the Hand of God;
+but Abel Keeling's Law was different; no better, no worse, only
+different. The Hand of God, that drew chips and galleons, must work by
+some method; and Abel Keeling's eyes were dully on the pipkin again as if
+he sought the method there....
+
+Then conscious thought left him for a space, and when he resumed it was
+without obvious connection.
+
+Oars, of course, were the thing. With oars, men could laugh at calms.
+Oars, that only pinnaces and galliasses now used, had had their
+advantages. But oars (which was to say a method, for you could say if you
+liked that the Hand of God grasped the oar-loom, as the Breath of God
+filled the sail)--oars were antiquated, belonged to the past, and meant a
+throwing-over of all that was good and new and a return to fine lines, a
+battle-formation abreast to give effect to the shock of the ram, and a
+day or two at sea and then to port again for provisions. Oars ... no.
+Abel Keeling was one of the new men, the men who swore by the line-ahead,
+the broadside fire of sakers and demi-cannon, and weeks and months
+without a landfall. Perhaps one day the wits of such men as he would
+devise a craft, not oar-driven (because oars could not penetrate into the
+remote seas of the world)--not sail-driven (because men who trusted to
+sails found themselves in an airless, three-mile strait, suspended
+motionless between cloud and water, ever gliding to a wall of rock)--but
+a ship ... a ship ...
+
+"_To Noah and his sons with him
+  God spake, and thus said He:
+A covenant set I up with you
+  And your posterity_--"
+
+It was Bligh again, wandering somewhere in the waist. Abel Keeling's mind
+was once more a blank. Then slowly, slowly, as the water drops collected
+on the collar of rope, his thought took shape again.
+
+A galliasse? No, not a galliasse. The galliasse made shift to be two
+things, and was neither. This ship, that the hand of man should one day
+make for the Hand of God to manage, should be a ship that should take and
+conserve the force of the wind, take it and store it as she stored her
+victuals; at rest when she wished, going ahead when she wished; turning
+the forces both of calm and storm against themselves. For, of course, her
+force must be wind--stored wind--a bag of the winds, as the children's
+tale had it--wind probably directed upon the water astern, driving it
+away and urging forward the ship, acting by reaction. She would have a
+wind-chamber, into which wind would be pumped with pumps.... Bligh would
+call that equally the Hand of God, this driving-force of the ship of the
+future that Abel Keeling dimly foreshadowed as he lay between the
+mainmast and the belfry, turning his eyes now and then from ashy white
+timbers to the vivid green bronze-rust of the bell above him....
+
+Bligh's face, liver-coloured with the sun and ravaged from inwards by the
+faith that consumed him, appeared at the head of the quarter-deck steps.
+His voice beat uncontrolledly out.
+
+_"And in the earth here is no place
+    Of refuge to be found,
+Nor in the deep and water-course
+    That passeth under ground--"_
+
+
+II
+
+Bligh's eyes were lidded, as if in contemplation of his inner ecstasy.
+His head was thrown back, and his brows worked up and down tormentedly.
+His wide mouth remained open as his hymn was suddenly interrupted on the
+long-drawn note. From somewhere in the shimmering mists the note was
+taken up, and there drummed and rang and reverberated through the strait
+a windy, hoarse, and dismal bellow, alarming and sustained. A tremor rang
+through Bligh. Moving like a sightless man, he stumbled forward from the
+head of the quarter-deck steps, and Abel Keeling was aware of his gaunt
+figure behind him, taller for the steepness of the deck. As that vast
+empty sound died away, Bligh laughed in his mania.
+
+"Lord, hath the grave's wide mouth a tongue to praise Thee? Lo, again--"
+
+Again the cavernous sound possessed the air, louder and nearer. Through
+it came another sound, a slow throb, throb--throb, throb--Again the
+sounds ceased.
+
+"Even Leviathan lifteth up his voice in praise!" Bligh sobbed.
+
+Abel Keeling did not raise his head. There had returned to him the memory
+of that day when, before the morning mists had lifted from the strait, he
+had emptied the pipkin of the water that was the allowance until night
+should fall again. During that agony of thirst he had seen shapes and
+heard sounds with other than his mortal eyes and ears, and even in the
+moments that had alternated with his lightness, when he had known these
+to be hallucinations, they had come again. He had heard the bells on a
+Sunday in his own Kentish home, the calling of children at play, the
+unconcerned singing of men at their daily labour, and the laughter and
+gossip of the women as they had spread the linen on the hedge or
+distributed bread upon the platters. These voices had rung in his brain,
+interrupted now and then by the groans of Bligh and of two other men who
+had been alive then. Some of the voices he had heard had been silent on
+earth this many a long year, but Abel Keeling, thirst-tortured, had heard
+them, even as he was now hearing that vacant moaning with the
+intermittent throbbing that filled the strait with alarm....
+
+"Praise Him, praise Him, praise Him!" Bligh was calling deliriously.
+
+Then a bell seemed to sound in Abel Keeling's ears, and, as if something
+in the mechanism of his brain had slipped, another picture rose in his
+fancy--the scene when the _Mary of the Tower_ had put out, to a bravery
+of swinging bells and shrill fifes and valiant trumpets. She had not been
+a leper-white galleon then. The scroll-work on her prow had twinkled with
+gilding; her belfry and stern-galleries and elaborate lanterns had
+flashed in the sun with gold; and her fighting-tops and the war-pavesse
+about her waist had been gay with painted coats and scutcheons. To her
+sails had been stitched gaudy ramping lions of scarlet saye, and from her
+mainyard, now dipping in the water, had hung the broad two-tailed pennant
+with the Virgin and Child embroidered upon it....
+
+Then suddenly a voice about him seemed to be saying, "_And a
+half-seven--and a half-seven--_" and in a twink the picture in Abel
+Keeling's brain changed again. He was at home again, instructing his son,
+young Abel, in the casting of the lead from the skiff they had pulled out
+of the harbour.
+
+"_And a half-seven!_" the boy seemed to be calling.
+
+Abel Keeling's blackened lips muttered: "Excellently well cast, Abel,
+excellently well cast!"
+
+"_And a half-seven--and a half-seven--seven--seven--_"
+
+"Ah," Abel Keeling murmured, "that last was not a clear cast--give me the
+line--thus it should go ... ay, so.... Soon you shall sail the seas with
+me in the _Mary of the Tower_. You are already perfect in the stars and
+the motions of the planets; to-morrow I will instruct you in the use of
+the backstaff...."
+
+For a minute or two he continued to mutter; then he dozed. When again he
+came to semi-consciousness it was once more to the sound of bells, at
+first faint, then louder, and finally becoming a noisy clamour
+immediately above his head. It was Bligh. Bligh, in a fresh attack of
+delirium, had seized the bell-lanyard and was ringing the bell insanely.
+The cord broke in his fingers, but he thrust at the bell with his hand,
+and again called aloud.
+
+"Upon an harp and an instrument of ten strings ... let Heaven and Earth
+praise Thy Name!..."
+
+He continued to call aloud, and to beat on the bronze-rusted bell.
+
+_"Ship ahoy! What ship's that?"_
+
+One would have said that a veritable hail had come out of the mists; but
+Abel Keeling knew those hails that came out of the mists. They came from
+ships which were not there. "Ay, ay, keep a good look-out, and have a
+care to your lodemanage," he muttered again to his son....
+
+But, as sometimes a sleeper sits up in his dream, or rises from his couch
+and walks, so all of a sudden Abel Keeling found himself on his hands and
+knees on the deck, looking back over his shoulder. In some deep-seated
+region of his consciousness he was dimly aware that the cant of the deck
+had become more perilous, but his brain received the intelligence and
+forgot it again. He was looking out into the bright and baffling mists.
+The buckler of the sun was of a more ardent silver; the sea below it was
+lost in brilliant evaporation; and between them, suspended in the haze,
+no more substantial than the vague darknesses that float before dazzled
+eyes, a pyramidal phantom-shape hung. Abel Keeling passed his hand over
+his eyes, but when he removed it the shape was still there, gliding
+slowly towards the _Mary's_ quarter. Its form changed as he watched it.
+The spirit-grey shape that had been a pyramid seemed to dissolve into
+four upright members, slightly graduated in tallness, that nearest the
+_Mary's_ stern the tallest and that to the left the lowest. It might have
+been the shadow of the gigantic set of reed-pipes on which that vacant
+mournful note had been sounded.
+
+And as he looked, with fooled eyes, again his ears became fooled:
+
+_"Ahoy there! What ship's that? Are you a ship?... Here, give me that
+trumpet--"_ Then a metallic barking. _"Ahoy there! What the devil are
+you? Didn't you ring a bell? Ring it again, or blow a blast or something,
+and go dead slow!"_
+
+All this came, as it were, indistinctly, and through a sort of high
+singing in Abel Keeling's own ears. Then he fancied a short bewildered
+laugh, followed by a colloquy from somewhere between sea and sky.
+
+"Here, Ward, just pinch me, will you? Tell me what you see there. I want
+to know if I'm awake."
+
+"See where?"
+
+"There, on the starboard bow. (Stop that ventilating fan; I can't
+hear myself think.) See anything? Don't tell me it's that damned
+Dutchman--don't pitch me that old Vanderdecken tale--give me an easy
+one first, something about a sea-serpent.... You did hear that bell,
+didn't you?"
+
+"Shut up a minute--listen--"
+
+Again Bligh's voice was lifted up.
+
+_"This is the cov'nant that I make:
+  From henceforth nevermore
+Will I again the world destroy
+  With water, as before."_
+
+Bligh's voice died away again in Abel Keeling's ears.
+
+"_Oh--my--fat--Aunt--Julia!_" the voice that seemed to come from between
+sea and sky sounded again. Then it spoke more loudly. "_I say,_" it began
+with careful politeness, "_if you are a ship, do you mind telling us
+where the masquerade is to be? Our wireless is out of order, and we
+hadn't heard of it.... Oh, you do see it, Ward, don't you?... Please,
+please tell us what the hell you are!_"
+
+Again Abel Keeling had moved as a sleepwalker moves. He had raised
+himself up by the belfry timbers, and Bligh had sunk in a heap on the
+deck. Abel Keeling's movement overturned the pipkin, which raced the
+little trickle of its contents down the deck and lodged where the still
+and brimming sea made, as it were, a chain with the carved balustrade of
+the quarter-deck--one link a still gleaming edge, then a dark baluster,
+and then another gleaming link. For one moment only Abel Keeling found
+himself noticing that that which had driven Bligh aft had been the
+rising of the water in the waist as the galleon settled by the head--the
+waist was now entirely submerged; then once more he was absorbed in
+his dream, its voices, and its shape in the mist, which had again taken
+the form of a pyramid before his eyeballs.
+
+"_Of course_," a voice seemed to be complaining anew, and still through
+that confused dinning in Abel Keeling's ears, "_we can't turn a four-inch
+on it.... And, of course, Ward, I don't believe in 'em. D'you hear, Ward?
+I don't believe in 'em, I say.... Shall we call down to old A. B.? This
+might interest His Scientific Skippership...._"
+
+"Oh, lower a boat and pull out to it--into it--over it--through it--"
+
+"Look at our chaps crowded on the barbette yonder. They've seen it.
+Better not give an order you know won't be obeyed...."
+
+Abel Keeling, cramped against the antique belfry, had begun to find his
+dream interesting. For, though he did not know her build, that mirage was
+the shape of a ship. No doubt it was projected from his brooding on ships
+of half an hour before; and that was odd.... But perhaps, after all, it
+was not very odd. He knew that she did not really exist; only the
+appearance of her existed; but things had to exist like that before they
+really existed. Before the _Mary of the Tower_ had existed she had been a
+shape in some man's imagination; before that, some dreamer had dreamed
+the form of a ship with oars; and before that, far away in the dawn and
+infancy of the world, some seer had seen in a vision the raft before man
+had ventured to push out over the water on his two planks. And since this
+shape that rode before Abel Keeling's eyes was a shape in his, Abel
+Keeling's dream, he, Abel Keeling, was the master of it. His own brooding
+brain had contrived her, and she was launched upon the illimitable ocean
+of his own mind....
+
+_"And I will not unmindful be
+  Of this, My covenant, passed
+Twixt Me and you and every flesh
+ Whiles that the world should last,"_
+
+sang Bligh, rapt....
+
+But as a dreamer, even in his dream, will scratch upon the wall by his
+couch some key or word to put him in mind of his vision on the morrow
+when it has left him, so Abel Keeling found himself seeking some sign to
+be a proof to those to whom no vision is vouchsafed. Even Bligh sought
+that--could not be silent in his bliss, but lay on the deck there,
+uttering great passionate Amens and praising his Maker, as he said, upon
+an harp and an instrument of ten strings. So with Abel Keeling. It would
+be the Amen of his life to have praised God, not upon a harp, but upon a
+ship that should carry her own power, that should store wind or its
+equivalent as she stored her victuals, that should be something wrested
+from the chaos of uninvention and ordered and disciplined and
+subordinated to Abel Keeling's will.... And there she was, that
+ship-shaped thing of spirit-grey, with the four pipes that resembled a
+phantom organ now broadside and of equal length. And the ghost-crew
+of that ship were speaking again....
+
+The interrupted silver chain by the quarterdeck balustrade had now become
+continuous, and the balusters made a herring-bone over their own
+motionless reflections. The spilt water from the pipkin had dried, and
+the pipkin was not to be seen. Abel Keeling stood beside the mast, erect
+as God made man to go. With his leathery hand he smote upon the bell. He
+waited for the space of a minute, and then cried:
+
+"Ahoy!... Ship ahoy!... What ship's that?"
+
+
+III
+
+We are not conscious in a dream that we are playing a game the beginning
+and end of which are in ourselves. In this dream of Abel Keeling's a
+voice replied:
+
+"_Hallo, it's found its tongue.... Ahoy there! What are you?_"
+
+Loudly and in a clear voice Abel Keeling called: "Are you a ship?"
+
+With a nervous giggle the answer came:
+
+"_We are a ship, aren't we, Ward? I hardly feel sure.... Yes, of course,
+we're a ship. No question about us. The question is what the dickens
+you are._"
+
+Not all the words these voices used were intelligible to Abel Keeling,
+and he knew not what it was in the tone of these last words that reminded
+him of the honour due to the _Mary of the Tower_. Blister-white and at
+the end of her life as she was, Abel Keeling was still jealous of her
+dignity; the voice had a youngish ring; and it was not fitting that young
+chins should be wagged about his galleon. He spoke curtly.
+
+"You that spoke--are you the master of that ship?"
+
+"_Officer of the watch_," the words floated back; "_the captain's
+below_."
+
+"Then send for him. It is with masters that masters hold speech," Abel
+Keeling replied.
+
+He could see the two shapes, flat and without relief, standing on a high
+narrow structure with rails. One of them gave a low whistle, and seemed
+to be fanning his face; but the other rumbled something into a sort of
+funnel. Presently the two shapes became three. There was a murmuring,
+as of a consultation, and then suddenly a new voice spoke. At its thrill
+and tone a sudden tremor ran through Abel Keeling's frame. He wondered
+what response it was that that voice found in the forgotten recesses of
+his memory....
+
+"_Ahoy!_" seemed to call this new yet faintly remembered voice. "_What's
+all this about? Listen. We're His Majesty's destroyer_ Seapink, _out of
+Devonport last October, and nothing particular the matter with us. Now
+who are you?_"
+
+"The _Mary of the Tower_, out of the Port of Rye on the day of Saint
+Anne, and only two men--"
+
+A gasp interrupted him.
+
+"_Out of_ WHERE?" that voice that so strangely moved Abel Keeling said
+unsteadily, while Bligh broke into groans of renewed rapture.
+
+"Out of the Port of Rye, in the County of Sussex ... nay, give ear, else
+I cannot make you hear me while this man's spirit and flesh wrestle so
+together!... Ahoy! Are you gone?" For the voices had become a low murmur,
+and the ship-shape had faded before Abel Keeling's eyes. Again and again
+he called. He wished to be informed of the disposition and economy of the
+wind-chamber....
+
+"The wind-chamber!" he called, in an agony lest the knowledge
+almost within his grasp should be lost. "I would know about the
+wind-chamber...."
+
+Like an echo, there came back the words, uncomprehendingly uttered, "_The
+wind-chamber_?..."
+
+"... that driveth the vessel--perchance 'tis not wind--a steel bow that
+is bent also conserveth force--the force you store, to move at will
+through calm and storm...."
+
+"Can you make out what it's driving at?"
+
+"Oh, we shall all wake up in a minute...."
+
+"Quiet, I have it; the engines; it wants to know about our engines.
+It'll be wanting to see our papers presently. Rye Port!... Well, no harm
+in humouring it; let's see what it can make of this. Ahoy there!" came
+the voice to Abel Keeling, a little more strongly, as if a shifting wind
+carried it, and speaking faster and faster as it went on. "Not wind, but
+steam; d'you hear? Steam, steam. Steam, in eight Yarrow water-tube
+boilers. S-t-e-a-m, steam. Got it? And we've twin-screw triple expansion
+engines, indicated horse-power four thousand, and we can do 430
+revolutions per minute; savvy? Is there anything your phantomhood would
+like to know about our armament?..."
+
+Abel Keeling was muttering fretfully to himself. It annoyed him that
+words in his own vision should have no meaning for him. How did words
+come to him in a dream that he had no knowledge of when wide awake? The
+_Seapink_--that was the name of this ship; but a pink was long and
+narrow, low-carged and square-built aft....
+
+"_And as for our armament,_" the voice with the tones that so profoundly
+troubled Abel Keeling's memory continued, "_we've two revolving Whitehead
+torpedo-tubes, three six-pounders on the upper deck, and that's a
+twelve-pounder forward there by the conning-tower. I forgot to mention
+that we're nickel steel, with a coal capacity of sixty tons in most
+damnably placed bunkers, and that thirty and a quarter knots is about our
+top. Care to come aboard?_"
+
+But the voice was speaking still more rapidly and feverishly, as if to
+fill a silence with no matter what, and the shape that was uttering it
+was straining forward anxiously over the rail.
+
+"_Ugh! But I'm glad this happened in the daylight,_" another voice was
+muttering.
+
+"I wish I was sure it was happening at all.... Poor old spook!"
+
+"I suppose it would keep its feet if her deck was quite vertical. Think
+she'll go down, or just melt?"
+
+"Kind of go down ... without wash...."
+
+"Listen--here's the other one now--"
+
+For Bligh was singing again:
+
+"For, Lord, Thou know'st our nature such
+  If we great things obtain,
+And in the getting of the same
+  Do feel no grief or pain,
+
+"We little do esteem thereof;
+  But, hardly brought to pass,
+A thousand times we do esteem
+  More than the other was."
+
+_"But oh, look--look--look at the other!... Oh, I say, wasn't he a grand
+old boy! Look!"_
+
+For, transfiguring Abel Reeling's form as a prophet's form is
+transfigured in the instant of his rapture, flooding his brain with the
+white eureka-light of perfect knowledge, that for which he and his dream
+had been at a standstill had come. He knew her, this ship of the future,
+as if God's Finger had bitten her lines into his brain. He knew her as
+those already sinking into the grave know things, miraculously,
+completely, accepting Life's impossibilities with a nodded "Of course."
+From the ardent mouths of her eight furnaces to the last drip from her
+lubricators, from her bed-plates to the breeches of her quick-firers, he
+knew her--read her gauges, thumbed her bearings, gave the ranges from her
+range-finders, and lived the life he lived who was in command of her. And
+he would not forget on the morrow, as he had forgotten on many morrows,
+for at last he had seen the water about his feet, and knew that there
+would be no morrow for him in this world....
+
+And even in that moment, with but a sand or two to run in his glass,
+indomitable, insatiable, dreaming dream on dream, he could not die until
+he knew more. He had two questions to ask, and a master-question; and but
+a moment remained. Sharply his voice rang out.
+
+"Ho, there!... This ancient ship, the _Mary of the Tower_, cannot steam
+thirty and a quarter knots, but yet she can sail the waters. What
+more does your ship? Can she soar above them, as the fowls of the air
+soar?"
+
+"_Lord, he thinks we're an aeroplane!... No, she can't...._"
+
+"And can you dive, even as the fishes of the deep?"
+
+"_No.... Those are submarines ... we aren't a submarine...._"
+
+But Abel Keeling waited for no more. He gave an exulting chuckle.
+
+"Oho, oho--thirty knots, and but on the face of the waters--no more than
+that? Oho!... Now _my_ ship, the ship I see as a mother sees full-grown
+the child she has but conceived--_my_ ship, I say--oho!--_my_ ship
+shall.... Below there--trip that gun!"
+
+The cry came suddenly and alertly, as a muffled sound came from below and
+an ominous tremor shook the galleon.
+
+"_By Jove, her guns are breaking loose below--that's her finish_--"
+
+"Trip that gun, and double-breech the others!" Abel Keeling's voice rang
+out, as if there had been any to obey him. He had braced himself within
+the belfry frame; and then in the middle of the next order his voice
+suddenly failed him. His ship-shape, that for the moment he had
+forgotten, rode once more before his eyes. This was the end, and his
+master-question, apprehension for the answer to which was now torturing
+his face and well-nigh bursting his heart, was still unasked.
+
+"Ho--he that spoke with me--the master," he cried in a voice that ran
+high, "is he there?"
+
+"_Yes, yes!_" came the other voice across the water, sick with suspense.
+"_Oh, be quick!_"
+
+There was a moment in which hoarse cries from many voices, a heavy thud
+and rumble on wood, and a crash of timbers and a gurgle and a splash were
+indescribably mingled; the gun under which Abel Keeling had lain had
+snapped her rotten breechings and plunged down the deck, carrying Bligh's
+unconscious form with it. The deck came up vertical, and for one instant
+longer Abel Keeling clung to the belfry.
+
+"I cannot see your face," he screamed, "but meseems your voice is a voice
+I know. _What is your name_?"
+
+In a torn sob the answer came across the water:
+
+"_Keeling--Abel Keeling.... Oh, my God!_"
+
+And Abel Keeling's cry of triumph, that mounted to a victorious "Huzza!"
+was lost in the downward plunge of the _Mary of the Tower_, that left
+the strait empty save for the sun's fiery blaze and the last smoke-like
+evaporation of the mists.
+
+
+
+
+ROOUM
+
+
+For all I ever knew to the contrary, it was his own name; and something
+about him, name or man or both, always put me in mind, I can't tell you
+how, of negroes. As regards the name, I dare say it was something
+huggermugger in the mere sound--something that I classed, for no
+particular reason, with the dark and ignorant sort of words, such as
+"Obi" and "Hoodoo." I only know that after I learned that his name was
+Rooum, I couldn't for the life of me have thought of him as being called
+anything else.
+
+The first impression that you got of his head was that it was a patchwork
+of black and white--black bushy hair and short white beard, or else the
+other way about. As a matter of fact, both hair and beard were piebald,
+so that if you saw him in the gloom a dim patch of white showed down one
+side of his head, and dark tufts cropped up here and there in his beard.
+His eyebrows alone were entirely black, with a little sprouting of hair
+almost joining them. And perhaps his skin helped to make me think of
+negroes, for it was very dark, of the dark brown that always seems to
+have more than a hint of green behind it. His forehead was low, and
+scored across with deep horizontal furrows.
+
+We never knew when he was going to turn up on a job. We might not have
+seen him for weeks, but his face was always as likely as not to appear
+over the edge of a crane-platform just when that marvellous mechanical
+intuition of his was badly needed. He wasn't certificated. He wasn't even
+trained, as the rest of us understood training; and he scoffed at the
+drawing-office, and laughed outright at logarithms and our laborious
+methods of getting out quantities. But he could set sheers and tackle in
+a way that made the rest of us look silly. I remember once how, through
+the parting of a chain, a sixty-foot girder had come down and lay under
+a ruck of other stuff, as the bottom chip lies under a pile of
+spellikins--a hopeless-looking smash. Myself, I'm certificated twice or
+three times over; but I can only assure you that I wanted to kick myself
+when, after I'd spent a day and a sleepless night over the job, I saw the
+game of tit-tat-toe that Rooum made of it in an hour or two. Certificated
+or not, a man isn't a fool who can do that sort of thing. And he was
+one of these fellows, too, who can "find water"--tell you where water is
+and what amount of getting it is likely to take, by just walking over the
+place. We aren't certificated up to that yet.
+
+He was offered good money to stick to us--to stick to our firm--but he
+always shook his black-and-white piebald head. He'd never be able to keep
+the bargain if he were to make it, he told us quite fairly. I know there
+are these chaps who can't endure to be clocked to their work with a
+patent time-clock in the morning and released of an evening with a
+whistle--and it's one of the things no master can ever understand. So
+Rooum came and went erratically, showing up maybe in Leeds or Liverpool,
+perhaps next on Plymouth breakwater, and once he turned up in an
+out-of-the-way place in Glamorganshire just when I was wondering what had
+become of him.
+
+The way I got to know him (got to know him, I mean, more than just to
+nod) was that he tacked himself on to me one night down Vauxhall way,
+where we were setting up some small plant or other. We had knocked off
+for the day, and I was walking in the direction of the bridge when he
+came up. We walked along together; and we had not gone far before it
+appeared that his reason for joining me was that he wanted to know "what
+a molecule was."
+
+I stared at him a bit.
+
+"What do you want to know that for?" I said. "What does a chap like you,
+who can do it all backwards, want with molecules?"
+
+Oh, he just wanted to know, he said.
+
+So, on the way across the bridge, I gave it him more or less from the
+book--molecular theory and all the rest of it. But, from the childish
+questions he put, it was plain that he hadn't got the hang of it at all.
+"Did the molecular theory allow things to pass through one another?" he
+wanted to know; "_Could_ things pass through one another?" and a lot of
+ridiculous things like that. I gave it up.
+
+"You're a genius in your own way, Rooum," I said finally; "you know these
+things without the books we plodders have to depend on. If I'd luck like
+that, I think I should be content with it."
+
+But he didn't seem satisfied, though he dropped the matter for that time.
+But I had his acquaintance, which was more than most of us had. He
+asked me, rather timidly, if I'd lend him a book or two. I did so, but
+they didn't seem to contain what he wanted to know, and he soon returned
+them, without remark.
+
+Now you'd expect a fellow to be specially sensitive, one way or another,
+who can tell when there's water a hundred feet beneath him; and as you
+know, the big men are squabbling yet about this water-finding business.
+But, somehow, the water-finding puzzled me less than it did that Rooum
+should be extraordinarily sensitive to something far commoner and easier
+to understand--ordinary echoes. He couldn't stand echoes. He'd go a
+mile round rather than pass a place that he knew had an echo; and if he
+came on one by chance, sometimes he'd hurry through as quick as he
+could, and sometimes he'd loiter and listen very intently. I rather joked
+about this at first, till I found it really distressed him; then, of
+course, I pretended not to notice. We're all cranky somewhere, and for
+that matter, I can't touch a spider myself.
+
+For the remarkable thing that overtook Rooum--(that, by the way, is an
+odd way to put it, as you'll see presently; but the words came that
+way into my head, so let them stand)--for the remarkable thing that
+overtook Rooum, I don't think I can begin better than with the first
+time, or very soon after the first time, that I noticed this peculiarity
+about the echoes.
+
+It was early on a particularly dismal November evening, and this time we
+were somewhere out south-east London way, just beyond what they are
+pleased to call the building-line--you know these districts of wretched
+trees and grimy fields and market-gardens that are about the same to real
+country that a slum is to a town. It rained that night; rain was the most
+appropriate weather for the brickfields and sewage-farms and yards of old
+carts and railway-sleepers we were passing. The rain shone on the black
+hand-bag that Rooum always carried; and I sucked at the dottle of a pipe
+that it was too much trouble to fill and light again. We were walking in
+the direction of Lewisham (I think it would be), and were still a little
+way from that eruption of red-brick houses that ... but you've doubtless
+seen them.
+
+You know how, when they're laying out new roads, they lay down the
+narrow strip of kerb first, with neither setts on the one hand nor
+flagstones on the other? We had come upon one of these. (I had noticed
+how, as we had come a few minutes before under a tall hollow-ringing
+railway arch, Rooum had all at once stopped talking--it was the echo, of
+course, that bothered him.) The unmade road to which we had come had
+headless lamp-standards at intervals, and ramparts of grey road-metal
+ready for use; and save for the strip of kerb, it was a broth of mud
+and stiff clay. A red light or two showed where the road-barriers
+were--they were laying the mains; a green railway light showed on an
+embankment; and the Lewisham lamps made a rusty glare through the rain.
+Rooum went first, walking along the narrow strip of kerb.
+
+The lamp-standards were a little difficult to see, and when I heard Rooum
+stop suddenly and draw in his breath sharply, I thought he had walked
+into one of them.
+
+"Hurt yourself?" I said.
+
+He walked on without replying; but half a dozen yards farther on he
+stopped again. He was listening again. He waited for me to come up.
+
+"I say," he said, in an odd sort of voice, "go a yard or two ahead, will
+you?"
+
+"What's the matter?" I asked, as I passed ahead. He didn't answer.
+
+Well, I hadn't been leading for more than a minute before he wanted to
+change again. He was breathing very quick and short.
+
+"Why, what ails you?" I demanded, stopping.
+
+"It's all right.... You're not playing any tricks, are you?..."
+
+I saw him pass his hand over his brow.
+
+"Come, get on," I said shortly; and we didn't speak again till we struck
+the pavement with the lighted lamps. Then I happened to glance at him.
+
+"Here," I said brusquely, taking him by the sleeve, "you're not well.
+We'll call somewhere and get a drink."
+
+"Yes," he said, again wiping his brow. "I say ... did you hear?"
+
+"Hear what?"
+
+"Ah, you didn't ... and, of course, you didn't feel anything...."
+
+"Come, you're shaking."
+
+When presently we came to a brightly lighted public-house or hotel, I saw
+that he was shaking even worse than I had thought. The shirt-sleeved
+barman noticed it too, and watched us curiously. I made Rooum sit down,
+and got him some brandy.
+
+"What was the matter?" I asked, as I held the glass to his lips.
+
+But I could get nothing out of him except that it was "All right--all
+right," with his head twitching over his shoulder almost as if he had
+touch of the dance. He began to come round a little. He wasn't the kind
+of man you'd press for explanations, and presently we set out again.
+He walked with me as far as my lodgings, refused to come in, but for all
+that lingered at the gate as if loath to leave. I watched him turn the
+corner in the rain.
+
+We came home together again the next evening, but by a different way,
+quite half a mile longer. He had waited for me a little pertinaciously.
+It seemed he wanted to talk about molecules again.
+
+Well, when a man of his age--he'd be near fifty--begins to ask questions,
+he's rather worse than a child who wants to know where Heaven is or some
+such thing--for you can't put him off as you can the child. Somewhere or
+other he'd picked up the word "osmosis," and seemed to have some
+glimmering of its meaning. He dropped the molecules, and began to ask me
+about osmosis.
+
+"It means, doesn't it," he demanded, "that liquids will work their way
+into one another--through a bladder or something? Say a thick fluid and a
+thin: you'll find some of the thick in the thin, and the thin in the
+thick?"
+
+"Yes. The thick into the thin is ex-osmosis, and the other end-osmosis.
+That takes place more quickly. But I don't know a deal about it."
+
+"Does it ever take place with solids?" he next asked.
+
+What was he driving at? I thought; but replied: "I believe that what is
+commonly called 'adhesion' is something of the sort, under another name."
+
+"A good deal of this bookwork seems to be finding a dozen names for the
+same thing," he grunted; and continued to ask his questions.
+
+But what it was he really wanted to know I couldn't for the life of me
+make out.
+
+Well, he was due any time now to disappear again, having worked quite six
+weeks in one place; and he disappeared. He disappeared for a good many
+weeks. I think it would be about February before I saw or heard of him
+again.
+
+It was February weather, anyway, and in an echoing enough place that I
+found him--the subway of one of the Metropolitan stations. He'd probably
+forgotten the echoes when he'd taken the train; but, of course, the
+railway folk won't let a man who happens to dislike echoes go wandering
+across the metals where he likes.
+
+He was twenty yards ahead when I saw him. I recognised him by his patched
+head and black hand-bag. I ran along the subway after him.
+
+It was very curious. He'd been walking close to the white-tiled wall,
+and I saw him suddenly stop; but he didn't turn. He didn't even turn
+when I pulled up, close behind him; he put out one hand to the wall, as
+if to steady himself. But, the moment I touched his shoulder, he just
+dropped--just dropped, half on his knees against the white tiling. The
+face he turned round and up to me was transfixed with fright.
+
+There were half a hundred people about--a train was just in--and it isn't
+a difficult matter in London to get a crowd for much less than a man
+crouching terrified against a wall, looking over his shoulder as Rooum
+looked, at another man almost as terrified. I felt somebody's hand on
+my own arm. Evidently somebody thought I'd knocked Rooum down.
+
+The terror went slowly from his face. He stumbled to his feet. I shook
+myself free of the man who held me and stepped up to Rooum.
+
+"What the devil's all this about?" I demanded, roughly enough.
+
+"It's all right ... it's all right,..." he stammered.
+
+"Heavens, man, you shouldn't play tricks like that!"
+
+"No ... no ... but for the love of God don't do it again!..."
+
+"We'll not explain here," I said, still in a good deal of a huff; and
+the small crowd melted away--disappointed, I dare say, that it wasn't
+a fight.
+
+"Now," I said, when we were outside in the crowded street, "you might let
+me know what all this is about, and what it is that for the love of
+God I'm not to do again."
+
+He was half apologetic, but at the same time half blustering, as if I had
+committed some sort of an outrage.
+
+"A senseless thing like that!" he mumbled to himself. "But there: you
+didn't know.... You _don't_ know, do you?... I tell you, d'you hear,
+_you're not to run at all when I'm about_! You're a nice fellow and all
+that, and get your quantities somewhere near right, if you do go a long
+way round to do it--but I'll not answer for myself if you run, d'you
+hear?... Putting your hand on a man's shoulder like that, just when ..."
+
+"Certainly I might have spoken," I agreed, a little stiffly.
+
+"Of course, you ought to have spoken! Just you see you don't do it again.
+It's monstrous!"
+
+I put a curt question.
+
+"Are you sure you're quite right in your head, Rooum?"
+
+"Ah," he cried, "don't you think I just fancy it, my lad! Nothing so
+easy! I thought you guessed that other time, on the new road ... it's as
+plain as a pikestaff... no, no, no! _I_ shall be telling _you_ something
+about molecules one of these days!"
+
+We walked for a time in silence.
+
+Suddenly he asked: "What are you doing now?"
+
+"I myself, do you mean? Oh, the firm. A railway job, past Pinner.
+But we've a big contract coming on in the West End soon they might
+want you for. They call it 'alterations,' but it's one of these big
+shop-rebuildings."
+
+"I'll come along."
+
+"Oh, it isn't for a month or two yet."
+
+"I don't mean that. I mean I'll come along to Pinner with you now,
+to-night, or whenever you go."
+
+"Oh!" I said.
+
+I don't know that I specially wanted him. It's a little wearing, the
+company of a chap like that. You never know what he's going to let you in
+for next. But, as this didn't seem to occur to him, I didn't say
+anything. If he really liked catching the last train down, a three-mile
+walk, and then sharing a double-bedded room at a poor sort of alehouse
+(which was my own programme), he was welcome. We walked a little farther;
+then I told him the time of the train and left him.
+
+He turned up at Euston, a little after twelve. We went down together. It
+was getting on for one when we left the station at the other end, and
+then we began the tramp across the Weald to the inn. A little to my
+surprise (for I had begun to expect unaccountable behaviour from him) we
+reached the inn without Rooum having dodged about changing places with
+me, or having fallen cowering under a gorse-bush, or anything of
+that kind. Our talk, too, was about work, not molecules and osmosis.
+
+The inn was only a roadside beerhouse--I have forgotten its name--and all
+its sleeping accomodation was the one double-bedded room. Over the head
+of my own bed the ceiling was cut away, following the roof-line; and the
+wallpaper was perfectly shocking--faded bouquets that made V's and A's,
+interlacing everywhere. The other bed was made up, and lay across the
+room.
+
+I think I only spoke once while we were making ready for bed, and that
+was when Rooum took from his black hand-bag a brush and a torn nightgown.
+
+"That's what you always carry about, is it?" I remarked; and Rooum
+grunted something: Yes ... never knew where you'd be next ... no harm,
+was it? We tumbled into bed.
+
+But, for all the lateness of the hour, I wasn't sleepy; so from my own
+bag I took a book, set the candle on the end of the mantel, and began
+to read. Mark you, I don't say I was much better informed for the reading
+I did, for I was watching the V's on the wallpaper mostly--that, and
+wondering what was wrong with the man in the other bed who had fallen
+down at a touch in the subway. He was already asleep.
+
+Now I don't know whether I can make the next clear to you. I'm quite
+certain he was sound asleep, so that it wasn't just the fact that he
+spoke. Even that is a little unpleasant, I always think, any sort of
+sleep-talking; but it's a very queer sort of sensation when a man
+actually answers a question that's put to him, knowing nothing whatever
+about it in the morning. Perhaps I ought not to have put that question;
+having put it, I did the next best thing afterwards, as you'll see in a
+moment ... but let me tell you.
+
+He'd been asleep perhaps an hour, and I woolgathering about the
+wallpaper, when suddenly, in a far more clear and loud voice than he ever
+used when awake, he said:
+
+_"What the devil is it prevents me seeing him, then?"_
+
+That startled me, rather, for the second time that evening; and I really
+think I had spoken before I had fully realised what was happening.
+
+"From seeing whom?" I said, sitting up in bed.
+
+"Whom?... You're not attending. The fellow I'm telling you about, who
+runs after me," he answered--answered perfectly plainly.
+
+I could see his head there on the pillow, black and white, and his
+eyes were closed. He made a slight movement with his arm, but that did
+not wake him. Then it came to me, with a sort of start, what was
+happening. I slipped half out of bed. Would he--would he?--answer
+another question?... I risked it, breathlessly:
+
+"Have you any idea who he is?"
+
+Well, that too he answered.
+
+"Who he is? The Runner?... Don't be silly. _Who else should it be?_"
+
+With every nerve in me tingling, I tried again.
+
+"What happens, then, when he catches you?"
+
+This time, I really don't know whether his words were an answer or not;
+they were these:
+
+"To hear him catching you up ... and then padding away ahead again! All
+right, all right ... but I guess it's weakening him a bit, too...."
+
+Without noticing it, I had got out of bed, and had advanced quite to the
+middle of the floor.
+
+"What did you say his name was?" I breathed.
+
+But that was a dead failure. He muttered brokenly for a moment, gave a
+deep troubled sigh, and then began to snore loudly and regularly.
+
+I made my way back to bed; but I assure you that before I did so I filled
+my basin with water, dipped my face into it, and then set the candlestick
+afloat in it, leaving the candle burning. I thought I'd like to have a
+light.... It had burned down by morning. Rooum, I remember, remarked on
+the silly practice of reading in bed.
+
+Well, it was a pretty kind of obsession for a man to have, wasn't it?
+Somebody running after him all the time, and then ... running on ahead?
+And, of course, on a broad pavement there would be plenty of room for
+this running gentleman to run round; but on an eight- or nine-inch kerb,
+such as that of the new road out Lewisham way ... but perhaps he was a
+jumping gentleman too, and could jump over a man's head. You'd think he'd
+have to get past some way, wouldn't you?... I remember vaguely wondering
+whether the name of that Runner was not Conscience; but Conscience isn't
+a matter of molecules and osmosis....
+
+One thing, however, was clear; I'd got to tell Rooum what I'd learned:
+for you can't get hold of a fellow's secrets in ways like that. I lost
+no time about it. I told him, in fact, soon after we'd left the inn the
+next morning--told him how he'd answered in his sleep.
+
+And--what do you think of this?--he seemed to think I ought to have
+guessed it! _Guessed_ a monstrous thing like that!
+
+"You're less clever than I thought, with your books and that, if you
+didn't," he grunted.
+
+"But ... Good God, man!"
+
+"Queer, isn't it? But you don't know the queerest ..."
+
+He pondered for a moment, and then suddenly put his lips to my ear.
+
+"I'll tell you," he whispered. "_It gets harder every time_!... At first,
+he just slipped through: a bit of a catch at my heart, like when you nod
+off to sleep in a chair and jerk up awake again; and away he went. But
+now it's getting grinding, sluggish; and the pain.... You'd notice, that
+night on the road, the little check it gave me; that's past long since;
+and last night, when I'd just braced myself up stiff to meet it, and you
+tapped me on the shoulder ..." He passed the back of his hand over his
+brow.
+
+"I tell you," he continued, "it's an agony each time. I could scream at
+the thought of it. It's oftener, too, now, and he's getting stronger. The
+end-osmosis is getting to be ex-osmosis--is that right? Just let me tell
+you one more thing--"
+
+But I'd had enough. I'd asked questions the night before, but now--well,
+I knew quite as much as, and more than, I wanted.
+
+"Stop, please," I said. "You're either off your head, or worse. Let's
+call it the first. Don't tell me any more, please."
+
+"Frightened, what? Well, I don't blame you. But what would _you_ do?"
+
+"I should see a doctor; I'm only an engineer," I replied.
+
+"Doctors?... Bah!" he said, and spat.
+
+I hope you see how the matter stood with Rooum. What do you make of it?
+Could you have believed it--_do_ you believe it?... He'd made a nearish
+guess when he'd said that much of our knowledge is giving names to things
+we know nothing about; only rule-of-thumb Physics thinks everything's
+explained in the Manual; and you've always got to remember one thing:
+You can call it Force or what you like, but it's a certainty that things,
+solid things of wood and iron and stone, would explode, just go off in a
+puff into space, if it wasn't for something just as inexplicable as that
+that Rooum said he felt in his own person. And if you can swallow that,
+it's a relatively small matter whether Rooum's light-footed Familiar
+slipped through him unperceived, or had to struggle through obstinately.
+You see now why I said that "a queer thing overtook Rooum."
+
+More: I saw it. This thing, that outrages reason--I saw it happen. That
+is to say, I saw its effects, and it was in broad daylight, on an
+ordinary afternoon, in the middle of Oxford Street, of all places. There
+wasn't a shadow of doubt about it. People were pressing and jostling
+about him, and suddenly I saw him turn his head and listen, as I'd seen
+him before. I tell you, an icy creeping ran all over my skin. I fancied I
+felt it approaching too, nearer and nearer.... The next moment he had
+made a sort of gathering of himself, as if against a gust. He stumbled
+and thrust--thrust with his body. He swayed, physically, as a tree sways
+in a wind; he clutched my arm and gave a loud scream. Then, after
+seconds--minutes--I don't know how long--he was free again.
+
+And for the colour of his face when by-and-by I glanced at it ... well, I
+once saw a swarthy Italian fall under a sunstroke, and _his_ face was
+much the same colour that Rooum's negro face had gone; a cloudy, whitish
+green.
+
+"Well--you've seen it--what do you think of it?" he gasped presently,
+turning a ghastly grin on me.
+
+But it was night before the full horror of it had soaked into me.
+
+Soon after that he disappeared again. I wasn't sorry.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Our big contract in the West End came on. It was a time-contract, with
+all manner of penalty clauses if we didn't get through; and I assure
+you that we were busy. I myself was far too busy to think of Rooum.
+
+It's a shop now, the place we were working at, or rather one of these
+huge weldings of fifty shops where you can buy anything; and if you'd
+seen us there... but perhaps you did see us, for people stood up on the
+tops of omnibuses as they passed, to look over the mud-splashed hoarding
+into the great excavation we'd made. It was a sight. Staging rose on
+staging, tier on tier, with interminable ladders all over the steel
+structure. Three or four squat Otis lifts crouched like iron turtles on
+top, and a lattice-crane on a towering three-cornered platform rose a
+hundred and twenty feet into the air. At one end of the vast quarry
+was a demolished house, showing flues and fireplaces and a score of
+thicknesses of old wallpaper; and at night--they might well have stood up
+on the tops of the buses! A dozen great spluttering violet arc-lights
+half-blinded you; down below were the watchmen's fires; overhead, the
+riveters had their fire-baskets; and in odd corners naphtha-lights
+guttered and flared. And the steel rang with the riveters' hammers, and
+the crane-chains rattled and clashed.... There's not much doubt in _my_
+mind, it's the engineers who are the architects nowadays. The chaps who
+think they're the architects are only a sort of paperhangers, who hang
+brick and terra-cotta on our work and clap a pinnacle or two on top--but
+never mind that. There we were, sweating and clanging and navvying, till
+the day shift came to relieve us.
+
+And I ought to say that fifty feet above our great gap, and from end to
+end across it, there ran a travelling crane on a skeleton line, with
+platform, engine, and wooden cab all compact in one.
+
+It happened that they had pitched in as one of the foremen some fellow or
+other, a friend of the firm's, a rank duffer, who pestered me incessantly
+with his questions. I did half his work and all my own, and it hadn't
+improved my temper much. On this night that I'm telling about, he'd been
+playing the fool with his questions as if a time-contract was a sort of
+summer holiday; and he'd filled me up to that point that I really can't
+say just when it was that Rooum put in an appearance again. I think I had
+heard somebody mention his name, but I'd paid no attention.
+
+Well, our Johnnie Fresh came up to me for the twentieth time that night,
+this time wanting to know something about the overhead crane. At that
+I fairly lost my temper.
+
+"What ails the crane?" I cried. "It's doing its work, isn't it? Isn't
+everybody doing their work except you? Why can't you ask Hopkins? Isn't
+Hopkins there?"
+
+"I don't know," he said.
+
+"Then," I snapped, "in that particular I'm as ignorant as you, and I hope
+it's the only one."
+
+But he grabbed my arm.
+
+"Look at it now!" he cried, pointing; and I looked up.
+
+Either Hopkins or somebody was dangerously exceeding the speed-limit. The
+thing was flying along its thirty yards of rail as fast as a tram, and
+the heavy fall-blocks swung like a ponderous kite-tail, thirty feet
+below. As I watched, the engine brought up within a yard of the end of
+the way, the blocks crashed like a ram into the broken house end,
+fetching down plaster and brick, and then the mechanism was reversed. The
+crane set off at a tear back.
+
+"Who in Hell ..." I began; but it wasn't a time to talk. "_Hi!_" I
+yelled, and made a spring for a ladder.
+
+The others had noticed it, too, for there were shouts all over the place.
+By that time I was halfway up the second stage. Again the crane tore
+past, with the massive tackle sweeping behind it, and again I heard the
+crash at the other end. Whoever had the handling of it was managing
+it skilfully, for there was barely a foot to spare when it turned again.
+
+On the fourth platform, at the end of the way, I found Hopkins. He was
+white, and seemed to be counting on his fingers.
+
+"What's the matter here?" I cried.
+
+"It's Rooum," he answered. "I hadn't stepped out of the cab, not a
+minute, when I heard the lever go. He's running somebody down, he says;
+he'll run the whole shoot down in a minute--look!..."
+
+The crane was coming back again. Half out of the cab I could see Rooum's
+mottled hair and beard. His brow was ribbed like a gridiron, and as he
+ripped past one of the arcs his face shone like porcelain with the sweat
+that bathed it.
+
+"Now ... you!... Now, damn you!..." he was shouting.
+
+"Get ready to board him when he reverses!" I shouted to Hopkins.
+
+Just how we scrambled on I don't know. I got one arm over the
+lifting-gear (which, of course, wasn't going), and heard Hopkins on
+the other footplate. Rooum put the brakes down and reversed; again came
+the thud of the fall-blocks; and we were speeding back again over the
+gulf of misty orange light. The stagings were thronged with gaping men.
+
+"Ready? Now!" I cried to Hopkins; and we sprang into the cab.
+
+Hopkins hit Rooum's wrist with a spanner. Then he seized the lever,
+jammed the brake down and tripped Rooum, all, as it seemed, in one
+movement. I fell on top of Rooum. The crane came to a standstill
+half-way down the line. I held Rooum panting.
+
+But either Rooum was stronger than I, or else he took me very much
+unawares. All at once he twisted clear from my grasp and stumbled on his
+knees to the rear door of the cab. He threw up one elbow, and staggered
+to his feet as I made another clutch at him.
+
+"Keep still, you fool!" I bawled. "Hit him over the head, Hopkins!"
+
+Rooum screamed in a high voice.
+
+"Run him down--cut him up with the wheels--down, you!--down, I say!--Oh,
+my God!... _Ha_!"
+
+He sprang clear out from the crane door, well-nigh taking me with him.
+
+I told you it was a skeleton line, two rails and a tie or two. He'd
+actually jumped to the right-hand rail. And he was running along
+it--running along that iron tightrope, out over that well of light and
+watching men. Hopkins had started the travelling-gear, as if with some
+insane idea of catching him; but there was only one possible end to it.
+He'd gone fully a dozen yards, while I watched, horribly fascinated; and
+then I saw the turn of his head....
+
+He didn't meet it this time; he sprang to the other rail, as if to evade
+it....
+
+Even at the take-off he missed. As far as I could see, he made no attempt
+to save himself with his hands. He just went down out of the field of
+my vision. There was an awful silence; then, from far below ...
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They weren't the men on the lower stages who moved first. The men above
+went a little way down, and then they too stopped. Presently two of them
+descended, but by a distant way. They returned, with two bottles of
+brandy, and there was a hasty consultation. Two men drank the brandy off
+there and then--getting on for a pint of brandy apiece; then they went
+down, drunk.
+
+I, Hopkins tells me, had got down on my knees in the crane cab, and was
+jabbering away cheerfully to myself. When I asked him what I said,
+he hesitated, and then said: "Oh, you don't want to know that, sir," and
+I haven't asked him since.
+
+What do _you_ make of it?
+
+
+
+
+BENLIAN
+
+
+I
+
+It would be different if you had known Benlian. It would be different if
+you had had even that glimpse of him that I had the very first time I saw
+him, standing on the little wooden landing at the top of the flight of
+steps outside my studio door. I say "studio"; but really it was just a
+sort of loft looking out over the timber-yard, and I used it as a studio.
+The real studio, the big one, was at the other end of the yard, and that
+was Benlian's.
+
+Scarcely anybody ever came there. I wondered many a time if the
+timber-merchant was dead or had lost his memory and forgotten all about
+his business; for his stacks of floorboards, set criss-crosswise to
+season (you know how they pile them up) were grimy with soot, and nobody
+ever disturbed the rows of scaffold-poles that stood like palisades along
+the walls. The entrance was from the street, through a door in a
+billposter's hoarding; and on the river not far away the steamboats
+hooted, and, in windy weather, the floorboards hummed to keep them
+company.
+
+I suppose some of these real, regular artists wouldn't have called me an
+artist at all; for I only painted miniatures, and it was trade-work at
+that, copied from photographs and so on. Not that I wasn't jolly good at
+it, and punctual too (lots of these high-flown artists have simply no
+idea of punctuality); and the loft was cheap, and suited me very well.
+But, of course, a sculptor wants a big place on the ground floor; it's
+slow work, that with blocks of stone and marble that cost you twenty
+pounds every time you lift them; so Benlian had the studio. His name was
+on a plate on the door, but I'd never seen him till this time I'm telling
+you of.
+
+I was working that evening at one of the prettiest little things I'd ever
+done: a girl's head on ivory, that I'd stippled up just like ... oh,
+you'd never have thought it was done by hand at all. The daylight had
+gone, but I knew that "Prussian" would be about the colour for the eyes
+and the bunch of flowers at her breast, and I wanted to finish.
+
+I was working at my little table, with a shade over my eyes; and I jumped
+a bit when somebody knocked at the door--not having heard anybody come up
+the steps, and not having many visitors anyway. (Letters were always put
+into the box in the yard door.)
+
+When I opened the door, there he stood on the platform; and I gave a bit
+of a start, having come straight from my ivory, you see. He was one of
+these very tall, gaunt chaps, that make us little fellows feel even
+smaller than we are; and I wondered at first where his eyes were, they
+were set so deep in the dark caves on either side of his nose. Like a
+skull, his head was; I could fancy his teeth curving round inside his
+cheeks; and his zygomatics stuck up under his skin like razorbacks (but
+if you're not one of us artists you'll not understand that). A bit of
+smoky, greenish sky showed behind him; and then, as his eyes moved in
+their big pits, one of them caught the light of my lamp and flashed like
+a well of lustre.
+
+He spoke abruptly, in a deep, shaky sort of voice.
+
+"I want you to photograph me in the morning," he said. I supposed he'd
+seen my printing-frames out on the window-sash some time or other.
+
+"Come in," I said. "But I'm afraid, if it's a miniature you want, that
+I'm retained--my firm retains me--you'd have to do it through them. But
+come in, and I'll show you the kind of thing I do--though you ought to
+have come in the daylight ..."
+
+He came in. He was wearing a long, grey dressing-gown that came right
+down to his heels and made him look something like a Noah's-ark figure.
+Seen in the light, his face seemed more ghastly bony still; and as he
+glanced for a moment at my little ivory he made a sound of contempt--I
+know it was contempt. I thought it rather cheek, coming into my place
+and--
+
+He turned his cavernous eyeholes on me.
+
+"I don't want anything of that sort. I want you to photograph me. I'll be
+here at ten in the morning."
+
+So, just to show him that I wasn't to be treated that way, I said, quite
+shortly, "I can't. I've an appointment at ten o'clock."
+
+"What's that?" he said--he'd one of these rich deep voices that always
+sound consumptive.
+
+"Take that thing off your eyes, and look at me," he ordered.
+
+Well, I was awfully indignant.
+
+"If you think I'm going to be told to do things like this--" I began.
+
+"Take that thing off," he just ordered again.
+
+I've got to remember, of course, that you didn't know Benlian. _I_ didn't
+then. And for a chap just to stalk into a fellow's place, and tell him to
+photograph him, and order him about ... but you'll see in a minute. I
+took the shade off my eyes, just to show him that _I_ could browbeat a
+bit too.
+
+I used to have a tall strip of looking-glass leaning against my wall; for
+though I didn't use models much, it's awfully useful to go to Nature for
+odd bits now and then, and I've sketched myself in that glass, oh,
+hundreds of times! We must have been standing in front of it, for all at
+once I saw the eyes at the bottom of his pits looking rigidly over my
+shoulder. Without moving his eyes from the glass, and scarcely moving his
+lips, he muttered:
+
+"Get me a pair of gloves, get me a pair of gloves."
+
+It was a funny thing to ask for; but I got him a pair of my gloves from a
+drawer. His hands were shaking so that he could hardly get them on, and
+there was a little glistening of sweat on his face, that looked like the
+salt that dries on you when you've been bathing in the sea. Then I
+turned, to see what it was that he was looking so earnestly and
+profoundly at in the mirror. I saw nothing except just the pair of us, he
+with my gloves on.
+
+He stepped aside, and slowly drew the gloves off. I think _I_ could have
+bullied _him_ just then. He turned to me.
+
+"Did that look all right to you?" he asked.
+
+"Why, my dear chap, whatever ails you?" I cried.
+
+"I suppose," he went on, "you couldn't photograph me to-night--now?"
+
+I could have done, with magnesium, but I hadn't a scrap in the place. I
+told him so. He was looking round my studio. He saw my camera standing in
+a corner.
+
+"Ah!" he said.
+
+He made a stride towards it. He unscrewed the lens, brought it to the
+lamp, and peered attentively through it, now into the air, now at his
+sleeve and hand, as if looking for a flaw in it. Then he replaced it, and
+pulled up the collar of his dressing-gown as if he was cold.
+
+"Well, another night of it," he muttered; "but," he added, facing
+suddenly round on me, "if your appointment was to meet your God Himself,
+you must photograph me at ten to-morrow morning!"
+
+"All right," I said, giving in (for he seemed horribly ill). "Draw up to
+the stove and have a drink of something and a smoke."
+
+"I neither drink nor smoke," he replied, moving towards the door.
+
+"Sit down and have a chat, then," I urged; for I always like to be decent
+with fellows, and it was a lonely sort of place, that yard.
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"Be ready by ten o'clock in the morning," he said; and he passed down my
+stairs and crossed the yard to his studio without even having said "Good
+night."
+
+Well, he was at my door again at ten o'clock in the morning, and I
+photographed him. I made three exposures; but the plates were some that
+I'd had in the place for some time, and they'd gone off and fogged in the
+developing.
+
+"I'm awfully sorry," I said; "but I'm going out this afternoon, and will
+get some more, and we'll have another shot in the morning."
+
+One after the other, he was holding the negatives up to the light and
+examining them. Presently he put them down quietly, leaning them
+methodically up against the edge of the developing-bath.
+
+"Never mind. It doesn't matter. Thank you," he said; and left me.
+
+After that, I didn't see him for weeks; but at nights I could see the
+light of his roof-window, shining through the wreathing river-mists, and
+sometimes I heard him moving about, and the muffled knock-knocking of his
+hammer on marble.
+
+
+II
+
+Of course I did see him again, or I shouldn't be telling you all this. He
+came to my door, just as he had done before, and at about the same time
+in the evening. He hadn't come to be photographed this time, but for all
+that it was something about a camera--something he wanted to know. He'd
+brought two books with him, big books, printed in German. They were on
+Light, he said, and Physics (or else it was Psychics--I always get those
+two words wrong). They were full of diagrams and equations and figures;
+and, of course, it was all miles above my head.
+
+He talked a lot about "hyper-space," whatever that is; and at first I
+nodded, as if I knew all about it. But he very soon saw that I didn't,
+and he came down to my level again. What he'd come to ask me was this:
+Did I know anything, of my own experience, about things "photographing
+through"? (You know the kind of thing: a name that's been painted out on
+a board, say, comes up in the plate.)
+
+Well, as it happened, I _had_ once photographed a drawing for a fellow,
+and the easel I had stood it on had come up through the picture; and I
+knew by the way Benlian nodded that that was the kind of thing he meant.
+
+"More," he said.
+
+I told him I'd once seen a photograph of a man with a bowler hat on, and
+the shape of his crown had showed through the hat.
+
+"Yes, yes," he said, musing; and then he asked: "Have you ever heard of
+things not photographing at all?"
+
+But I couldn't tell him anything about that; and off he started again,
+about Light and Physics and so on. Then, as soon as I could get a word
+in, I said, "But, of course, the camera isn't Art." (Some of my
+miniatures, you understand, were jolly nice little things.)
+
+"No--no," he murmured absently; and then abruptly he said: "Eh? What's
+that? And what the devil do _you_ know about it?"
+
+"Well," said I, in a dignified sort of way, "considering that for ten
+years I've been--"
+
+"Chut!... Hold your tongue," he said, turning away.
+
+There he was, talking to me again, just as if I'd asked him in to bully
+me. But you've got to be decent to a fellow when he's in your own place;
+and by-and-by I asked him, but in a cold, off-hand sort of way, how his
+own work was going on. He turned to me again.
+
+"Would you like to see it?" he asked.
+
+"_Aha_!" thought I, "he's got to a sticking-point with his work! It's all
+very well," I thought, "for you to sniff at my miniatures, my friend, but
+we all get stale on our work sometimes, and the fresh eye, even of a
+miniature-painter ..."
+
+"I shall be glad if I can be of any help to you," I answered, still a bit
+huffish, but bearing no malice.
+
+"Then come," he said.
+
+We descended and crossed the timber-yard, and he held his door open for
+me to pass in.
+
+It was an enormous great place, his studio, and all full of mist; and the
+gallery that was his bedroom was up a little staircase at the farther
+end. In the middle of the floor was a tall structure of scaffolding, with
+a stage or two to stand on; and I could see the dim ghostly marble figure
+in the gloom. It had been jacked up on a heavy base; and as it would have
+taken three or four men to put it into position, and scarcely a stranger
+had entered the yard since I had been there, I knew that the figure must
+have stood for a long time. Sculpture's weary, slow work.
+
+Benlian was pottering about with a taper at the end of a long rod; and
+suddenly the overhead gas-ring burst into light. I placed myself before
+the statue--to criticise, you know.
+
+Well, it didn't seem to me that he needed to have turned up his nose at
+my ivories, for I didn't think much of his statue--except that it was a
+great, lumping, extraordinary piece of work. It had an outstretched arm
+that, I remember thinking, was absolutely misshapen--disproportioned,
+big enough for a giant, ridiculously out of drawing. And as I looked at
+the thing this way and that, I knew that his eyes in their deep cellars
+never left my face for a moment.
+
+"It's a god," he said by-and-by.
+
+Then I began to tell him about that monstrous arm; but he cut me very
+short.
+
+"I say it's a god," he interrupted, looking at me as if he would have
+eaten me. "Even you, child as you are, have seen the gods men have made
+for themselves before this. Half-gods they've made, all good or all evil
+(and then they've called them the Devil). This is _my_ god--the god of
+good and of evil also."
+
+"Er--I see," I said, rather taken aback (but quite sure he was off his
+head for all that). Then I looked at the arm again; a child could have
+seen how wrong it was....
+
+But suddenly, to my amazement, he took me by the shoulders and turned me
+away.
+
+"That'll do," he said curtly. "I didn't ask you to come in here with a
+view to learning anything from you. I wanted to see how it struck you. I
+shall send for you again--and again--"
+
+Then he began to jabber, half to himself.
+
+"Bah!" he muttered. "'Is that all?' they ask before a stupendous thing.
+Show them the ocean, the heavens, infinity, and they ask, 'Is that all?'
+If they saw their God face to face they'd ask it!... There's only one
+Cause, that works now in good and now in evil, but show It to them and
+they put their heads on one side and begin to appraise and patronise
+It!... I tell you, what's seen at a glance flies away at a glance. Gods
+come slowly over you, but presently, ah! they begin to grip you, and at
+the end there's no fleeing from them! You'll tell me more about my statue
+by-and-by!... What was that you said?" he demanded, facing swiftly round
+on me. "That arm? Ah, yes; but we'll see what you say about that arm six
+months from now! Yes, the arm.... Now be off!" he ordered me. "I'll send
+for you again when I want you!"
+
+He thrust me out.
+
+"An asylum, Mr. Benlian," I thought as I crossed the yard, "is the place
+for you!" You see, I didn't know him then, and that he wasn't to be
+judged as an ordinary man is. Just you wait till you see....
+
+And straight away, I found myself vowing that I'd have nothing more to do
+with him. I found myself resolving that, as if I were making up my mind
+not to smoke or drink--and (I don't know why) with a similar sense that I
+was depriving myself of something. But, somehow, I forgot, and within a
+month he'd been in several times to see me, and once or twice had fetched
+me in to see his statue.
+
+In two months I was in an extraordinary state of mind about him. I was
+familiar with him in a way, but at the same time I didn't know one scrap
+more about him. Because I'm a fool (oh, yes, I know quite well, now, what
+I am) you'll think I'm talking folly if I even begin to tell you what
+sort of a man he was. I don't mean just his knowledge (though I think he
+knew everything--sciences, languages, and all that) for it was far more
+than that. Somehow, when he was there, he had me all restless and uneasy;
+and when he wasn't there I was (there's only the one word for it)
+jealous--as jealous as if he'd been a girl! Even yet I can't make it
+out....
+
+And he knew how unsettled he'd got me; and I'll tell you how I found that
+out.
+
+Straight out one night, when he was sitting up in my place, he asked me:
+"Do you like me, Pudgie?" (I forgot to say that I'd told him they used to
+call me Pudgie at home, because I was little and fat; it was odd, the
+number of things I told him that I wouldn't have told anybody else.)
+
+"Do you like me, Pudgie?" he said.
+
+As for my answer, I don't know how it spurted out. I was much more
+surprised than he was, for I really didn't intend it. It was for all the
+world as if somebody else was talking with my mouth.
+
+"_I loathe and adore you!_" it came; and then I looked round, awfully
+startled to hear myself saying that.
+
+But he didn't look at me. He only nodded.
+
+"Yes. Of good and evil too--" he muttered to himself. And then all of a
+sudden he got up and went out.
+
+I didn't sleep for ever so long after that, thinking how odd it was I
+should have said that.
+
+Well (to get on), after that something I couldn't account for began to
+come over me sometimes as I worked. It began to come over me, without any
+warning, that he was thinking of me down there across the yard. I used to
+_know_ (this must sound awfully silly to you) that he was down yonder,
+thinking of me and doing something to me. And one night I was so sure
+that it wasn't fancy that I jumped straight up from my work, and I'm not
+quite sure what happened then, until I found myself in his studio, just
+as if I'd walked there in my sleep.
+
+And he seemed to be waiting for me, for there was a chair by his own, in
+front of the statue.
+
+"What is it, Benlian?" I burst out.
+
+"Ah!" he said.... "Well, it's about that arm, Pudgie; I want you to tell
+me about the arm. Does it look so strange as it did?"
+
+"No," I said.
+
+"I thought it wouldn't," he observed. "But I haven't touched it,
+Pudgie--"
+
+So I stayed the evening there.
+
+But you must not think he was always doing that thing--whatever it
+was--to me. On the other hand, I sometimes felt the oddest sort of
+release (I don't know how else to put it) ... like when, on one of these
+muggy, earthy-smelling days, when everything's melancholy, the wind
+freshens up suddenly and you breathe again. And that (I'm trying to take
+it in order, you see, so that it will be plain to you) brings me to the
+time I found out that _he_ did that too, and knew when he was doing it.
+
+I'd gone into his place one night to have a look at his statue. It was
+surprising what a lot I was finding out about that statue. It was still
+all out of proportion (that is to say, I knew it must be--remembered I'd
+thought so--though it didn't annoy me now quite so much. I suppose I'd
+lost _my_ fresh eye by that time). Somehow, too, my own miniatures had
+begun to look a bit kiddish; they made me impatient; and that's horrible,
+to be discontented with things that once seemed jolly good to you.
+
+Well, he'd been looking at me in the hungriest sort of way, and I looking
+at the statue, when all at once that feeling of release and lightness
+came over me. The first I knew of it was that I found myself thinking of
+some rather important letters my firm had written to me, wanting to know
+when a job I was doing was going to be finished. I thought myself it was
+time I got it finished; I thought I'd better set about it at once; and I
+sat suddenly up in my chair, as if I'd just come out of a sleep. And,
+looking at the statue, I saw it as it had seemed at first--all misshapen
+and out of drawing.
+
+The very next moment, as I was rising, I sat down again as suddenly as if
+somebody had pulled me back.
+
+Now a chap doesn't like to be changed about like that; so, without
+looking at Benlian, I muttered a bit testily, "Don't, Benlian!"
+
+Then I heard him get up and knock his chair away. He was standing behind
+me.
+
+"Pudgie," he said, in a moved sort of voice, "I'm no good to you. Get out
+of this. Get out--"
+
+"No, no, Benlian!" I pleaded.
+
+"Get out, do you hear, and don't come again! Go and live somewhere
+else--go away from London--don't let me know where you go--"
+
+"Oh, what have I done?" I asked unhappily; and he was muttering again.
+
+"Perhaps it would be better for me too," he muttered; and then he added,
+"Come, bundle out!"
+
+So in home I went, and finished my ivory for the firm; but I can't tell
+you how friendless and unhappy I felt.
+
+Now I used to know in those days a little girl--a nice, warm-hearted
+little thing, just friendly you know, who used to come to me sometimes in
+another place I lived at and mend for me and so on. It was an awful long
+time since I'd seen her; but she found me out one night--came to that
+yard, walked straight in, went straight to my linen-bag, and began to
+look over my things to see what wanted mending, just as she used to. I
+don't mind confessing that I was a bit sweet on her at one time; and it
+made me feel awfully mean, the way she came in, without asking any
+questions, and took up my mending.
+
+So she sat doing my things, and I sat at my work, glad of a bit of
+company; and she chatted as she worked, just jolly and gentle and not at
+all reproaching me.
+
+But as suddenly as a shot, right in the middle of it all, I found myself
+wondering about Benlian again. And I wasn't only wondering; somehow I was
+horribly uneasy about him. It came to me that he might be ill or
+something. And all the fun of her having come to see me was gone. I found
+myself doing all sorts of stupid things to my work, and glancing at my
+watch that was lying on the table before me.
+
+At last I couldn't stand it any longer. I got up.
+
+"Daisy," I said, "I've got to go out now."
+
+She seemed surprised.
+
+"Oh, why didn't you tell me I'd been keeping you!" she said, getting up
+at once.
+
+I muttered that I was awfully sorry....
+
+I packed her off. I closed the door in the hoarding behind her. Then I
+walked straight across the yard to Benlian's.
+
+He was lying on a couch, not doing anything.
+
+"I know I ought to have come sooner, Benlian," I said, "but I had
+somebody with me."
+
+"Yes," he said, looking hard at me; and I got a bit red.
+
+"She's awfully nice," I stammered; "but you never bother with girls, and
+you don't drink or smoke--"
+
+"No," he said.
+
+"Well," I continued, "you ought to have a little relaxation; you're
+knocking yourself up." And, indeed, he looked awfully ill.
+
+But he shook his head.
+
+"A man's only a definite amount of force in him, Pudgie," he said, "and
+if he spends it in one way he goes short in another. Mine goes--there."
+He glanced at the statue. "I rarely sleep now," he added.
+
+"Then you ought to see a doctor," I said, a bit alarmed. (I'd felt sure
+he was ill.)
+
+"No, no, Pudgie. My force is all going there--all but the minimum that
+can't be helped, you know.... You've heard artists talk about 'putting
+their soul into their work,' Pudgie?"
+
+"Don't rub it in about my rotten miniatures, Benlian," I asked him.
+
+"You've heard them say that; but they're charlatans, professional
+artists, all, Pudgie. They haven't got any souls bigger than a sixpence
+to put into it.... You know, Pudgie, that Force and Matter are the same
+thing--that it's decided nowadays that you can't define matter otherwise
+than as 'a point of Force'?"
+
+"Yes," I found myself saying eagerly, as if I'd heard it dozens of times
+before.
+
+"So that if they could put their souls into it, it would be just as easy
+for them to put their _bodies_ into it?..."
+
+I had drawn very close to him, and again--it was not fancy--I felt as if
+somebody, not me, was using my mouth. A flash of comprehension seemed to
+come into my brain.
+
+"_Not that, Benlian_?" I cried breathlessly.
+
+He nodded three or four times, and whispered. I really don't know why we
+both whispered.
+
+"_Really that, Benlian_?" I whispered again.
+
+"Shall I show you?... I tried my hardest not to, you know,..." he still
+whispered.
+
+"Yes, show me!" I replied in a suppressed voice.
+
+"Don't breathe a sound then! I keep them up there...."
+
+He put his finger to his lips as if we had been two conspirators; then he
+tiptoed across the studio and went up to his bedroom in the gallery.
+Presently he tiptoed down again, with some rolled-up papers in his hand.
+They were photographs, and we stooped together over a little table. His
+hand shook with excitement.
+
+"You remember this?" he whispered, showing me a rough print.
+
+It was one of the prints from the fogged plates that I'd taken after that
+first night.
+
+"Come closer to me if you feel frightened, Pudgie," he said. "You said
+they were old plates, Pudgie. No no; the plates were all right; it's _I_
+who am wrong!"
+
+"Of course," I said. It seemed so natural.
+
+"This one," he said, taking up one that was numbered "1," "is a plain
+photograph, in the flesh, before it started; _you_ know! Now look at
+this, and this--"
+
+He spread them before me, all in order.
+
+"2" was a little fogged, as if a novice had taken it; on "3" a sort of
+cloudy veil partly obliterated the face; "4" was still further smudged
+and lost; and "5" was a figure with gloved hands held up, as a man holds
+his hands up when he is covered by a gun. The face of this one was
+completely blotted out.
+
+And it didn't seem in the least horrible to me, for I kept on murmuring,
+"Of course, of course."
+
+Then Benlian rubbed his hands and smiled at me. "I'm making good
+progress, am I not?" he said.
+
+"Splendid!" I breathed.
+
+"Better than you know, too," he chuckled, "for you're not properly under
+yet. But you will be, Pudgie, you will be--"
+
+"Yes, yes!... Will it be long, Benlian?"
+
+"No," he replied, "not if I can keep from eating and sleeping and
+thinking of other things than the statue--and if you don't disturb me by
+having girls about the place, Pudgie."
+
+"I'm awfully sorry," I said contritely.
+
+"All right, all right; ssh!... This, you know, Pudgie, is my own studio;
+I bought it; I bought it purposely to make my statue, my god. I'm passing
+nicely into it; and when I'm quite passed--_quite_ passed, Pudgie--you
+can have the key and come in when you like."
+
+"Oh, thanks awfully," I murmured gratefully.
+
+He nudged me.
+
+"What would they think of it, Pudgie--those of the exhibitions and
+academies, who say 'their souls are in their work'? What would the
+cacklers think of it, Pudgie?"
+
+"Aren't they fools!" I chuckled.
+
+"And I shall have _one_ worshipper, shan't I, Pudgie?"
+
+"Rather!" I replied. "Isn't it splendid!... Oh, need I go back just yet?"
+
+"Yes, you must go now; but I'll send for you again very soon.... You know
+I tried to do without you, Pudge; I tried for thirteen days, and it
+nearly killed me! That's past. I shan't try again. Now off you trot, my
+Pudgie--"
+
+I winked at him knowingly, and came skipping and dancing across the yard.
+
+
+III
+
+It's just silly--that's what it is--to say that something of a man
+doesn't go into his work.
+
+Why, even those wretched little ivories of mine, the thick-headed fellows
+who paid for them knew my touch in them, and once spotted it instantly
+when I tried to slip in another chap's who was hard up. Benlian used to
+say that a man went about spreading himself over everything he came in
+contact with--diffusing some sort of influence (as far as I could make it
+out); and the mistake was, he said, that we went through the world just
+wasting it instead of directing it. And if Benlian didn't understand all
+about those things, I should jolly well like to know who does! A chap
+with a great abounding will and brain like him, it's only natural he
+should be able to pass himself on, to a statue or anything else, when he
+really tried--did without food and talk and sleep in order to save
+himself up for it!
+
+"A man can't both _do_ and _be_," I remember he said to me once. "He's so
+much force, no more, and he can either make himself with it or something
+else. If he tries to do both, he does both imperfectly. I'm going to do
+_one_ perfect thing." Oh, he was a queer chap! Fancy, a fellow making a
+thing like that statue, out of himself, and then wanting somebody to
+adore him!
+
+And I hadn't the faintest conception of how much I did adore him till
+yet again, as he had done before, he seemed to--you know--to take
+himself away from me again, leaving me all alone, and so wretched!... And
+I was angry at the same time, for he'd promised me he wouldn't do it
+again.... (This was one night, I don't remember when.)
+
+I ran to my landing and shouted down into the yard.
+
+"Benlian! Benlian!"
+
+There was a light in his studio, and I heard a muffled shout come back.
+
+"Keep away--keep away--keep away!"
+
+He was struggling--I knew he was struggling as I stood there on my
+landing--struggling to let me go. And I could only run and throw myself
+on my bed and sob, while he tried to set me free, who didn't want to be
+set free ... he was having a terrific struggle, all alone there....
+
+(He told me afterwards that he _had_ to eat something now and then and to
+sleep a little, and that weakened him--strengthened him--strengthened
+his body and weakened the passing, you know.)
+
+But the next day it was all right again. I was Benlian's again. And I
+wondered, when I remembered his struggle, whether a dying man had ever
+fought for life as hard as Benlian was fighting to get away from it and
+pass himself.
+
+The next time after that that he fetched me--called me--whatever you like
+to name it--I burst into his studio like a bullet. He was sunk in a big
+chair, gaunt as a mummy now, and all the life in him seemed to burn in
+the bottom of his deep eye-sockets. At the sight of him I fiddled with
+my knuckles and giggled.
+
+"You _are_ going it, Benlian!" I said.
+
+"Am I not?" he replied, in a voice that was scarcely a breath.
+
+"You _meant_ me to bring the camera and magnesium, didn't you?" (I had
+snatched them up when I felt his call, and had brought them.)
+
+"Yes. Go ahead."
+
+So I placed the camera before him, made all ready, and took the magnesium
+ribbon in a pair of pincers.
+
+"Are you ready?" I said; and lighted the ribbon.
+
+The studio seemed to leap with the blinding glare. The ribbon spat and
+spluttered. I snapped the shutter, and the fumes drifted away and hung
+in clouds in the roof.
+
+"You'll have to walk me about soon, Pudgie, and bang me with bladders, as
+they do the opium-patients," he said sleepily.
+
+"Let me take one of the statue now," I said eagerly.
+
+But he put up his hand.
+
+"No, no. _That's_ too much like testing our god. Faith's the food they
+feed gods on, Pudgie. We'll let the S.P.R. people photograph it when it's
+all over," he said. "Now get it developed."
+
+I developed the plate. The obliteration now seemed complete.
+
+But Benlian seemed dissatisfied.
+
+"There's something wrong somewhere," he said. "It isn't so perfect as
+that yet--I can feel within me it isn't. It's merely that your camera
+isn't strong enough to find me, Pudgie."
+
+"I'll get another in the morning," I cried.
+
+"No," he answered. "I know something better than that. Have a cab here by
+ten o'clock in the morning, and we'll go somewhere."
+
+By half-past ten the next morning we had driven to a large hospital, and
+had gone down a lot of steps and along corridors to a basement room.
+There was a stretcher couch in the middle of the room, and all manner of
+queer appliances, frames of ground glass, tubes of glass blown into
+extraordinary shapes, a dynamo, and a lot of other things all about. A
+couple of doctors were there too, and Benlian was talking to them.
+
+"We'll try my hand first," Benlian said by-and-by.
+
+He advanced to the couch, and put his hand under one of the frames of
+ground glass. One of the doctors did something in a corner. A harsh
+crackling filled the room, and an unearthly, fluorescent light shot and
+flooded across the frame where Benlian's hand was. The two doctors
+looked, and then started back. One of them gave a cry. He was sickly
+white.
+
+"Put me on the couch," said Benlian.
+
+I and the doctor who was not ill lifted him on the canvas stretcher. The
+green-gleaming frame of fluctuating light was passed over the whole of
+his body. Then the doctor ran to a telephone and called a colleague....
+
+We spent the morning there, with dozens of doctors coming and going. Then
+we left. All the way home in the cab Benlian chuckled to himself.
+
+"That scared 'em, Pudgie!" he chuckled. "A man they can't X-ray--that
+scared 'em! We must put that down in the diary--"
+
+"Wasn't it ripping!" I chuckled back.
+
+He kept a sort of diary or record. He gave it to me afterwards, but
+they've borrowed it. It was as big as a ledger, and immensely valuable,
+I'm sure; they oughtn't to borrow valuable things like that and not
+return them. The laughing that Benlian and I have had over that diary!
+It fooled them all--the clever X-ray men, the artists of the academies,
+everybody! Written on the fly-leaf was "_To My Pudgie_." I shall publish
+it when I get it back again.
+
+Benlian had now got frightfully weak; it's awfully hard work, passing
+yourself. And he had to take a little milk now and then or he'd have
+died before he had quite finished. I didn't bother with miniatures any
+longer, and when angry letters came from my employers we just put them
+into the fire, Benlian and I, and we laughed--that is to say, I laughed,
+but Benlian only smiled, being too weak to laugh really. He'd lots of
+money, so that was all right; and I slept in his studio, to be there for
+the passing.
+
+And that wouldn't be very long now, I thought; and I was always looking
+at the statue. Things like that (in case you don't know) have to be done
+gradually, and I supposed he was busy filling up the inside of it and
+hadn't got to the outside yet--for the statue was much the same to look
+at. But, reckoning off his sips of milk and snatches of sleep, he was
+making splendid progress, and the figure must be getting very full now.
+I was awfully excited, it was getting so near....
+
+And then somebody came bothering and nearly spoiling all. It's odd, but I
+really forget exactly what it was. I only know there was a funeral, and
+people were sobbing and looking at me, and somebody said I was callous,
+but somebody else said, "No, look at him," and that it was just the other
+way about. And I think I remember, now, that it wasn't in London, for I
+was in a train; but after the funeral I dodged them, and found myself
+back at Euston again. They followed me, but I shook them off. I locked my
+own studio up, and lay as quiet as a mouse in Benlian's place when they
+came hammering at the door....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And now I must come to what you'll called the finish--though it's awfully
+stupid to call things like that "finishes."
+
+I'd slipped into my own studio one night--I forget what for; and I'd gone
+quietly, for I knew they were following me, those people, and would catch
+me if they could. It was a thick, misty night, and the light came
+streaming up through Benlian's roof window, with the shadows of the
+window-divisions losing themselves like dark rays in the fog. A lot of
+hooting was going on down the river, steamers and barges.... Oh, I know
+what I'd come into my studio for! It was for those negatives. Benlian
+wanted them for the diary, so that it could be seen there wasn't any
+fake about the prints. For he'd said he would make a final spurt that
+evening and get the job finished. It had taken a long time, but I'll bet
+_you_ couldn't have passed _yourself_ any quicker.
+
+When I got back he was sitting in the chair he'd hardly left for weeks,
+and the diary was on the table by his side. I'd taken all the scaffolding
+down from the statue, and he was ready to begin. He had to waste one last
+bit of strength to explain to me, but I drew as close as I could, so that
+he wouldn't lose much.
+
+"Now, Pudgie," I just heard him say, "you've behaved splendidly, and
+you'll be quite still up to the finish, won't you?"
+
+I nodded.
+
+"And you mustn't expect the statue to come down and walk about,
+or anything like that," he continued. "_Those_ aren't the really
+wonderful things. And no doubt people will tell you it hasn't changed;
+but you'll know better! It's much more wonderful that I should be there
+than that they should be able to prove it, isn't it?... And, of course,
+I don't know exactly how it will happen, for I've never done this
+before.... You have the letter for the S.P.R.? They can photograph it if
+they want.... By the way, you don't think the same of my statue as you
+did at first, do you?"
+
+"Oh, it's wonderful!" I breathed.
+
+"And even if, like the God of the others, it doesn't vouchsafe a special
+sign and wonder, it's Benlian, for all that?"
+
+"Oh, do be quick, Benlian! I can't bear another minute!"
+
+Then, for the last time, he turned his great eaten-out eyes on me.
+
+"_I seal you mine, Pudgie_!" he said.
+
+Then his eyes fastened themselves on the statue.
+
+I waited for a quarter of an hour, scarcely breathing. Benlian's breath
+came in little flutters, many seconds apart. He had a little clock on the
+table. Twenty minutes passed, and half an hour. I was a little
+disappointed, really, that the statue wasn't going to move; but Benlian
+knew best, and it was filling quietly up with him instead. Then I thought
+of those zigzag bunches of lightning they draw on the electric-belt
+advertisements, and I was rather glad after all that the statue _wasn't_
+going to move. It would have been a little cheap, that ... vulgar, in a
+sense.... He was breathing a little more sharply now, as if in pain, but
+his eyes never moved. A dog was howling somewhere, and I hoped that the
+hooting of the tugs wouldn't disturb Benlian....
+
+Nearly an hour had passed when, all of a sudden, I pushed my chair
+farther away and cowered back, gnawing my fingers, very frightened.
+Benlian had suddenly moved. He'd set himself forward in his chair, and he
+seemed to be strangling. His mouth was wide open, and he began to make
+long harsh "_Aaaaah-aaaah's_!" I shouldn't have thought passing yourself
+was such agony....
+
+And then I gave a scream--for he seemed to be thrusting himself back in
+his chair again, as if he'd changed his mind and didn't want to pass
+himself at all. But just you ask anybody: When you get yourself just over
+half-way passed, the other's dragged out of you, and you can't help
+yourself. His "_Aaaaahs_!" became so loud and horrid that I shut my eyes
+and stopped my ears.... Minutes that lasted; and then there came a high
+dinning that I couldn't shut out, and all at once the floor shook with a
+heavy thump. When all was still again I opened my eyes.
+
+His chair had overturned, and he lay in a heap beside it.
+
+I called "Benlian!" but he didn't answer....
+
+He'd passed beautifully; quite dead. I looked up at the statue. It was
+just as Benlian had said--it didn't open its eyes, nor speak, nor
+anything like that. Don't you believe chaps who tell you that statues
+that have been passed into do that; they don't.
+
+But instead, in a blaze and flash and shock, I knew now for the first
+time what a glorious thing that statue was! Have you ever seen anything
+for the first time like that? If you have, you never see very much
+afterwards, you know. The rest's all piffle after that. It was like
+coming out of fog and darkness into a split in the open heavens, my
+statue was so transfigured; and I'll bet if you'd been there you'd have
+clapped your hands, as I did, and chucked the tablecloth over the Benlian
+on the floor till they should come to cart that empty shell away, and
+patted the statue's foot and cried: "_Is it all right, Benlian_?"
+
+I did this; and then I rushed excitedly out into the street, to call
+somebody to see how glorious it was....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They've brought me here for a holiday, and I'm to go back to the studio
+in two or three days. But they've said that before, and I think it's
+caddish of fellows not to keep their word--and not to return a valuable
+diary too! But there isn't a peephole in my room, as there is in some of
+them (the Emperor of Brazil told me that); and Benlian knows I haven't
+forsaken him, for they take me a message every day to the studio, and
+Benlian always answers that it's "_all right_, and I'm to stay where I am
+for a bit." So as long as he knows, I don't mind so much. But it is a bit
+rotten hanging on here, especially when the doctors themselves admit how
+reasonable it all is.... Still, if Benlian says it's "_All right_ ..."
+
+
+
+
+IO
+
+
+As the young man put his hand to the uppermost of the four brass
+bell-knobs to the right of the fanlighted door he paused, withdrew the
+hand again, and then pulled at the lowest knob. The sawing of bell-wire
+answered him, and he waited for a moment, uncertain whether the bell had
+rung, before pulling again. Then there came from the basement a single
+cracked stroke; the head of a maid appeared in the whitewashed area
+below; and the head was withdrawn as apparently the maid recognised him.
+Steps were heard along the hall; the door was opened; and the maid stood
+aside to let him enter, the apron with which she had slipped the latch
+still crumpled in her greasy hand.
+
+"Sorry, Daisy," the young man apologised, "but I didn't want to bring her
+down all those stairs. How is she? Has she been out to-day?"
+
+The maid replied that the person spoken of had been out; and the young
+man walked along the wide carpeted passage.
+
+It was cumbered like an antique-shop with alabaster busts on pedestals,
+dusty palms in faience vases, and trophies of spears and shields and
+assegais. At the foot of the stairs was a rustling portière of strung
+beads, and beyond it the carpet was continued up the broad, easy flight,
+secured at each step by a brass rod. Where the stairs made a turn, the
+fading light of the December afternoon, made still dimmer by a window of
+decalcomanied glass, shone on a cloudy green aquarium with sallow
+goldfish, a number of cacti on a shabby console table, and a large and
+dirty white sheepskin rug. Passing along a short landing, the young man
+began the ascent of the second flight. This also was carpeted, but with a
+carpet that had done duty in some dining- or bed-room before being cut up
+into strips of the width of the narrow space between the wall and the
+handrail. Then, as he still mounted, the young man's feet sounded loud on
+oilcloth; and when he finally paused and knocked at a door it was on a
+small landing of naked boards beneath the cold gleam of the skylight
+above the well of the stairs.
+
+"Come in," a girl's voice called.
+
+The room he entered had a low sagging ceiling on which shone a low glow
+of firelight, making colder still the patch of eastern sky beyond the
+roofs and the cowls and hoods of chimneys framed by the square of the
+single window. The glow on the ceiling was reflected dully in the old
+dark mirror over the mantelpiece. An open door in the farther corner,
+hampered with skirts and blouses, allowed a glimpse of the girl's
+bedroom.
+
+The young man set the paper bag he carried down on the littered round
+table and advanced to the girl who sat in an old wicker chair before
+the fire. The girl did not turn her head as he kissed her cheek, and he
+looked down at something that had muffled the sound of his steps as
+he had approached her.
+
+"Hallo, that's new, isn't it, Bessie? Where did that come from?" he asked
+cheerfully.
+
+The middle of the floor was covered with a common jute matting, but on
+the hearth was a magnificent leopard-skin rug.
+
+"Mrs. Hepburn sent it up. There was a draught from under the door. It's
+much warmer for my feet."
+
+"Very kind of Mrs. Hepburn. Well, how are you feeling to-day, old girl?"
+
+"Better, thanks, Ed."
+
+"That's the style. You'll be yourself again soon. Daisy says you've been
+out to-day?"
+
+"Yes, I went for a walk. But not far; I went to the Museum and then sat
+down. You're early, aren't you?"
+
+He turned away to get a chair, from which he had to move a mass of
+tissue-paper patterns and buckram linings. He brought it to the rug.
+
+"Yes. I stopped last night late to cash up for Vedder, so he's staying
+to-night. Turn and turn about. Well, tell us all about it, Bess."
+
+Their faces were red in the firelight. Hers had the prettiness that the
+first glance almost exhausts, the prettiness, amazing in its quantity,
+that one sees for a moment under the light of the street lamps when shops
+and offices close for the day. She was short-nosed, pulpy-mouthed and
+faunish-eyed, and only the rather remarkable smallness of the head on the
+splendid thick throat saved her from ordinariness. He, too, might have
+been seen in his thousands at the close of any day, hurrying home to
+Catford or Walham Green or Tufnell Park to tea and an evening with a
+girl or in a billiard-room, or else dining cheaply "up West" preparatory
+to smoking cigarettes from yellow packets in the upper circle of a
+music-hall. Four inches of white up-and-down collar encased his neck; and
+as he lifted his trousers at the knee to clear his purple socks, the pair
+of paper covers showed, that had protected his cuffs during the day at
+the office. He removed them, crumpled them up and threw them on the fire;
+and the momentary addition to the light of the upper chamber showed how
+curd-white was that superb neck of hers and how moody and tired her eyes.
+
+From his face only one would have guessed, and guessed wrongly, that his
+preferences were for billiard-rooms and music-halls. His conversation
+showed them to be otherwise. It was of Polytechnic classes that he spoke,
+and of the course of lectures in English literature that had just begun.
+And, as if somebody had asserted that the pursuit of such studies was not
+compatible with a certain measure of physical development also, he
+announced that he was not sure that he should not devote, say, half an
+evening a week, on Wednesdays, to training in the gymnasium.
+
+"_Mens sana in corpore sano_, Bessie," he said; "a sound mind in a sound
+body, you know. That's tremendously important, especially when a fellow
+spends the day in a stuffy office. Yes, I think I shall give it half
+Wednesdays, from eight-thirty to nine-thirty; sends you home in a glow.
+But I was going to tell you about the Literature Class. The second
+lecture's to-night. The first was splendid, all about the languages of
+Europe and Asia--what they call the Indo-Germanic languages, you know.
+Aryans. I can't tell you exactly without my notes, but the Hindoos and
+Persians, I think it was, they crossed the Himalaya Mountains and spread
+westward somehow, as far as Europe. That was the way it all began. It
+was splendid, the way the lecturer put it. English is a Germanic
+language, you know. Then came the Celts. I wish I'd brought my notes. I
+see you've been reading; let's look--"
+
+A book lay on her knees, its back warped by the heat of the fire. He took
+it and opened it.
+
+"Ah, Keats! Glad you like Keats, Bessie. We needn't be great readers, but
+it's important that what we do read should be all right. I don't know
+him, not _really_ know him, that is. But he's quite all right--A1 in
+fact. And he's an example of what I've always maintained, that knowledge
+should be brought within the reach of all. It just shows. He was the son
+of a livery-stable keeper, you know, so what he'd have been if he'd
+really had chances, been to universities and so on, there's no knowing.
+But, of course, it's more from the historical standpoint that I'm
+studying these things. Let's have a look--"
+
+He opened the book where a hairpin between the leaves marked a place.
+The firelight glowed on the page, and he read, monotonously and
+inelastically:
+
+"_And as I sat, over the light blue hills
+There came a noise of revellers; the rills
+Into the wide stream came of purple hue--
+  'Twas Bacchus and his crew!
+The earnest trumpet spake, and silver thrills
+From kissing cymbals made a merry din--
+  'Twas Bacchus and his kin!
+Like to a moving vintage down they came,
+Crowned with green leaves, and faces all on flame
+All madly dancing through the pleasant valley
+  To scare thee, Melancholy!"_
+
+It was the wondrous passage from _Endymion_, of the descent of the wild
+inspired rabble into India. Ed plucked for a moment at his lower lip, and
+then, with a "Hm! What's it all about, Bessie?" continued:
+
+_"Within his car, aloft, young Bacchus stood,
+Trifling his ivy-dart, in dancing mood,
+  With sidelong laughing;
+And little rills of crimson wine imbrued
+His plump white arms and shoulders, enough white
+  For Venus' pearly bite;
+And near him rode Silenus on his ass,
+Pelted with flowers as he on did pass,
+  Tipsily quaffing."_
+
+"Hm! I see. Mythology. That's made up of tales, and myths, you know. Like
+Odin and Thor and those, only those were Scandinavian Mythology. So it
+would be absurd to take it too seriously. But I think, in a way, things
+like that do harm. You see," he explained, "the more beautiful they are
+the more harm they might do. We ought always to show virtue and vice in
+their true colours, and if you look at it from that point of view this is
+just drunkenness. That's rotten; destroys your body and intellect; as I
+heard a chap say once, it's an insult to the beasts to call it beastly. I
+joined the Blue Ribbon when I was fourteen and I haven't been sorry for
+it yet. No. Now there's Vedder; he 'went off on a bend,' as he calls it,
+last night, and even he says this morning it wasn't worth it. But let's
+read on."
+
+Again he read, with unresilient movement:
+
+"_I saw Osirian Egypt kneel adown
+Before the vine wreath crown!
+  I saw parched Abyssinia rouse and sing
+  To the silver cymbals' ring!
+I saw the whelming vintage hotly pierce
+  Old Tartary the fierce!
+Great Brahma from his mystic heaven groans_ ..."
+
+"Hm! He was a Buddhist god, Brahma was; mythology again. As I say, if you
+take it seriously, it's just glorifying intoxication.--But I say; I can
+hardly see. Better light the lamp. We'll have tea first, then read. No,
+you sit still; I'll get it ready; I know where things are--"
+
+He rose, crossed to a little cupboard with a sink in it, filled the
+kettle at the tap, and brought it to the fire. Then he struck a match and
+lighted the lamp.
+
+The cheap glass shade was of a foolish corolla shape, clear glass below,
+shading to pink, and deepening to red at the crimped edge. It gave a
+false warmth to the spaces of the room above the level of the
+mantelpiece, and Ed's figure, as he turned the regulator, looked from the
+waist upwards as if he stood within that portion of a spectrum screen
+that deepens to the band of red. The bright concentric circles that
+spread in rings of red on the ceiling were more dimly reduplicated in the
+old mirror over the mantelpiece; and the wintry eastern light beyond the
+chimney-hoods seemed suddenly almost to die out.
+
+Bessie, her white neck below the level of the lamp-shade, had taken up
+the book again; but she was not reading. She was looking over it at the
+upper part of the grate. Presently she spoke. "I was looking at some of
+those things this afternoon, at the Museum."
+
+He was clearing from the table more buckram linings and patterns of
+paper, numbers of Myra's Journal and The Delineator. Already on his way
+to the cupboard he had put aside a red-bodiced dressmaker's "shape" of
+wood and wire. "What things?" he asked.
+
+"Those you were reading about. Greek, aren't they?"
+
+"Oh, the Greek room!... But those people, Bacchus and those, weren't
+people in the ordinary sense. Gods and goddesses, most of 'em; Bacchus
+was a god. That's what mythology means. I wish sometimes our course took
+in Greek literature, but it's a dead language after all. German's more
+good in modern life. It would be nice to know everything, but one has to
+select, you know. Hallo, I clean forgot; I brought you some grapes,
+Bessie; here they are, in this bag; we'll have 'em after tea, what?"
+
+"But," she said again after a pause, still looking at the grate, "they
+had their priests and priestesses, and followers and people, hadn't they?
+It was their things I was looking at--combs and brooches and hairpins,
+and things to cut their nails with. They're all in a glass case there.
+And they had safety-pins, exactly like ours."
+
+"Oh, they were a civilised people," said Ed cheerfully. "It all gives you
+an idea. I only hope you didn't tire yourself out. You'll soon be all
+right, of course, but you have to be careful yet. We'll have a clean
+tablecloth, shall we?"
+
+She had been seriously ill; her life had been despaired of; and somehow
+the young Polytechnic student seemed anxious to assure her that she was
+now all right again, or soon would be. They were to be married "as soon
+as things brightened up a bit," and he was very much in love with her. He
+watched her head and neck as he continued to lay the table, and then, as
+he crossed once more to the cupboard, he put his hand lightly in passing
+on her hair.
+
+She gave so quick a start that he too started. She must have been very
+deep in her reverie to have been so taken by surprise.
+
+"I say, Bessie, don't jump like that!" he cried with involuntary
+quickness. Indeed, had his hand been red-hot, or ice-cold, or taloned,
+she could not have turned a more startled, even frightened, face to him.
+
+"It was your touching me," she muttered, resuming her gazing into the
+grate.
+
+He stood looking anxiously down on her. It would have been better not to
+discuss her state, and he knew it; but in his anxiety he forgot it.
+
+"That jumpiness is the effect of your illness, you know. I shall be glad
+when it's all over. It's made you so odd."
+
+She was not pleased that he should speak of her "oddness." For that
+matter, she, too, found him "odd"--at any rate, found it difficult to
+realise that he was as he always had been. He had begun to irritate her a
+little. His club-footed reading of the verses had irritated her, and she
+had tried hard to hide from him that his cocksure opinions and the tone
+in which they were pronounced jarred on her. It was not that she was
+"better" than he, "knew" any more than he did, didn't (she supposed) love
+him still the same; these moods, that dated from her illness, had nothing
+to do with those things; she reproached herself sometimes that she was
+subject to such doldrums.
+
+"It's all right, Ed, but please don't touch me just now," she said.
+
+He was in the act of leaning over her chair, but he saw her shrink, and
+refrained.
+
+"Poor old girl!" he said sympathetically. "What's the matter?"
+
+"I don't know. It's awfully stupid of me to be like this, but I can't
+help it. I shall be better soon if you leave me alone."
+
+"Nothing's happened, has it?"
+
+"Only those silly dreams I told you about."
+
+"Bother the dreams!" muttered the Polytechnic student.
+
+During her illness she had had dreams, and had come to herself at
+intervals to find Ed or the doctor, Mrs. Hepburn or her aunt, bending
+over her. These kind, solicitous faces had been no more than a glimpse,
+and then she had gone off into the dreams again. The curious thing had
+been that the dreams had seemed to be her vivid waking life, and the
+other things--the anxious faces, the details of her dingy bedroom, the
+thermometer under her tongue--had been the dream. And, though she had
+come back to actuality, the dreams had never quite vanished. She could
+remember no more of them than that they had seemed to hold a high singing
+and jocundity, issuing from some region of haze and golden light; and
+they seemed to hover, ever on the point of being recaptured, yet ever
+eluding all her mental efforts. She was living now between reality and a
+vision.
+
+She had fewer words than sensations, and it was a little pitiful to hear
+her vainly striving to make clear what she meant.
+
+"It's so queer," she said. "It's like being on the edge of something--a
+sort of tiptoe--I can't describe it. Sometimes I could almost touch it
+with my hand, and then it goes away, but never quite away. It's like
+something just past the corner of my eye, over my shoulder, and I sit
+very still sometimes, trying to take it off its guard. But the moment I
+move my head it moves too--like this--"
+
+Again he gave a quick start at the suddenness of her action. Very
+stealthily her faunish eyes had stolen sideways, and then she had swiftly
+turned her head.
+
+"Here, I say, don't, Bessie!" he cried nervously. "You look awfully
+uncanny when you do that! You're brooding," he continued, "that's what
+you're doing, brooding. You're getting into a low state. You want bucking
+up. I don't think I shall go to the Polytec. to-night; I shall stay and
+cheer you up. You know, I really don't think you're making an effort,
+darling."
+
+His last words seemed to strike her. They seemed to fit in with something
+of which she too was conscious. "Not making an effort ..." she wondered
+how he knew that. She felt in some vague way that it was important that
+she should make an effort.
+
+For, while her dream ever evaded her, and yet never ceased to call her
+with such a voice as he who reads on a magic page of the calling of elves
+hears stilly in his brain, yet somehow behind the seduction was another
+and a sterner voice. There was warning as well as fascination. Beyond
+that edge at which she strained on tiptoe, mingled with the jocund calls
+to Hasten, Hasten, were deeper calls that bade her Beware. They puzzled
+her. Beware of what? Of what danger? And to whom?...
+
+"How do you mean, I'm not making an effort, Ed?" she asked slowly, again
+looking into the fire, where the kettle now made a gnat-like singing.
+
+"Why, an effort to get all right again. To be as you used to be--as, of
+course, you will be soon."
+
+"As I used to be?" The words came with a little check in her breathing.
+
+"Yes, before all this. To be yourself, you know."
+
+"Myself?"
+
+"All jolly, and without these jerks and jumps. I wish you could get away.
+A fortnight by the sea would do you all the good in the world."
+
+She knew not what it was in the words "the sea" that caused her suddenly
+to breathe more deeply. The sea!... It was as if, by the mere uttering of
+them, he had touched some secret spring, brought to fulfilment some
+spell. What had he meant by speaking of the sea?... A fortnight before,
+had somebody spoken to her of the sea it would have been the sea of
+Margate, of Brighton, of Southend, that, supplying the image that a word
+calls up as if by conjuration, she would have seen before her; and what
+other image could she supply, could she possibly supply, now?... Yet she
+did, or almost did, supply one. What new experience had she had, or what
+old, old one had been released in her? With that confused, joyous dinning
+just beyond the range of physical hearing there had suddenly mingled
+a new illusion of sound--a vague, vast pash and rustle, silky and harsh
+both at once, its tireless voice holding meanings of stillness and
+solitude compared with which the silence that is mere absence of sound
+was vacancy. It was part of her dream, invisible, intangible, inaudible,
+yet there. As if he had been an enchanter, it had come into being at the
+word upon his lips. Had he other such words? Had he the Master Word
+that--(ah, she knew what the Master Word would do!)--would make the
+Vision the Reality and the Reality the Vision? Deep within her she felt
+something--her soul, herself, she knew not what--thrill and turn over and
+settle again....
+
+"The sea," she repeated in a low voice.
+
+"Yes, that's what you want to set you up--rather! Do you remember that
+fortnight at Littlehampton, you and me and your Aunt? Jolly that was! I
+like Littlehampton. It isn't flash like Brighton, and Margate's always so
+beastly crowded. And do you remember that afternoon by the windmill? I
+did love you that afternoon, Bessie!"...
+
+He continued to talk, but she was not listening. She was wondering why
+the words "the sea" were somehow part of it all--the pins and brooches
+of the Museum, the book on her knees, the dream. She remembered a game of
+hide-and-seek she had played as a child, in which cries of "Warm, warm,
+warmer!" had announced the approach to the hidden object. Oh, she was
+getting warm--positively hot....
+
+He had ceased to talk, and was watching her. Perhaps it was the thought
+of how he had loved her that afternoon by the windmill that had brought
+him close to her chair again. She was aware of his nearness, and closed
+her eyes for a moment as if she dreaded something. Then she said quickly,
+"Is tea nearly ready, Ed?" and, as he turned to the table, took up the
+book again.
+
+She felt that even to touch that book brought her "warmer." It fell open
+at a page. She did not hear the clatter Ed made at the table, nor yet the
+babble his words had evoked, of the pierrots and banjos and minstrels of
+Margate and Littlehampton. It was to hear a gladder, wilder tumult that
+she sat once more so still, so achingly listening....
+
+_"The earnest trumpet spake, and silver thrills
+From kissing cymbals made a merry din--"_
+
+The words seemed to move on the page. In her eyes another light than the
+firelight seemed to play. Her breast rose, and in her thick white throat
+a little inarticulate sound twanged.
+
+"Eh? Did you speak, Bessie?" Ed asked, stopping in his buttering of
+bread.
+
+"Eh?... No."
+
+In answering, her head had turned for a moment, and she had seen him.
+Suddenly it struck her with force: what a shaving of a man he was!
+Desk-chested, weak-necked, conscious of his little "important" lip
+and chin--yes, he needed a Polytechnic gymnastic course! Then she
+remarked how once, at Margate, she had seen him in the distance, as
+in a hired baggy bathing-dress he had bathed from a machine, in muddy
+water, one of a hundred others, all rather cold, flinging a polo-ball
+about and shouting stridently. "A sound mind in a sound body!"... He
+was rather vain of his neat shoes, too, and doubtless stunted his
+feet; and she had seen the little spot on his neck caused by the
+chafing of his collar-stud.... No, she did not want him to touch her,
+just now at any rate. His touch would be too like a betrayal of another
+touch ... somewhere, sometime, somehow ... in that tantalising dream
+that refused to allow itself either to be fully remembered or quite
+forgotten. What was that dream? What was it?...
+
+She continued to gaze into the fire.
+
+Of a sudden she sprang to her feet with a choked cry of almost animal
+fury. The fool had touched her. Carried away doubtless by the memory of
+that afternoon by the windmill, he had, in passing once more to the
+kettle, crept softly behind her and put a swift burning kiss on the side
+of her neck.
+
+Then he had retreated before her, stumbling against the table and causing
+the cups and saucers to jingle.
+
+The basket-chair tilted up, but righted itself again.
+
+"I told you--I told you--" she choked, her stockish figure shaking with
+rage, "I told you--you--"
+
+He put up his elbow as if to ward off a blow.
+
+"_You_ touch me--_you!--you!_" the words broke from her.
+
+He had put himself farther round the table. He stammered.
+
+"Here--dash it all, Bessie--what is the matter?"
+
+"_You_ touch me!"
+
+"All right," he said sullenly. "I won't touch you again--no fear. I
+didn't know you were such a firebrand. All right, drop it now. I won't
+again. Good Lord!"
+
+Slowly the white fist she had drawn back sank to her side again.
+
+"All right now," he continued to grumble resentfully. "You needn't take
+on so. It's said--I won't touch you again." Then, as if he remembered
+that after all she was ill and must be humoured, he began, while her
+bosom still rose and fell rapidly, to talk with an assumption that
+nothing much had happened. "Come, sit down again, Bessie. The tea's in
+the pot and I'll have it ready in a couple of jiffs. What a ridiculous
+little girl you are, to take on like that!... And I say, listen! That's a
+muffin-bell, and there's a grand fire for toast! You sit down while I run
+out and get 'em. Give me your key, so I can let myself in again--"
+
+He took her key from her bag, caught up his hat, and hastened out.
+
+But she did not sit down again. She was no calmer for his quick
+disappearance. In that moment when he had recoiled from her she had had
+the expression of some handsome and angered snake, its hood puffed, ready
+to strike. She stood dazed; one would have supposed that that ill-advised
+kiss of his had indeed been the Master Word she sought, the Word she felt
+approaching, the Word to which the objects of the Museum, the book, that
+rustle of a sea she had never seen, had been but the ever "warming"
+stages. Some merest trifle stood between her and those elfin cries,
+between her and that thin golden mist in which faintly seen shapes seemed
+to move--shapes almost of tossed arms, waving, brandishing objects
+strangely all but familiar. That roaring of the sea was not the rushing
+of her own blood in her ears, that rosy flush not the artificial glow of
+the cheap red lampshade. The shapes were almost as plain as if she saw
+them in some clear but black mirror, the sounds almost as audible as if
+she heard them through some not very thick muffling....
+
+"Quick--the book," she muttered.
+
+But even as she stretched out her hand for it, again came that solemn
+sound of warning. As if something sought to stay it, she had deliberately
+to thrust her hand forward. Again the high dinning calls of "Hasten!
+Hasten!" were mingled with that deeper "Beware!" She knew in her soul
+that, once over that terrible edge, the Dream would become the Reality
+and the Reality the Dream. She knew nothing of the fluidity of the thing
+called Personality--not a thing at all, but a state, a balance, a
+relation, a resultant of forces so delicately in equilibrium that a
+touch, and--pff!--the horror of Formlessness rushed over all.
+
+As she hesitated a new light appeared in the chamber. Within the frame of
+the small square window, beyond the ragged line of the chimney-cowls,
+an edge of orange brightness showed. She leaned forward. It was the full
+moon, rusty and bloated and flattened by the earth-mist.
+
+The next moment her hand had clutched at the book.
+
+_"Whence came ye, merry Damsels! Whence came ye
+So many, and so many, and such glee?
+Why have ye left your bowers desolate,
+      Your lutes, and gentler fate?
+'We follow Bacchus, Bacchus on the wing A-conquering!
+Bacchus, young Bacchus! Good or ill betide
+We dance before him thorough kingdoms wide!
+Come hither, Lady fair, and joined be
+      To our wild minstrelsy!'"_
+
+There was an instant in which darkness seemed to blot out all else; then
+it rolled aside, and in a blaze of brightness was gone. It was gone, and
+she stood face to face with her Dream, that for two thousand years had
+slumbered in the blood of her and her line. She stood, with mouth agape
+and eyes that hailed, her thick throat full of suppressed clamour. The
+other was the Dream now, and these!... they came down, mad and noisy
+and bright--Maenades, Thyades, satyrs, fauns--naked, in hides of beasts,
+ungirded, dishevelled, wreathed and garlanded, dancing, singing,
+shouting. The thudding of their hooves shook the ground, and the clash of
+their timbrels and the rustling of their thyrsi filled the air. They
+brandished frontal bones, the dismembered quarters of kids and goats;
+they struck the bronze cantharus, they tossed the silver obba up aloft.
+Down a cleft of rocks and woods they came, trooping to a wide seashore
+with the red of the sunset behind them. She saw the evening light on the
+sleek and dappled hides, the gilded ivory and rich brown of their legs
+and shoulders, the white of inner arms held up on high, their wide red
+mouths, the quivering of the twin flesh-gouts on the necks of the leaping
+fauns. And, shutting out the glimpse of sky at the head of the deep
+ravine, the god himself descended, with his car full of drunken girls who
+slept with the serpents coiled about them.
+
+Shouting and moaning and frenzied, leaping upon one another with
+libidinous laughter and beating one another with the half-stripped
+thyrsi, they poured down to the yellow sands and the anemonied pools of
+the shore. They raced to the water, that gleamed pale as nacre in the
+deepening twilight in the eye of the evening star. They ran along its
+edge over their images in the wet sands, calling their lost companion.
+
+"Hasten, hasten!" they cried; and one of them, a young man with a torso
+noble as the dawn and shoulder-lines strong as those of the eternal
+hills, ran here and there calling her name.
+
+"Louder, louder!" she called back in an ecstasy.
+
+Something dropped and tinkled against the fender. It was one of her
+hairpins. One side of her hair was in a loose tumble; she threw up the
+small head on the superb thick neck.
+
+"Louder!--I cannot hear! Once more--"
+
+The throwing up of her head that had brought down the rest of her hair
+had given her a glimpse of herself in the glass over the mantelpiece. For
+the last time that formidable "Beware!" sounded like thunder in her ears;
+the next moment she had snapped with her fingers the ribbon that was
+cutting into her throbbing throat. He with the torso and those shoulders
+was seeking her ... how should he know her in that dreary garret, in
+those joyless habiliments? He would as soon known his Own in that
+crimson-bodiced, wire-framed dummy by the window yonder!...
+
+Her fingers clutched at the tawdry mercerised silk of her blouse. There
+was a rip, and her arms and throat were free. She panted as she tugged
+at something that gave with a short "click-click," as of steel
+fastenings; something fell against the fender.... These also.... She tore
+at them, and kicked them as they lay about her feet as leaves lie about
+the trunk of a tree in autumn....
+
+"Ah!"
+
+And as she stood there, as if within the screen of a spectrum that
+deepened to the band of red, her eyes fell on the leopard-skin at her
+feet. She caught it up, and in doing so saw purple grapes--purple
+grapes that issued from the mouth of a paper bag on the table. With the
+dappled pelt about her she sprang forward. The juice spurted through them
+into the mass of her loosened hair. Down her body there was a spilth of
+seeds and pulp. She cried hoarsely aloud.
+
+"Once more--oh, answer me! Tell me my name!"
+
+Ed's steps were heard on the oilclothed portion of the staircase.
+
+"My name--oh, my name!" she cried in an agony of suspense.... "Oh, they
+will not wait for me! They have lighted the torches--they run up and down
+the shore with torches--oh, cannot you see me?..."
+
+Suddenly she dashed to the chair on which the litter of linings and
+tissue-paper lay. She caught up a double handful and crammed them on the
+fire. They caught and flared. There was a call upon the stairs, and the
+sound of somebody mounting in haste.
+
+"Once--once only--my name!"
+
+The soul of the Bacchante rioted, struggled to escape from her eyes. Then
+as the door was flung open, she heard, and gave a terrifying shout of
+recognition.
+
+"I hear--I almost hear--but once more.... IO! _Io, Io, Io!_"
+
+Ed, in the doorway, stood for one moment agape; the next, ignorant of the
+full purport of his own words--ignorant that though man may come
+westwards he may yet bring his worship with him--ignorant that to make
+the Dream the Reality and the Reality the Dream is Heaven's dreadfullest
+favour--and ignorant that, that Edge once crossed, there is no return to
+the sanity and sweetness and light that are only seen clearly in the
+moment when they are lost for ever--he had dashed down the stairs crying
+in a voice hoarse and high with terror:
+
+"She's mad! She's mad!"
+
+
+
+
+THE ACCIDENT
+
+
+I
+
+The street had not changed so much but that, little by little, its
+influence had come over Romarin again; and as the clock a street or two
+away had struck seven he had stood, his hands folded on his stick, first
+curious, then expectant, and finally, as the sound had died away, oddly
+satisfied in his memory. The clock had a peculiar chime, a rather
+elaborate one, ending inconclusively on the dominant and followed after
+an unusually long interval by the stroke of the hour itself. Not until
+its last vibration had become too subtle for his ear had Romarin resumed
+the occupation that the pealing of the hour had interrupted.
+
+It was an occupation that especially tended to abstraction of mind--the
+noting in detail of the little things of the street that he had forgotten
+with such completeness that they awakened only tardy responses in his
+memory now that his eyes rested on them again. The shape of a
+doorknocker, the grouping of an old chimney-stack, the crack, still
+there, in a flagstone--somewhere deep in the past these things had
+associations; but they lay very deep, and the disturbing of them gave
+Romarin a curious, desolate feeling, as of returning to things he had
+long out-grown.
+
+But, as he continued to stare at the objects, the sluggish memories
+roused more and more; and for each bit of the old that reasserted itself
+scores of yards of the new seemed to disappear. New shop-frontages went;
+a wall, brought up flush where formerly a recess had been, became the
+recess once more; the intermittent electric sign at the street's end,
+that wrote in green and crimson the name of a whiskey across a lamp-lit
+façade, ceased to worry his eyes; and the unfamiliar new front of the
+little restaurant he was passing and repassing took on its old and
+well-known aspect again.
+
+Seven o'clock. He had thought, in dismissing his hansom, that it had been
+later. His appointment was not until a quarter past. But he decided
+against entering the restaurant and waiting inside; seeing who his guest
+was, it would be better to wait at the door. By the light of the
+restaurant window he corrected his watch, and then sauntered a few yards
+along the street, to where men were moving flats of scenery from a back
+door of the new theatre into a sort of tumbril. The theatre was twenty
+years old, but to Romarin it was "the new theatre." There had been no
+theatre there in his day.
+
+In his day!... His day had been twice twenty years before. Forty years
+before, that street, that quarter, had been bound up in his life. He had
+not, forty years ago, been the famous painter, honoured, decorated, taken
+by the arm by monarchs; he had been a student, wild and raw as any, with
+that tranquil and urbane philosophy that had made his success still in
+abeyance within him. As his eyes had rested on the doorknocker next to
+the restaurant a smile had crossed his face. How had _that_ door-knocker
+come to be left by the old crowd that had wrenched off so many others? By
+what accident had _that_ survived, to bring back all the old life now so
+oddly? He stood, again smiling, his hands folded on his stick. A Crown
+Prince had given him that stick, and had had it engraved, "To my Friend,
+Romarin."
+
+"You oughtn't to be here, you know," he said to the door-knocker. "If I
+didn't get you, Marsden ought to have done so...."
+
+It was Marsden whom Romarin had come to meet--Marsden, of whom he had
+thought with such odd persistency lately. Marsden was the only man in the
+world between whom and himself lay as much as the shadow of an enmity;
+and even that faint shadow was now passing. One does not guard, for forty
+years, animosities that take their rise in quick outbreaks of the young
+blood; and, now that Romarin came to think of it, he hadn't really hated
+Marsden for more than a few months. It had been within those very doors
+(Romarin was passing the restaurant again) that there had been that quick
+blow, about a girl, and the tables had been pushed hastily back, and he
+and Marsden had fought, while the other fellows had kept the waiters
+away.... And Romarin was now sixty-four, and Marsden must be a year
+older, and the girl--who knew?--probably dead long ago ... Yes, time
+heals these things, thank God; and Romarin had felt a genuine flush of
+pleasure when Marsden had accepted his invitation to dinner.
+
+But--Romarin looked at his watch again--it was rather like Marsden to be
+late. Marsden had always been like that--had come and gone pretty much as
+he had pleased, regardless of inconvenience to others. But, doubtless, he
+had had to walk. If all reports were true, Marsden had not made very much
+of his life in the way of worldly success, and Romarin, sorry to hear it,
+had wished he could give him a leg-up. Even a good man cannot do much
+when the current of his life sets against him in a tide of persistent
+ill-luck, and Romarin, honoured and successful, yet knew that he had been
+one of the lucky ones....
+
+But it was just like Marsden to be late, for all that.
+
+At first Romarin did not recognise him when he turned the corner of the
+street and walked towards him. He hadn't made up his mind beforehand
+exactly how he had expected Marsden to look, but he was conscious that he
+didn't look it. It was not the short stubble of grey beard, so short that
+it seemed to hesitate between beard and unshavenness; it was not the
+figure nor carriage--clothes alter that, and the clothes of the man who
+was advancing to meet Romarin were, to put it bluntly, shabby; nor was
+it... but Romarin did not know what it was in the advancing figure that
+for the moment found no response in his memory. He was already within
+half a dozen yards of the men who were moving the scenery from the
+theatre into the tumbril, and one of the workmen put up his hand as the
+edge of a fresh "wing" appeared....
+
+But at the sound of his voice the same thing happened that had happened
+when the clock had struck seven. Romarin found himself suddenly
+expectant, attentive, and then again curiously satisfied in his memory.
+Marsden's voice at least had not changed; it was as in the old days--a
+little envious, sarcastic, accepting lower interpretations somewhat
+willingly, somewhat grudging of better ones. It completed the taking back
+of Romarin that the chiming of the clock, the doorknocker, the grouping
+of the chimney-stack and the crack in the flagstone had begun.
+
+"Well, my distinguished Academician, my--"
+
+Marsden's voice sounded across the group of scene-shifters...
+
+"_'Alf_ a mo, _if_ you please, guv'nor," said another voice...
+
+For a moment the painted "wing" shut them off from one another.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In that moment Romarin's accident befell him. If its essential nature is
+related in arbitrary terms, it is that there are no other terms to relate
+it in. It is a decoded cipher, which can be restored to its cryptic form
+as Romarin subsequently restored it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As the painter took Marsden's arm and entered the restaurant, he noticed
+that while the outside of the place still retained traces of the old, its
+inside was entirely new. Its cheap glittering wall-mirrors, that gave a
+false impression of the actual size of the place, its Loves and
+Shepherdesses painted in the style of the carts of the vendors of
+ice-cream, its hat-racks and its four-bladed propeller that set the air
+slowly in motion at the farther end of the room, might all have been
+matched in a dozen similar establishments within hail of a cab-whistle.
+Its gelatine-written menu-cards announced that one might dine there _à
+la carte_ or _table d'hôte_ for two shillings. Neither the cooking nor
+the service had influenced Romarin in his choice of a place to dine at.
+
+He made a gesture to the waiter who advanced to help him on with his coat
+that Marsden was to be assisted first; but Marsden, with a grunted "All
+right," had already helped himself. A glimpse of the interior of the coat
+told Romarin why Marsden kept waiters at arm's-length. A little twinge of
+compunction took him that his own overcoat should be fur-collared and
+lined with silk.
+
+They sat down at a corner table not far from the slowly moving
+four-bladed propeller.
+
+"Now we can talk," Romarin said. "I'm glad, glad to see you again,
+Marsden."
+
+It was a peculiarly vicious face that he saw, corrugated about the brows,
+and with stiff iron-grey hair untrimmed about the ears. It shocked
+Romarin a little; he had hardly looked to see certain things so
+accentuated by the passage of time. Romarin's own brow was high and bald
+and benign, and his beard was like a broad shield of silver.
+
+"You're glad, are you?" said Marsden, as they sat down facing one
+another. "Well, I'm glad--to be seen with you. It'll revive my credit a
+bit. There's a fellow across there has recognised you already by your
+photographs in the papers.... I assume I may...?"
+
+He made a little upward movement of his hand. It was a gin and
+bitters Marsden assumed he might have. Romarin ordered it; he himself
+did not take one. Marsden tossed down the _apéritif_ at one gulp; then
+he reached for his roll, pulled it to pieces, and--Romarin remembered
+how in the old days Marsden had always eaten bread like that--began to
+throw bullets of bread into his mouth. Formerly this habit had irritated
+Romarin intensely; now ... well, well, Life uses some of us better than
+others. Small blame to these if they throw up the struggle. Marsden, poor
+devil ... but the arrival of the soup interrupted Romarin's meditation.
+He consulted the violet-written card, ordered the succeeding courses, and
+the two men ate for some minutes in silence.
+
+"Well," said Romarin presently, pushing away his plate and wiping his
+white moustache, "are you still a Romanticist, Marsden?"
+
+Marsden, who had tucked his napkin between two of the buttons of his
+frayed waistcoat, looked suspiciously across the glass with the dregs of
+the gin and bitters that he had half raised to his lips.
+
+"Eh?" he said. "I say, Romarin, don't let's go grave-digging among
+memories merely for the sake of making conversation. Yours may be
+pleasant, but I'm not in the habit of wasting much time over mine.
+Might as well be making new ones ... I'll drink whiskey and soda."
+
+It was brought, a large one; and Marsden, nodding, took a deep gulp.
+
+"Health," he said.
+
+"Thanks," said Romarin--instantly noting that the monosyllable, which
+matched the other's in curtness, was not at all the reply he had
+intended. "Thank you--yours," he amended; and a short pause followed, in
+which fish was brought.
+
+This was not what Romarin had hoped for. He had desired to be reconciled
+with Marsden, not merely to be allowed to pay for his dinner. Yet if
+Marsden did not wish to talk it was difficult not to defer to his wish.
+It was true that he had asked if Marsden was still a Romanticist largely
+for the sake of something to say; but Marsden's prompt pointing out of
+this was not encouraging. Now that he came to think of it, he had never
+known precisely what Marsden had meant by the word "Romance" he had so
+frequently taken into his mouth; he only knew that this creed of
+Romanticism, whatever it was, had been worn rather challengingly, a chip
+on the shoulder, to be knocked off at some peril or other. And it had
+seemed to Romarin a little futile in the violence with which it had been
+maintained ... But that was neither here nor there. The point was, that
+the conversation had begun not very happily, and must be mended at once
+if at all. To mend it, Romarin leaned across the table.
+
+"Be as friendly as I am, Marsden," he said. "I think--pardon me--that if
+our positions were reversed, and I saw in you the sincere desire to help
+that I have, I'd take it in the right way." Again Marsden looked
+suspiciously at him. "To help? How to help?" he demanded "That's what I
+should like you to tell me. But I suppose (for example) you still work?"
+
+"Oh, my work!" Marsden made a little gesture of contempt. "Try again,
+Romarin."
+
+"You don't do any?... Come, I'm no bad friend to my friends, and you'll
+find me--especially so."
+
+But Marsden put up his hand.
+
+"Not quite so quickly," he said. "Let's see what you mean by help first.
+Do you really mean that you want me to borrow money from you? That's help
+as I understand it nowadays."
+
+"Then you've changed," said Romarin--wondering, however, in his secret
+heart whether Marsden had changed very much in that respect after all.
+
+Marsden gave a short honk of a laugh.
+
+"You didn't suppose I hadn't changed, did you?" Then he leaned suddenly
+forward. "This is rather a mistake, Romarin--rather a mistake," he said.
+
+"What is?"
+
+"This--our meeting again. Quite a mistake."
+
+Romarin sighed. "I had hoped not," he said.
+
+Marsden leaned forward again, with another gesture Romarin remembered
+very well--dinner knife in hand, edge and palm upwards, punctuating
+and expounding with the point.
+
+"I tell you, it's a mistake," he said, knife and hand balanced. "You
+can't reopen things like this. You don't really _want_ to reopen them;
+you only want to reopen certain of them; you want to pick and choose
+among things, to approve and disapprove. There must have been somewhere
+or other something in me you didn't altogether dislike--I can't for the
+life of me think what it was, by the way; and you want to lay stress on
+that and to sink the rest. Well, you can't. I won't let you. I'll not
+submit my life to you like that. If you want to go into things, all
+right; but it must be all or none. And I'd like another drink."
+
+He put the knife down with a little clap as Romarin beckoned to the
+waiter.
+
+There was distress on Romarin's face. He was not conscious of having
+adopted a superior attitude. But again he told himself that he must make
+allowances. Men who don't come off in Life's struggle are apt to be
+touchy, and he was; after all, the same old Marsden, the man with whom he
+desired to be at peace.
+
+"Are you quite fair to me?" he asked presently, in a low voice.
+
+Again the knife was taken up and its point advanced.
+
+"Yes, I am," said Marsden in a slightly raised voice; and he indicated
+with the knife the mirror at the end of the table. "You know you've done
+well, and I, to all appearances, haven't; you can't look at that glass
+and not know it. But I've followed the line of my development too, no
+less logically than you. My life's been mine, and I'm not going to
+apologise for it to a single breathing creature. More, I'm proud of it.
+At least, there's been singleness of intention about it. So I think I'm
+strictly fair in pointing that out when you talk about helping me."
+
+"Perhaps so, perhaps so," Romarin agreed a little sadly. "It's your tone
+more than anything else that makes things a little difficult. Believe me,
+I've no end in my mind except pure friendliness."
+
+"No-o-o," said Marsden--a long "no" that seemed to deliberate, to
+examine, and finally to admit. "No. I believe that. And you usually get
+what you set out for. Oh yes. I've watched your rise--I've made a point
+of watching it. It's been a bit at a time, but you've got there. You're
+that sort. It's on your forehead--your destiny."
+
+Romarin smiled.
+
+"Hallo, that's new, isn't it?" he said. "It wasn't your habit to talk
+much about destiny, if I remember rightly. Let me see; wasn't this more
+your style--'will, passion, laughs-at-impossibilities and says,' et
+cetera--and so forth? Wasn't that it? With always the suspicion not far
+away that you did things more from theoretical conviction than real
+impulse after all?"
+
+A dispassionate observer would have judged that the words went somewhere
+near home. Marsden was scraping together with the edge of his knife the
+crumbs of his broken roll. He scraped them into a little square, and then
+trimmed the corners. Not until the little pile was shaped to his liking
+did he look surlily up.
+
+"Let it rest, Romarin," he said curtly. "Drop it," he added. "Let it
+alone. If I begin to talk like that, too, we shall only cut one another
+up. Clink glasses--there--and let it alone."
+
+Mechanically Romarin clinked; but his bald brow was perplexed.
+
+"'Cut one another up?'" he repeated.
+
+"Yes. Let it alone."
+
+"'Cut one another up?'" he repeated once more. "You puzzle me entirely."
+
+"Well, perhaps I'm altogether wrong. I only wanted to warn you that I've
+dared a good many things in my time. Now drop it."
+
+Romarin had fine brown eyes, under Oriental arched brows. Again they
+noted the singularly vicious look of the man opposite. They were full
+of mistrust and curiosity, and he stroked his silver beard.
+
+"Drop it?" he said slowly ... "No, let's go on. I want to hear more of
+this."
+
+"I'd much rather have another drink in peace and quietness.... Waiter!"
+
+Either leaned back in his chair, surveying the other. "You're a perverse
+devil still," was Romarin's thought. Marsden's, apparently, was of
+nothing but the whiskey and soda the waiter had gone to fetch.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Romarin was inclined to look askance at a man who could follow up a gin
+and bitters with three or four whiskeys and soda without turning a hair.
+It argued the seasoned cask. Marsden had bidden the waiter leave the
+bottle and the syphon on the table, and was already mixing himself
+another stiff peg.
+
+"Well," he said, "since you will have it so--to the old days."
+
+"To the old days," said Romarin, watching him gulp it down.
+
+"Queer, looking back across all that time at 'em, isn't it? How do you
+feel about it?"
+
+"In a mixed kind of way, I think; the usual thing: pleasure and regret
+mingled."
+
+"Oh, you have regrets, have you?"
+
+"For certain things, yes. Not, let me say, my turn-up with you, Marsden,"
+he laughed. "That's why I chose the old place--" he gave a glance
+round at its glittering newness. "Do you happen to remember what all that
+was about? I've only the vaguest idea."
+
+Marsden gave him a long look. "That all?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, I remember in a sort of way. That 'Romantic' soap-bubble of yours
+was really at the bottom of it, I suspect. Tell me," he smiled, "did you
+really suppose Life could be lived on those mad lines you used to lay
+down?"
+
+"My life," said Marsden calmly, "has been."
+
+"Not literally."
+
+"Literally."
+
+"You mean to say that you haven't outgrown _that_?"
+
+"I hope not."
+
+Romarin had thrown up his handsome head. "Well, well!" he murmured
+incredulously.
+
+"Why 'well, well'?" Marsden demanded.... "But, of course, you never did
+and never will know what I meant."
+
+"By Romance? ... No, I can't say that I did; but as I conceived it, it
+was something that began in appetite and ended in diabetes."
+
+"Not philosophic, eh?" Marsden inquired, picking up a chicken bone.
+
+"Highly unphilosophic," said Romarin, shaking his head.
+
+"Hm!" grunted Marsden, stripping the bone... "Well, I grant it pays in a
+different way."
+
+"It does pay, then?" Romarin asked.
+
+"Oh yes, it pays."
+
+The restaurant had filled up. It was one frequented by young artists,
+musicians, journalists and the clingers to the rather frayed fringes of
+the Arts. From time to time heads were turned to look at Romarin's portly
+and handsome figure, which the Press, the Regent Street photographic
+establishments, and the Academy Supplements had made well known. The
+plump young Frenchwoman within the glazed cash office near the door,
+at whom Marsden had several times glanced in a way at which Romarin had
+frowned, was aware of the honour done the restaurant; and several times
+the blond-bearded proprietor had advanced and inquired with concern
+whether the dinner and the service was to the liking of M'sieu.
+
+And the eyes that were turned to Romarin plainly wondered who the
+scallawag dining with him might be.
+
+Since Romarin had chosen that their conversation should be of the old
+days, and without picking and choosing, Marsden was quite willing that
+it should be so. Again he was casting the bullets of bread into his
+mouth, and again Romarin was conscious of irritation. Marsden, too,
+noticed it; but in awaiting the _rôti_ he still continued to roll and
+bolt the pellets, washing them down with gulps of whiskey and soda.
+
+"Oh yes, it paid," he resumed. "Not in that way, of course--" he
+indicated the head, quickly turned away again, of an aureoled youngster
+with a large bunch of black satin tie, "--not in admiration of that
+sort, but in other ways--"
+
+"Tell me about it."
+
+"Certainly, if you want it. But you're my host. Won't you let me hear
+your side of it all first?"
+
+"But I thought you said you knew that--had followed my career?"
+
+"So I have. It's not your list of honours and degrees; let me see, what
+are you? R.A., D.C.L., Doctor of Literature, whatever that means, and
+Professor of this, that, and the other, and not at the end of it yet. I
+know all that. I don't say you haven't earned it; I admire your painting;
+but it's not that. I want to know what it _feels_ like to be up there
+where you are."
+
+It was a childish question, and Romarin felt foolish in trying to answer
+it. Such things were the things the adoring aureoled youngster a table or
+two away would have liked to ask. Romarin recognised in Marsden the old
+craving for sensation; it was part of the theoretical creed Marsden had
+made for himself, of doing things, not for their own sakes, but in order
+that he might have done them. Of course, it had appeared to a fellow like
+that, that Romarin himself had always had a calculated end in view; he
+had not; Marsden merely measured Romarin's peck out of his own bushel. It
+had been Marsden who, in self-consciously seeking his own life, had lost
+it, and Romarin was more than a little inclined to suspect that the
+vehemence with which he protested that he had not lost it was precisely
+the measure of the loss.
+
+But he essayed it--essayed to give Marsden a _résumé_ of his career. He
+told him of the stroke of sheer luck that had been the foundation of it
+all, the falling ill of another painter who had turned over certain
+commissions to him. He told him of his poor but happy marriage, and of
+the windfall, not large, but timely, that had come to his wife. He told
+him of fortunate acquaintanceships happily cultivated, of his first
+important commission, of the fresco that had procured for him his
+Associateship, of his sale to the Chantrey, and of his quietly
+remunerative Visitorships and his work on Boards and Committees.
+
+And as he talked, Marsden drew his empty glass to him, moistened his
+finger with a little spilt liquid, and began to run the finger round the
+rim of the glass. They had done that formerly, a whole roomful of them,
+producing, when each had found the note of his instrument, a high, thin,
+intolerable singing. To this singing Romarin strove to tell his tale.
+
+But that thin and bat-like note silenced him. He ended lamely, with some
+empty generalisation on success.
+
+"Ah, but success in what?" Marsden demanded, interrupting his playing on
+the glass for a moment.
+
+"In your aim, whatever it may be."
+
+"Ah!" said Marsden, resuming his performance.
+
+Romarin had sought in his recital to minimise differences in
+circumstances; but Marsden seemed bent on aggravating them. He had the
+miserable advantage of the man who has nothing to lose. And bit by bit,
+Romarin had begun to realise that he was going considerably more than
+halfway to meet this old enemy of his, and that amity seemed as far on as
+ever. In his heart he began to feel the foreknowledge that their meeting
+could have no conclusion. He hated the man, the look of his face and the
+sound of his voice, as much as ever.
+
+The proprietor approached with profoundest apology in his attitude.
+M'sieu would pardon him, but the noise of the glass ... it was
+annoying ... another M'sieu had made complaint....
+
+"Eh?..." cried Marsden. "Oh, that! Certainly! It can be put to a much
+better purpose."
+
+He refilled the glass.
+
+The liquor had begun to tell on him. A quarter of the quantity would have
+made a clean-living man incapably drunk, but it had only made Marsden's
+eyes bright. He gave a sarcastic laugh.
+
+"And is that all?" he asked.
+
+Romarin replied shortly that that was all.
+
+"You've missed out the R.A., and the D.C.L."
+
+"Then let me add that I'm a Doctor of Civil Law and a full Member of the
+Royal Academy," said Romarin, almost at the end of his patience. "And
+now, since you don't think much of it, may I hear your own account?"
+
+"Oh, by all means. I don't know, however, that--" he broke off to throw a
+glance at a woman who had just entered the restaurant--a divesting glance
+that caused Romarin to redden to his crown and drop his eyes. "I was
+going to say that you may think as little of my history as I do of yours.
+Supple woman that; when the rather scraggy blonde does take it into her
+head to be a devil she's the worst kind there is...."
+
+Without apology Romarin looked at his watch.
+
+"All right," said Marsden, smiling, "for what _I've_ got out of life,
+then. But I warn you, it's entirely discreditable."
+
+Romarin did not doubt it.
+
+"But it's mine, and I boast of it. I've done--barring receiving honours
+and degrees--everything--everything! If there's anything I haven't done,
+tell me and lend me a sovereign, and I'll go and do it."
+
+"You haven't told the story."
+
+"That's so. Here goes then ... Well, you know, unless you've forgotten,
+how I began...."
+
+Fruit and nutshells and nutcrackers lay on the table between them, and at
+the end of it, shielded from draughts by the menu cards, the coffee
+apparatus simmered over its elusive blue flame. Romarin was taking the
+rind from a pear with a table-knife, and Marsden had declined port in
+favour of a small golden liqueur of brandy. Every seat in the restaurant
+was now occupied, and the proprietor himself had brought his finest
+cigarettes and cigars. The waiter poured out the coffee, and departed
+with the apparatus in one hand and his napkin in the other.
+
+Marsden was already well into his tale...
+
+The frightful unction with which he told it appalled Romarin. It was as
+he had said--there was nothing he had not done and did not exult in with
+a sickening exultation. It had, indeed, ended in diabetes. In the pitiful
+hunting down of sensation to the last inch he had been fiendishly
+ingenious and utterly unimaginative. His unholy curiosity had spared
+nothing, his unnatural appetite had known no truth. It was grinning sin.
+The details of it simply cannot be told....
+
+And his vanity in it all was prodigious. Romarin was pale as he listened.
+What! In order that _this_ malignant growth in Society's breast should
+be able to say "I know," had sanctities been profaned, sweet conventions
+assailed, purity blackened, soundness infected, and all that was bright
+and of the day been sunk in the quagmire that this creature of the night
+had called--yes, stilled called--by the gentle name of Romance? Yes,
+so it had been. Not only had men and women suffered dishonour, but
+manhood and womanhood and the clean institutions by which alone the
+creature was suffered to exist had been brought to shame. And what was he
+to look at when it was all done?...
+
+"Romance--Beauty--the Beauty of things as they are!" he croaked.
+
+If faces in the restaurant were now turned to Romarin, it was the horror
+on Romarin's own face that drew them. He drew out his handkerchief and
+mopped his brow.
+
+"But," he stammered presently, "you are speaking of
+generalities--horrible theories--things diabolically conceivable
+to be done--"
+
+"What?" cried Marsden, checked for a moment in his horrible triumph. "No,
+by God! I've done 'em, done 'em! Don't you understand? If you don't,
+question me!..."
+
+"No, no!" cried Romarin.
+
+"But I say yes! You came for this, and you shall have it! I tried to stop
+you, but you wanted it, and by God you shall have it! You think your
+life's been full and mine empty? Ha ha!... Romance! I had the conviction
+of it, and I've had the courage too! I haven't told you a tenth of it!
+What would you like? Chamber-windows when Love was hot? The killing of a
+man who stood in my way? (I've fought a duel, and killed.) The squeezing
+of the juice out of life like _that_?" He pointed to Romarin's plate;
+Romarin had been eating grapes. "Did you find me saying I'd do a thing
+and then drawing back from it when we--" he made a quick gesture of both
+hands towards the middle of the restaurant floor.
+
+"When we fought--?"
+
+"Yes, when we fought, here!... Oh no, oh no! I've lived, I tell you,
+every moment! Not a title, not a degree, but I've lived such a life as
+you never dreamed of--!"
+
+"Thank God--"
+
+But suddenly Marsden's voice, which had risen, dropped again. He began to
+shake with interior chuckles. They were the old, old chuckles, and they
+filled Romarin with a hatred hardly to be borne. The sound of the
+animal's voice had begun it, and his every word, look, movement,
+gesture, since they had entered the restaurant, had added to it. And he
+was now chuckling, chuckling, shaking with chuckles, as if some
+monstrous tit-bit still remained to be told. Already Romarin had tossed
+aside his napkin, beckoned to the waiter, and said, "M'sieu dines
+with me...."
+
+"Ho ho ho ho!" came the drunken sounds. "It's a long time since M'sieu
+dined here with his old friend Romarin! Do you remember the last time? Do
+you remember it? _Pif, pan_! Two smacks across the table, Romarin--oh,
+you got it in very well!--and then, _brrrrr_! quick! Back with the
+tables--all the fellows round--Farquharson for me and Smith for you, and
+then to it, Romarin!... And you really don't remember what it was all
+about?..."
+
+Romarin had remembered. His face was not the face of the philosophic
+master of Life now.
+
+"You said she shouldn't--little Pattie Hines you know--you said she
+shouldn't--"
+
+Romarin sprang half from his chair, and brought his fist down on the
+table.
+
+"And by Heaven, she didn't! At least that's one thing you haven't done!"
+
+Marsden too had risen unsteadily.
+
+"Oho, oho? You think that?"
+
+A wild thought flashed across Romarin's brain.
+
+"You mean--?"
+
+"I mean?... Oho, oho! Yes, I mean! She did, Romarin...."
+
+The mirrors, mistily seen through the smoke of half a hundred cigars and
+cigarettes, the Loves and Shepherdesses of the garish walls, the diners
+starting up in their places, all suddenly seemed to swing round in a
+great half-circle before Romarin's eyes. The next moment, feeling as if
+he stood on something on which he found it difficult to keep his balance,
+he had caught up the table-knife with which he had peeled the pear and
+had struck at the side of Marsden's neck. The rounded blade snapped, but
+he struck again with the broken edge, and left the knife where it
+entered. The table appeared uptilted almost vertical; over it Marsden's
+head disappeared; it was followed by a shower of glass, cigars,
+artificial flowers and the tablecloth at which he clutched; and the
+dirty American cloth of the table top was left bare.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But the edge behind which Marsden's face had disappeared remained
+vertical. A group of scene-shifters were moving a flat of scenery from a
+theatre into a tumbril-like cart...
+
+And Romarin knew that, past, present, and future, he had seen it all in
+an instant, and that Marsden stood behind that painted wing.
+
+And he knew, too, that he had only to wait until that flat passed and to
+take Marsden's arm and enter the restaurant, _and it would be so_. A
+drowning man is said to see all in one unmeasurable instant of time; a
+year-long dream is but, they say, an instantaneous arrangement in the
+moment of waking of the molecules we associate with ideas; and the past
+of history and the future of prophecy are folded up in the mystic moment
+we call the present....
+
+_It would come true_....
+
+For one moment Romarin stood; the next, he had turned and run for his
+life.
+
+At the corner of the street he collided with a loafer, and only the wall
+saved them from going down. Feverishly Romarin plunged his hand into his
+pocket and brought out a handful of silver. He crammed it into the
+loafer's hand.
+
+"Here--quick--take it!" he gasped. "There's a man there, by that
+restaurant door--he's waiting for Mr. Romarin--tell him--tell him--tell
+him Mr. Romarin's had an accident--"
+
+And he dashed away, leaving the man looking at the silver in his palm.
+
+
+
+
+THE CIGARETTE CASE
+
+
+"A cigarette, Loder?" I said, offering my case. For the moment Loder was
+not smoking; for long enough he had not been talking.
+
+"Thanks," he replied, taking not only the cigarette, but the case also.
+The others went on talking; Loder became silent again; but I noticed
+that he kept my cigarette case in his hand, and looked at it from time to
+time with an interest that neither its design nor its costliness seemed
+to explain. Presently I caught his eye.
+
+"A pretty case," he remarked, putting it down on the table. "I once had
+one exactly like it."
+
+I answered that they were in every shop window.
+
+"Oh yes," he said, putting aside any question of rarity.... "I lost
+mine."
+
+"Oh?..."
+
+He laughed. "Oh, that's all right--I got it back again--don't be afraid
+I'm going to claim yours. But the way I lost it--found it--the whole
+thing--was rather curious. I've never been able to explain it. I wonder
+if you could?"
+
+I answered that I certainly couldn't till I'd heard it, whereupon Loder,
+taking up the silver case again and holding it in his hand as he talked,
+began:
+
+"This happened in Provence, when I was about as old as Marsham there--and
+every bit as romantic. I was there with Carroll--you remember poor old
+Carroll and what a blade of a boy he was--as romantic as four Marshams
+rolled into one. (Excuse me, Marsham, won't you? It's a romantic tale,
+you see, or at least the setting is.) ... We were in Provence, Carroll
+and I; twenty-four or thereabouts; romantic, as I say; and--and this
+happened.
+
+"And it happened on the top of a whole lot of other things, you must
+understand, the things that do happen when you're twenty-four. If it
+hadn't been Provence, it would have been somewhere else, I suppose,
+nearly, if not quite as good; but this was Provence, that smells (as you
+might say) of twenty-four as it smells of argelasse and wild lavender and
+broom....
+
+"We'd had the dickens of a walk of it, just with knapsacks--had started
+somewhere in the Ardèche and tramped south through the vines and almonds
+and olives--Montélimar, Orange, Avignon, and a fortnight at that blanched
+skeleton of a town, Les Baux. We'd nothing to do, and had gone just where
+we liked, or rather just where Carroll had liked; and Carroll had had the
+_De Bello Gallico_ in his pocket, and had had a notion, I fancy, of
+taking in the whole ground of the Roman conquest--I remember he lugged me
+off to some place or other, Pourrières I believe its name was, because--I
+forget how many thousands--were killed in a river-bed there, and they
+stove in the water-casks so that if the men wanted water they'd have to
+go forward and fight for it. And then we'd gone on to Arles, where
+Carroll had fallen in love with everything that had a bow of black
+velvet in her hair, and after that Tarascon, Nîmes, and so on, the usual
+round--I won't bother you with that. In a word, we'd had two months of
+it, eating almonds and apricots from the trees, watching the women at the
+communal washing-fountains under the dark plane-trees, singing _Magali_
+and the _Qué Cantes_, and Carroll yarning away all the time about Caesar
+and Vercingetorix and Dante, and trying to learn Provençal so that he
+could read the stuff in the _Journal des Félibriges_ that he'd never have
+looked at if it had been in English....
+
+"Well, we got to Darbisson. We'd run across some young chap or
+other--Rangon his name was--who was a vine-planter in those parts, and
+Rangon had asked us to spend a couple of days with him, with him and his
+mother, if we happened to be in the neighbourhood. So as we might as
+well happen to be there as anywhere else, we sent him a postcard and
+went. This would be in June or early in July. All day we walked across
+a plain of vines, past hurdles of wattled _cannes_ and great wind-screens
+of velvety cypresses, sixty feet high, all white with dust on the north
+side of 'em, for the mistral was having its three-days' revel, and it
+whistled and roared through the _cannes_ till scores of yards of 'em
+at a time were bowed nearly to the earth. A roaring day it was, I
+remember.... But the wind fell a little late in the afternoon, and we
+were poring over what it had left of our Ordnance Survey--like fools,
+we'd got the unmounted paper maps instead of the linen ones--when Rangon
+himself found us, coming out to meet us in a very badly turned-out trap.
+He drove us back himself, through Darbisson, to the house, a mile and a
+half beyond it, where he lived with his mother.
+
+"He spoke no English, Rangon didn't, though, of course, both French and
+Provençal; and as he drove us, there was Carroll, using him as a
+Franco-Provençal dictionary, peppering him with questions about the names
+of things in the patois--I beg its pardon, the language--though there's
+a good deal of my eye and Betty Martin about that, and I fancy this
+Félibrige business will be in a good many pieces when Frédéric Mistral
+is under that Court-of-Love pavilion arrangement he's had put up for
+himself in the graveyard at Maillanne. If the language has got to go,
+well, it's got to go, I suppose; and while I personally don't want to
+give it a kick, I rather sympathise with the Government. Those jaunts of
+a Sunday out to Les Baux, for instance, with paper lanterns and Bengal
+fire and a fellow spouting _O blanche Venus d'Arles_--they're well
+enough, and compare favourably with our Bank Holidays and Sunday League
+picnics, but ... but that's nothing to do with my tale after all.... So
+he drove on, and by the time we got to Rangon's house Carroll had learned
+the greater part of _Magali_....
+
+"As you, no doubt, know, it's a restricted sort of life in some respects
+that a young _vigneron_ lives in those parts, and it was as we reached
+the house that Rangon remembered something--or he might have been trying
+to tell us as we came along for all I know, and not been able to get a
+word in edgeways for Carroll and his Provençal. It seemed that his mother
+was away from home for some days--apologies of the most profound, of
+course; our host was the soul of courtesy, though he did try to get at
+us a bit later.... We expressed our polite regrets, naturally; but I
+didn't quite see at first what difference it made. I only began to see
+when Rangon, with more apologies, told us that we should have to go back
+to Darbisson for dinner. It appeared that when Madame Rangon went away
+for a few days she dispersed the whole of the female side of her
+establishment also, and she'd left her son with nobody to look after
+him except an old man we'd seen in the yard mending one of these
+double-cylindered sulphur-sprinklers they clap across the horse's back
+and drive between the rows of vines.... Rangon explained all this as we
+stood in the hall drinking an _apéritif_--a hall crowded with oak
+furniture and photographs and a cradle-like bread-crib and doors opening
+to right and left to the other rooms of the ground floor. He had also, it
+seemed, to ask us to be so infinitely obliging as to excuse him for one
+hour after dinner--our postcard had come unexpectedly, he said, and
+already he had made an appointment with his agent about the _vendange_
+for the coming autumn.... We, begged him, of course, not to allow us to
+interfere with his business in the slightest degree. He thanked us a
+thousand times.
+
+"'But though we dine in the village, we will take our own wine with us,'
+he said, 'a wine _surfin_--one of my wines--you shall see--'
+
+"Then he showed us round his place--I forget how many hundreds of acres
+of vines, and into the great building with the presses and pumps and
+casks and the huge barrel they call the thunderbolt--and about seven
+o'clock we walked back to Darbisson to dinner, carrying our wine with us.
+I think the restaurant we dined in was the only one in the place, and our
+gaillard of a host--he was a straight-backed, well-set-up chap, with
+rather fine eyes--did us on the whole pretty well. His wine certainly was
+good stuff, and set our tongues going....
+
+"A moment ago I said a fellow like Rangon leads a restricted sort of life
+in those parts. I saw this more clearly as dinner went on. We dined by an
+open window, from which we could see the stream with the planks across it
+where the women washed clothes during the day and assembled in the
+evening for gossip. There were a dozen or so of them there as we dined,
+laughing and chatting in low tones--they all seemed pretty--it was
+quickly falling dusk--all the girls are pretty then, and are quite
+conscious of it--_you_ know, Marsham. Behind them, at the end of the
+street, one of these great cypress wind-screens showed black against the
+sky, a ragged edge something like the line the needle draws on a rainfall
+chart; and you could only tell whether they were men or women under the
+plantains by their voices rippling and chattering and suddenly a deeper
+note.... Once I heard a muffled scuffle and a sound like a kiss.... It
+was then that Rangon's little trouble came out....
+
+"It seemed that he didn't know any girls--wasn't allowed to know any
+girls. The girls of the village were pretty enough, but you see how it
+was--he'd a position to keep up--appearances to maintain--couldn't be
+familiar during the year with the girls who gathered his grapes for him
+in the autumn.... And as soon as Carroll gave him a chance, _he_ began to
+ask _us_ questions, about England, English girls, the liberty they had,
+and so on.
+
+"Of course, we couldn't tell him much he hadn't heard already, but that
+made no difference; he could stand any amount of that, our strapping
+young _vigneron_; and he asked us questions by the dozen, that we both
+tried to answer at once. And his delight and envy!... What! In England
+did the young men see the young women of their own class without
+restraint--the sisters of their friends _même_--even at the house? Was it
+permitted that they drank tea with them in the afternoon, or went without
+invitation to pass the _soirée_?... He had all the later Prévosts in his
+room, he told us (I don't doubt he had the earlier ones also); Prévost
+and the Disestablishment between them must be playing the mischief
+with the convent system of education for young girls; and our young man
+was--what d'you call it?--'Co-ed'--co-educationalist--by Jove, yes!... He
+seemed to marvel that we should have left a country so blessed as England
+to visit his dusty, wild-lavender-smelling, girl-less Provence.... You
+don't know half your luck, Marsham....
+
+"Well, we talked after this fashion--we'd left the dining-room of the
+restaurant and had planted ourselves on a bench outside with Rangon
+between us--when Rangon suddenly looked at his watch and said it was time
+he was off to see this agent of his. Would we take a walk, he asked us,
+and meet him again there? he said.... But as his agent lived in the
+direction of his own home, we said we'd meet him at the house in an hour
+or so. Off he went, envying every Englishman who stepped, I don't
+doubt.... I told you how old--how young--we were.... Heigho!...
+
+"Well, off goes Rangon, and Carroll and I got up, stretched ourselves,
+and took a walk. We walked a mile or so, until it began to get pretty
+dark, and then turned; and it was as we came into the blackness of one of
+these cypress hedges that the thing I'm telling you of happened. The
+hedge took a sharp turn at that point; as we came round the angle we saw
+a couple of women's figures hardly more than twenty yards ahead--don't
+know how they got there so suddenly, I'm sure; and that same moment I
+found my foot on something small and white and glimmering on the grass.
+
+"I picked it up. It was a handkerchief--a woman's--embroidered--
+
+"The two figures ahead of us were walking in our direction; there was
+every probability that the handkerchief belonged to one of them; so we
+stepped out....
+
+"At my 'Pardon, madame,' and lifted hat one of the figures turned her
+head; then, to my surprise, she spoke in English--cultivated English.
+I held out the handkerchief. It belonged to the elder lady of the two,
+the one who had spoken, a very gentle-voiced old lady, older by very many
+years than her companion. She took the handkerchief and thanked me....
+
+"Somebody--Sterne, isn't it?--says that Englishmen don't travel to see
+Englishmen. I don't know whether he'd stand to that in the case of
+Englishwomen; Carroll and I didn't.... We were walking rather slowly
+along, four abreast across the road; we asked permission to introduce
+ourselves, did so, and received some name in return which, strangely
+enough, I've entirely forgotten--I only remember that the ladies were
+aunt and niece, and lived at Darbisson. They shook their heads when I
+mentioned M. Rangon's name and said we were visiting him. They didn't
+know him....
+
+"I'd never been in Darbisson before, and I haven't been since, so I don't
+know the map of the village very well. But the place isn't very big,
+and the house at which we stopped in twenty minutes or so is probably
+there yet. It had a large double door--a double door in two senses,
+for it was a big _porte-cochère_ with a smaller door inside it, and an
+iron grille shutting in the whole. The gentle-voiced old lady had already
+taken a key from her reticule and was thanking us again for the little
+service of the handkerchief; then, with the little gesture one makes when
+one has found oneself on the point of omitting a courtesy, she gave a
+little musical laugh.
+
+"'But,' she said with a little movement of invitation, 'one sees so
+few compatriots here--if you have the time to come in and smoke a
+cigarette ... also the cigarette,' she added, with another rippling
+laugh, 'for we have few callers, and live alone--'
+
+"Hastily as I was about to accept, Carroll was before me, professing a
+nostalgia for the sound of the English tongue that made his recent
+protestations about Provençal a shameless hypocrisy. Persuasive young
+rascal, Carroll Was--poor chap ... So the elder lady opened the grille
+and the wooden door beyond it, and we entered.
+
+"By the light of the candle which the younger lady took from a bracket
+just within the door we saw that we were in a handsome hall or vestibule;
+and my wonder that Rangon had made no mention of what was apparently a
+considerable establishment was increased by the fact that its tenants
+must be known to be English and could be seen to be entirely charming. I
+couldn't understand it, and I'm afraid hypotheses rushed into my head
+that cast doubts on the Rangons--you know--whether _they_ were all right.
+We knew nothing about our young planter, you see....
+
+"I looked about me. There were tubs here and there against the walls,
+gaily painted, with glossy-leaved aloes and palms in them--one of the
+aloes, I remember, was flowering; a little fountain in the middle made a
+tinkling noise; we put our caps on a carved and gilt console table; and
+before us rose a broad staircase with shallow steps of spotless stone and
+a beautiful wrought-iron handrail. At the top of the staircase were more
+palms and aloes, and double doors painted in a clear grey.
+
+"We followed our hostesses up the staircase. I can hear yet the sharp
+clean click our boots made on that hard shiny stone--see the lights of
+the candle gleaming on the handrail ... The young girl--she was not much
+more than a girl--pushed at the doors, and we went in.
+
+"The room we entered was all of a piece with the rest for rather
+old-fashioned fineness. It was large, lofty, beautifully kept. Carroll
+went round for Miss ... whatever her name was ... lighting candles in
+sconces; and as the flames crept up they glimmered on a beautifully
+polished floor, which was bare except for an Eastern rug here and there.
+The elder lady had sat down in a gilt chair, Louis Fourteenth I should
+say, with a striped rep of the colour of a petunia; and I really don't
+know--don't smile, Smith--what induced me to lead her to it by the
+finger-tips, bending over her hand for a moment as she sat down. There
+was an old tambour-frame behind her chair, I remember, and a vast oval
+mirror with clustered candle-brackets filled the greater part of the
+farther wall, the brightest and clearest glass I've ever seen...."
+
+He paused, looking at my cigarette case, which he had taken into his hand
+again. He smiled at some recollection or other, and it was a minute or
+so before he continued.
+
+"I must admit that I found it a little annoying, after what we'd
+been talking about at dinner an hour before, that Rangon wasn't with
+us. I still couldn't understand how he could have neighbours so
+charming without knowing about them, but I didn't care to insist on
+this to the old lady, who for all I knew might have her own reasons
+for keeping to herself. And, after all, it was our place to return
+Rangon's hospitality in London if he ever came there, not, so to speak,
+on his own doorstep.... So presently I forgot all about Rangon, and I'm
+pretty sure that Carroll, who was talking to his companion of some
+Félibrige junketing or other and having the air of Gounod's _Mireille_
+hummed softly over to him, didn't waste a thought on him either. Soon
+Carroll--you remember what a pretty crooning, humming voice he had--soon
+Carroll was murmuring what they call 'seconds,' but so low that the sound
+hardly came across the room; and I came in with a soft bass note from
+time to time. No instrument, you know; just an unaccompanied murmur no
+louder than an Aeolian harp; and it sounded infinitely sweet and
+plaintive and--what shall I say?--weak--attenuated--faint--'pale' you
+might almost say--in that formal, rather old-fashioned _salon_, with that
+great clear oval mirror throwing back the still flames of the candles in
+the sconces on the walls. Outside the wind had now fallen completely; all
+was very quiet; and suddenly in a voice not much louder than a sigh,
+Carroll's companion was singing _Oft in the Stilly Night_--you know
+it...."
+
+He broke off again to murmur the beginning of the air. Then, with a
+little laugh for which we saw no reason, he went on again:
+
+"Well, I'm not going to try to convince you of such a special and
+delicate thing as the charm of that hour--it wasn't more than an
+hour--it would be all about an hour we stayed. Things like that just
+have to be said and left; you destroy them the moment you begin to
+insist on them; we've every one of us had experiences like that, and
+don't say much about them. I was as much in love with my old lady as
+Carroll evidently was with his young one--I can't tell you why--being
+in love has just to be taken for granted too, I suppose... Marsham
+understands.... We smoked our cigarettes, and sang again, once more
+filling that clear-painted, quiet apartment with a murmuring no louder
+than if a light breeze found that the bells of a bed of flowers were
+really bells and played on 'em. The old lady moved her fingers gently
+on the round table by the side of her chair,.. oh, infinitely pretty it
+was.... Then Carroll wandered off into the _Qué Cantes_--awfully
+pretty--'It is not for myself I sing, but for my friend who is near
+me'--and I can't tell you how like four old friends we were, those two
+so oddly met ladies and Carroll and myself.... And so to _Oft in the
+Stilly Night_ again....
+
+"But for all the sweetness and the glamour of it, we couldn't stay on
+indefinitely, and I wondered what time it was, but didn't ask--anything
+to do with clocks and watches would have seemed a cold and mechanical
+sort of thing just then.... And when presently we both got up neither
+Carroll nor I asked to be allowed to call again in the morning to
+thank them for a charming hour.... And they seemed to feel the same as
+we did about it. There was no 'hoping that we should meet again in
+London'--neither an au revoir nor a good-bye--just a tacit understanding
+that that hour should remain isolated, accepted like a good gift without
+looking the gift-horse in the mouth, single, unattached to any hours
+before or after--I don't know whether you see what I mean.... Give me a
+match somebody....
+
+"And so we left, with no more than looks exchanged and finger-tips
+resting between the back of our hands and our lips for a moment. We
+found our way out by ourselves, down that shallow-stepped staircase with
+the handsome handrail, and let ourselves out of the double door and
+grille, closing it softly. We made for the village without speaking a
+word.... Heigho!..."
+
+Loder had picked up the cigarette case again, but for all the way his
+eyes rested on it I doubt whether he really saw it. I'm pretty sure he
+didn't; I knew when he did by the glance he shot at me, as much as to say
+"I see you're wondering where the cigarette case comes in."... He
+resumed with another little laugh.
+
+"Well," he continued, "we got back to Rangon's house. I really don't
+blame Rangon for the way he took it when we told him, you know--he
+thought we were pulling his leg, of course, and he wasn't having any; not
+he! There were no English ladies in Darbisson, he said.... We told him as
+nearly as we could just where the house was--we weren't very precise, I'm
+afraid, for the village had been in darkness as we had come through it,
+and I had to admit that the cypress hedge I tried to describe where we'd
+met our friends was a good deal like other cypress hedges--and, as I say,
+Rangon wasn't taking any. I myself was rather annoyed that he should
+think we were returning his hospitality by trying to get at him, and it
+wasn't very easy either to explain in my French and Carroll's Provençal
+that we were going to let the thing stand as it was and weren't going to
+call on our charming friends again.... The end of it was that Rangon
+just laughed and yawned....
+
+"'I knew it was good, my wine,' he said, 'but--' a shrug said the rest.
+'Not so good as all that,' he meant....
+
+"Then he gave us our candles, showed us to our rooms, shook hands, and
+marched off to his own room and the Prévosts.
+
+"I dreamed of my old lady half the night.
+
+"After coffee the next morning I put my hand into my pocket for my
+cigarette case and didn't find it. I went through all my pockets, and
+then I asked Carroll if he'd got it.
+
+"'No,' he replied.... 'Think you left it behind at that place last
+night?'
+
+"'Yes; did you?' Rangon popped in with a twinkle.
+
+"I went through all my pockets again. No cigarette case....
+
+"Of course, it was possible that I'd left it behind, and I was annoyed
+again. I didn't want to go back, you see.... But, on the other hand, I
+didn't want to lose the case--it was a present--and Rangon's smile
+nettled me a good deal, too. It was both a challenge to our truthfulness
+and a testimonial to that very good wine of his....
+
+"'Might have done,' I grunted.... 'Well, in that case we'll go and get
+it.'
+
+"'If one tried the restaurant first--?' Rangon suggested, smiling again.
+
+"'By all means,' said I stuffily, though I remembered having the case
+after we'd left the restaurant.
+
+"We were round at the restaurant by half-past nine. The case wasn't
+there. I'd known jolly well beforehand it wasn't, and I saw Rangon's
+mouth twitching with amusement.
+
+"'So we now seek the abode of these English ladies, _hein_?' he said.
+
+"'Yes,' said I; and we left the restaurant and strode through the village
+by the way we'd taken the evening before....
+
+"That vigneron's smile became more and more irritating to me.... 'It is
+then the next village?' he said presently, as we left the last house and
+came out into the open plain.
+
+"We went back....
+
+"I was irritated because we were two to one, you see, and Carroll backed
+me up. 'A double door, with a grille in front of it,' he repeated for
+the fiftieth time.... Rangon merely replied that it wasn't our good faith
+he doubted. He didn't actually use the word 'drunk.'...
+
+"'_Mais tiens_,' he said suddenly, trying to conceal his mirth. '_Si
+c'est possible... si c'est possible_... a double door with a grille? But
+perhaps that I know it, the domicile of these so elusive ladies.... Come
+this way.'
+
+"He took us back along a plantain-groved street, and suddenly turned up
+an alley that was little more than two gutters and a crack of sky
+overhead between two broken-tiled roofs. It was a dilapidated, deserted
+_ruelle_, and I was positively angry when Rangon pointed to a blistered
+old _porte-cochère_ with a half-unhinged railing in front of it.
+
+"'Is it that, your house?' he asked.
+
+"'No,' says I, and 'No,' says Carroll ... and off we started again....
+
+"But another half-hour brought us back to the same place, and Carroll
+scratched his head.
+
+"'Who lives there, anyway?' he said, glowering at the _porte-cochère_,
+chin forward, hands in pockets.
+
+"'Nobody,' says Rangon, as much as to say 'look at it!' 'M'sieu then
+meditates taking it?'...
+
+"Then I struck in, quite out of temper by this time.
+
+"'How much would the rent be?' I asked, as if I really thought of taking
+the place just to get back at him.
+
+"He mentioned something ridiculously small in the way of francs.
+
+"'One might at least see the place,' says I. 'Can the key be got?'
+
+"He bowed. The key was at the baker's, not a hundred yards away, he
+said....
+
+"We got the key. It was the key of the inner wooden door--that grid of
+rusty iron didn't need one--it came clean off its single hinge when
+Carroll touched it. Carroll opened, and we stood for a moment motioning
+to one another to step in. Then Rangon went in first, and I heard him
+murmur 'Pardon, Mesdames.'...
+
+"Now this is the odd part. We passed into a sort of vestibule or hall,
+with a burst lead pipe in the middle of a dry tank in the centre of it.
+There was a broad staircase rising in front of us to the first floor, and
+double doors just seen in the half-light at the head of the stairs. Old
+tubs stood against the walls, but the palms and aloes in them were
+dead--only a cabbage-stalk or two--and the rusty hoops lay on the ground
+about them. One tub had come to pieces entirely and was no more than a
+heap of staves on a pile of spilt earth. And everywhere, everywhere was
+dust--the floor was an inch deep in dust and old plaster that muffled our
+footsteps, cobwebs hung like old dusters on the walls, a regular goblin's
+tatter of cobwebs draped the little bracket inside the door, and the
+wrought-iron of the hand-rail was closed up with webs in which not even a
+spider moved. The whole thing was preposterous....
+
+"'It is possible that for even a less rental--'
+
+"Rangon murmured, dragging his forefinger across the hand-rail and
+leaving an inch-deep furrow....
+
+"'Come upstairs,' said I suddenly....
+
+"Up we went. All was in the same state there. A clutter of stuff came
+down as I pushed at the double doors of the _salon_, and I had to strike
+a stinking French sulphur match to see into the room at all. Underfoot
+was like walking on thicknesses of flannel, and except where we put
+our feet the place was as printless as a snowfield--dust, dust, unbroken
+grey dust. My match burned down....
+
+"'Wait a minute--I've a _bougie_,' said Carroll, and struck the wax
+match....
+
+"There were the old sconces, with never a candle-end in them. There was
+the large oval mirror, but hardly reflecting Carroll's match for the
+dust on it. And the broken chairs were there, all gutless, and the
+rickety old round table....
+
+"But suddenly I darted forward. Something new and bright on the table
+twinkled with the light of Carroll's match. The match went out, and by
+the time Carroll had lighted another I had stopped. I wanted Rangon to
+see what was on the table....
+
+"'You'll see by my footprints how far from that table _I've_ been,' I
+said. 'Will you pick it up?'
+
+"And Rangon, stepping forward, picked up from the middle of the table--my
+cigarette case."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Loder had finished. Nobody spoke. For quite a minute nobody spoke, and
+then Loder himself broke the silence, turning to me.
+
+"Make anything of it?" he said.
+
+I lifted my eyebrows. "Only your _vigneron's_ explanation--" I began, but
+stopped again, seeing that wouldn't do.
+
+"_Any_body make anything of it?" said Loder, turning from one to another.
+
+I gathered from Smith's face that he thought one thing might be made of
+it--namely, that Loder had invented the whole tale. But even Smith
+didn't speak.
+
+"Were any English ladies ever found to have lived in the place--murdered,
+you know--bodies found and all that?" young Marsham asked diffidently,
+yearning for an obvious completeness.
+
+"Not that we could ever learn," Loder replied. "We made inquiries
+too.... So you all give it up? Well, so do I...."
+
+And he rose. As he walked to the door, myself following him to get his
+hat and stick, I heard him humming softly the lines--they are from
+_Oft in the Stilly Night_--
+
+"_I seem like one who treads alone
+    Some banquet-hall deserted,
+Whose guests are fled, whose garlands dead,
+    And all but he--departed!_"
+
+
+
+
+THE ROCKER
+
+
+I
+
+There was little need for the swart gipsies to explain, as they stood
+knee-deep in the snow round the bailiff of the Abbey Farm, what it
+was that had sent them. The unbroken whiteness of the uplands told that,
+and, even as they spoke, there came up the hill the dark figures of the
+farm men with shovels, on their way to dig out the sheep. In the summer,
+the bailiff would have been the first to call the gipsies vagabonds
+and roost-robbers; now ... they had women with them too.
+
+"The hares and foxes were down four days ago, and the liquid-manure pumps
+like a snow man," the bailiff said.... "Yes, you can lie in the laithes
+and welcome--if you can find 'em. Maybe you'll help us find our sheep
+too--"
+
+The gipsies had done so. Coming back again, they had had some ado to
+discover the spot where their three caravans made a hummock of white
+against a broken wall.
+
+The women--they had four women with them--began that afternoon to weave
+the mats and baskets they hawked from door to door; and in the forenoon
+of the following day one of them, the black-haired, soft-voiced quean
+whom the bailiff had heard called Annabel, set her babe in the sling on
+her back, tucked a bundle of long cane-loops under her oxter, and trudged
+down between eight-foot walls of snow to the Abbey Farm. She stood in the
+latticed porch, dark and handsome against the whiteness, and then,
+advancing, put her head into the great hall-kitchen.
+
+"Has the lady any chairs for the gipsy woman to mend?" she asked in a
+soft and insinuating voice....
+
+They brought her the old chairs; she seated herself on a box in the
+porch; and there she wove the strips of cane in and out, securing each
+one with a little wooden peg and a tap of her hammer. The child remained
+in the sling at her back, taking the breast from time to time over her
+shoulder; and the silver wedding ring could be seen as she whipped the
+cane, back and forth.
+
+As she worked, she cast curious glances into the old hall-kitchen. The
+snow outside cast a pallid, upward light on the heavy ceiling-beams; this
+was reflected in the polished stone floor; and the children, who at first
+had shyly stopped their play, seeing the strange woman in the porch--the
+nearest thing they had seen to gipsies before had been the old itinerant
+glazier with his frame of glass on his back--resumed it, but still eyed
+her from time to time. In the ancient walnut chair by the hearth sat the
+old, old lady who had told them to bring the chairs. Her hair, almost
+as white as the snow itself, was piled up on her head _à la Marquise_;
+she was knitting; but now and then she allowed the needle in the little
+wooden sheath at her waist to lie idle, closed her eyes, and rocked
+softly in the old walnut chair.
+
+"Ask the woman who is mending the chairs whether she is warm enough
+there," the old lady said to one of the children; and the child went
+to the porch with the message.
+
+"Thank you, little missie--thank you, lady dear--Annabel is quite warm,"
+said the soft voice; and the child returned to the play.
+
+It was a childish game of funerals at which the children played. The hand
+of Death, hovering over the dolls, had singled out Flora, the
+articulations of whose sawdust body were seams and whose boots were
+painted on her calves of fibrous plaster. For the greater solemnity, the
+children had made themselves sweeping trains of the garments of their
+elders, and those with cropped curls had draped their heads with shawls,
+the fringes of which they had combed out with their fingers to simulate
+hair--long hair, such as Sabrina, the eldest, had hanging so low down
+her back that she could almost sit on it. A cylindrical-bodied horse,
+convertible (when his flat head came out of its socket) into a
+locomotive, headed the sad _cortège_; then came the defunct Flora; then
+came Jack, the raffish sailor doll, with other dolls; and the children
+followed with hushed whisperings.
+
+The youngest of the children passed the high-backed walnut chair in which
+the old lady sat. She stopped.
+
+"Aunt Rachel--" she whispered, slowly and gravely opening very wide and
+closing very tight her eyes.
+
+"Yes, dear?"
+
+"Flora's dead!"
+
+The old lady, when she smiled, did so less with her lips than with her
+faded cheeks. So sweet was her face that you could not help wondering,
+when you looked on it, how many men had also looked upon it and loved it.
+Somehow, you never wondered how many of them had been loved in return.
+
+"I'm so sorry, dear," Aunt Rachel, who in reality was a great-aunt, said.
+"What did she die of this time?"
+
+"She died of ... Brown Titus ... 'n now she's going to be buried in a
+grave as little as her bed."
+
+"In a what, dear?"
+
+"As little ... dread ... as little as my bed ... you say it, Sabrina."
+
+"She means, Aunt Rachel,
+
+"_Teach me to live that I may dread
+The Grave as little as my bed,_"
+
+Sabrina, the eldest, interpreted.
+
+"Ah!... But won't you play at cheerful things, dears?"
+
+"Yes, we will, presently, Aunt Rachel; gee up, horse!... Shall we go and
+ask the chair-woman if she's warm enough?"
+
+"Do, dears."
+
+Again the message was taken, and this time it seemed as if Annabel, the
+gipsy, was not warm enough, for she gathered up her loops of cane and
+brought the chair she was mending a little way into the hall-kitchen
+itself. She sat down on the square box they used to cover the sewing
+machine.
+
+"Thank you, lady dear," she murmured, lifting her handsome almond eyes to
+Aunt Rachel. Aunt Rachel did not see the long, furtive, curious glance.
+Her own eyes were closed, as if she was tired; her cheeks were smiling;
+one of them had dropped a little to one shoulder, as it might have
+dropped had she held in her arms a babe; and she was rocking, softly,
+slowly, the rocker of the chair making a little regular noise on the
+polished floor.
+
+The gipsy woman beckoned to one of the children.
+
+"Tell the lady, when she wakes, that I will tack a strip of felt to the
+rocker, and then it will make no noise at all," said the low and
+wheedling voice; and the child retired again.
+
+The interment of Flora proceeded....
+
+An hour later Flora had taken up the burden of Life again. It was as
+Angela, the youngest, was chastising her for some offence, that Sabrina,
+the eldest, looked with wondering eyes on the babe in the gipsy's sling.
+She approached on tiptoe.
+
+"May I look at it, please?" she asked timidly.
+
+The gipsy set one shoulder forward, and Sabrina put the shawl gently
+aside, peering at the dusky brown morsel within.
+
+"Sometime, perhaps--if I'm very careful--"
+
+Sabrina ventured diffidently, "--if I'm _very_ careful--may I hold it?"
+
+Before replying, the gipsy once more turned her almond eyes towards Aunt
+Rachel's chair. Aunt Rachel had been awakened for the conclusion of
+Flora's funeral, but her eyes were closed again now, and once more her
+cheek was dropped in that tender suggestive little gesture, and she
+rocked. But you could see that she was not properly asleep.... It was,
+somehow, less to Sabrina, still peering at the babe in the sling, than to
+Aunt Rachel, apparently asleep, that the gipsy seemed to reply.
+
+"You'll know some day, little missis, that a wean knows its own pair of
+arms," her seductive voice came.
+
+And Aunt Rachel heard. She opened her eyes with a start. The little
+regular noise of the rocker ceased. She turned her head quickly;
+tremulously she began to knit again; and, as her eyes rested on the
+sidelong eyes of the gipsy woman, there was an expression in them that
+almost resembled fright.
+
+
+II
+
+They began to deck the great hall-kitchen for Christmas, but the snow
+still lay thick over hill and valley, and the gipsies' caravans remained
+by the broken wall where the drifts had overtaken them. Though all the
+chairs were mended, Annabel still came daily to the farm, sat on the box
+they used to cover the sewing machine, and wove mats. As she wove them,
+Aunt Rachel knitted, and from time to time fragments of talk passed
+between the two women. It was always the white-haired lady who spoke
+first, and Annabel made all sorts of salutes and obeisances with her eyes
+before replying.
+
+"I have not seen your husband," Aunt Rachel said to Annabel one day. (The
+children at the other end of the apartment had converted a chest into an
+altar, and were solemnising the nuptials of the resurrected Flora and
+Jack, the raffish sailor-doll.)
+
+Annabel made roving play with her eyes. "He is up at the caravans, lady
+dear," she replied. "Is there anything Annabel can bid him do?"
+
+"Nothing, thank you," said Aunt Rachel.
+
+For a minute the gipsy watched Aunt Rachel, and then she got up from the
+sewing machine box and crossed the floor. She leaned so close towards her
+that she had to put up a hand to steady the babe at her back.
+
+"Lady dear," she murmured with irresistible softness, "your husband died,
+didn't he?"
+
+On Aunt Rachel's finger was a ring, but it was not a wedding ring. It was
+a hoop of pearls.
+
+"I have never had a husband," she said.
+
+The gipsy glanced at the ring. "Then that is--?"
+
+"That is a betrothal ring," Aunt Rachel replied.
+
+"Ah!..." said Annabel.
+
+Then, after a minute, she drew still closer. Her eyes were fixed on Aunt
+Rachel's, and the insinuating voice was very low.
+
+"Ah!... And did _it_ die too, lady dear?"
+
+Again came that quick, half-affrighted look into Aunt Rachel's face. Her
+eyes avoided those of the gipsy, sought them, and avoided them again.
+
+"Did what die?" she asked slowly and guardedly....
+
+The child at the gipsy's back did not need suck; nevertheless, Annabel's
+fingers worked at her bosom, and she moved the sling. As the child
+settled, Annabel gave Aunt Rachel a long look.
+
+"Why do you rock?" she asked slowly.
+
+Aunt Rachel was trembling. She did not reply. In a voice soft as sliding
+water the gipsy continued:
+
+"Lady dear, we are a strange folk to you, and even among us there are
+those who shuffle the pack of cards and read the palm when silver has
+been put upon it, knowing nothing... But some of us _see_--some of us
+_see_."
+
+It was more than a minute before Aunt Rachel spoke.
+
+"You are a woman, and you have your babe at your breast now.... Every
+woman sees the thing you speak of."
+
+But the gipsy shook her head. "You speak of seeing with the heart. I
+speak of eyes--these eyes."
+
+Again came a long pause. Aunt Rachel had given a little start, but had
+become quiet again. When at last she spoke it was in a voice scarcely
+audible.
+
+"That cannot be. I know what you mean, but it cannot be.... He died
+on the eve of his wedding. For my bridal clothes they made me black
+garments instead. It is long ago, and now I wear neither black nor white,
+but--" her hands made a gesture. Aunt Rachel always dressed as if to suit
+a sorrow that Time had deprived of bitterness, in such a tender and
+fleecy grey as one sees in the mists that lie like lawn over hedgerow
+and copse early of a midsummer's morning. "Therefore," she resumed, "your
+heart may see, but your eyes cannot see that which never was."
+
+But there came a sudden note of masterfulness into the gipsy's voice.
+
+"With my eyes--_these_ eyes," she repeated, pointing to them.
+
+Aunt Rachel kept her own eyes obstinately on her knitting needles. "None
+except I have seen it. It is not to be seen," she said.
+
+The gipsy sat suddenly erect.
+
+"It is not so. Keep still in your chair," she ordered, "and I will tell
+you when--"
+
+It was a curious thing that followed. As if all the will went out of
+her, Aunt Rachel sat very still; and presently her hands fluttered and
+dropped. The gipsy sat with her own hands folded over the mat on her
+knees. Several minutes passed; then, slowly, once more that sweetest of
+smiles stole over Aunt Rachel's cheeks. Once more her head dropped. Her
+hands moved. Noiselessly on the rockers that the gipsy had padded with
+felt the chair began to rock. Annabel lifted one hand.
+
+"_Dovo se li_" she said. "It is there."
+
+Aunt Rachel did not appear to hear her. With that ineffable smile still
+on her face, she rocked....
+
+Then, after some minutes, there crossed her face such a look as visits
+the face of one who, waking from sleep, strains his faculties to
+recapture some blissful and vanishing vision....
+
+"_Jal_--it is gone," said the gipsy woman.
+
+Aunt Rachel opened her eyes again. She repeated dully after Annabel:
+
+"It is gone."
+
+"Ghosts," the gipsy whispered presently, "are of the dead. Therefore it
+must have lived."
+
+But again Aunt Rachel shook her head. "It never lived."
+
+"You were young, and beautiful?..."
+
+Still the shake of the head. "He died on the eve of his wedding. They
+took my white garments away and gave me black ones. How then could
+it have lived?"
+
+"Without the kiss, no.... But sometimes a woman will lie through her
+life, and at the graveside still will lie.... Tell me the truth."
+
+But they were the same words that Aunt Rachel repeated: "He died on the
+eve of his wedding; they took away my wedding garments...." From her lips
+a lie could hardly issue. The gipsy's face became grave....
+
+She broke another long silence.
+
+"I believe," she said at last. "It is a new kind--but no more wonderful
+than the other. The other I have seen, now I have seen this also. Tell
+me, does it come to any other chair?"
+
+"It was his chair; he died in it," said Aunt Rachel.
+
+"And you--shall you die in it?"
+
+"As God wills."
+
+"Has ... _other life_ ... visited it long?"
+
+"Many years; but it is always small; it never grows."
+
+"To their mothers babes never grow. They remain ever babes.... None other
+has ever seen it?"
+
+"Except yourself, none. I sit here; presently it creeps into my arms; it
+is small and warm; I rock, and then... it goes."
+
+"Would it come to another chair?"
+
+"I cannot tell. I think not. It was his chair."
+
+Annabel mused. At the other end of the room Flora was now bestowed on
+Jack, the disreputable sailor. The gipsy's eyes rested on the bridal
+party....
+
+"Yet another might see it--"
+
+"None has."
+
+"No; but yet.... The door does not always shut behind us suddenly.
+Perhaps one who has toddled but a step or two over the threshold might,
+by looking back, catch a glimpse.... What is the name of the smallest
+one?"
+
+"Angela."
+
+"That means 'angel'... Look, the doll who died yesterday is now being
+married.... It may be that Life has not yet sealed the little one's eyes.
+Will you let Annabel ask her if she sees what it is you hold in your
+arms?"
+
+Again the voice was soft and wheedling....
+
+"No, Annabel," said Aunt Rachel faintly.
+
+"Will you rock again?"
+
+Aunt Rachel made no reply.
+
+"Rock..." urged the cajoling voice.
+
+But Aunt Rachel only turned the betrothal ring on her finger. Over at the
+altar Jack was leering at his new-made bride, past decency; and little
+Angela held the wooden horse's head, which had parted from its body.
+
+"Rock, and comfort yourself--" tempted the voice.
+
+Then slowly Aunt Rachel rose from her chair.
+
+"No, Annabel," she said gently. "You should not have spoken. When the
+snow melts you will go, and come no more; why then did you speak? It was
+mine. It was not meant to be seen by another. I no longer want it. Please
+go."
+
+The swarthy woman turned her almond eyes on her once more.
+
+"You cannot live without it," she said as she also rose....
+
+And as Jack and his bride left the church on the reheaded horse, Aunt
+Rachel walked with hanging head from the apartment.
+
+
+III
+
+Thenceforward, as day followed day, Aunt Rachel rocked no more; and with
+the packing and partial melting of the snow the gipsies up at the
+caravans judged it time to be off about their business. It was on the
+morning of Christmas Eve that they came down in a body to the Abbey
+Farm to express their thanks to those who had befriended them; but the
+bailiff was not there. He and the farm men had ceased work, and were
+down at the church, practising the carols. Only Aunt Rachel sat, still
+and knitting, in the black walnut chair; and the children played on the
+floor.
+
+A night in the toy-box had apparently bred discontent between Jack
+and Flora--or perhaps they sought to keep their countenances before
+the world; at any rate, they sat on opposite sides of the room, Jack
+keeping boon company with the lead soldiers, his spouse reposing, her
+lead-balanced eyes closed, in the broken clockwork motor-car. With the
+air of performing some vaguely momentous ritual, the children were
+kissing one another beneath the bunch of mistletoe that hung from the
+centre beam. In the intervals of kissing they told one another in
+whispers that Aunt Rachel was not very well, and Angela woke Flora to
+tell her that Aunt Rachel had Brown Titus also.
+
+"Stay you here; I will give the lady dear our thanks," said Annabel to
+the group of gipsies gathered about the porch; and she entered the
+great hall-kitchen. She approached the chair in which Aunt Rachel sat.
+
+There was obeisance in the bend of her body, but command in her long
+almond eyes, as she spoke.
+
+"Lady dear, you must rock or you cannot live."
+
+Aunt Rachel did not look up from her work.
+
+"Rocking, I should not live long," she replied.
+
+"We are leaving you."
+
+"All leave me."
+
+"Annabel fears she has taken away your comfort."
+
+"Only for a little while. The door closes behind us, but it opens again."
+
+"But for that little time, rock--"
+
+Aunt Rachel shook her head.
+
+"No. It is finished. Another has seen.... Say good-bye to your
+companions; they are very welcome to what they have had; and God speed
+you."
+
+"They thank you, lady dear.... Will you not forget that Annabel saw, and
+rock?"
+
+"No more."
+
+Annabel stooped and kissed the hand that bore the betrothal hoop of
+pearls. The other hand Aunt Rachel placed for a moment upon the smoky
+head of the babe in the sling. It trembled as it rested there, but the
+tremor passed, and Annabel, turning once at the porch, gave her a last
+look. Then she departed with her companions.
+
+That afternoon, Jack and Flora had shaken down to wedlock as married
+folk should, and sat together before the board spread with the dolls'
+tea-things. The pallid light in the great hall-kitchen faded; the candles
+were lighted; and then the children, first borrowing the stockings of
+their elders to hang at the bed's foot, were packed off early--for it was
+the custom to bring them down again at midnight for the carols. Aunt
+Rachel had their good-night kisses, not as she had them every night, but
+with the special ceremony of the mistletoe.
+
+Other folk, grown folk, sat with Aunt Rachel that evening; but the old
+walnut chair did not move upon its rockers. There was merry talk, but
+Aunt Rachel took no part in it. The board was spread with ale and cheese
+and spiced loaf for the carol-singers; and the time drew near for their
+coming.
+
+When at midnight, faintly on the air from the church below, there came
+the chiming of Christmas morning, all bestirred themselves.
+
+"They'll be here in a few minutes," they said; "somebody go and bring the
+children down;" and within a very little while subdued noises were heard
+outside, and the lifting of the latch of the yard gate. The children were
+in their nightgowns, hardly fully awake; a low voice outside was heard
+giving orders; and then there arose on the night the carol.
+
+"Hush!" they said to the wondering children; "listen!..."
+
+It was the Cherry Tree Carol that rose outside, of how sweet Mary, the
+Queen of Galilee, besought Joseph to pluck the cherries for her Babe, and
+Joseph refused; and the voices of the singers, that had begun
+hesitatingly, grew strong and loud and free.
+
+"... and Joseph wouldn't pluck the cherries," somebody was whispering to
+the tiny Angela....
+
+"_Mary said to Cherry Tree,
+  'Bow down to my knee,
+That I may pluck cherries
+  For my Babe and me._'"
+
+the carollers sang; and "Now listen, darling," the one who held Angela
+murmured....
+
+"_The uppermost spray then
+  Bowed down to her knee;
+'Thus you may see, Joseph,
+  These cherries are for me.'
+
+"'O, eat your cherries, Mary,
+  Give them your Babe now;
+O, eat your cherries, Mary,
+  That grew upon the bough._'"
+
+The little Angela, within the arms that held her, murmured, "It's the
+gipsies, isn't it, mother?"
+
+"No, darling. The gipsies have gone. It's the carol-singers, singing
+because Jesus was born."
+
+"But, mother ... it _is_ the gipsies, isn't it?... 'Cos look..."
+
+"Look where?"
+
+"At Aunt Rachel, mother ... The gipsy woman wouldn't go without her
+little baby, would she?"
+
+"No, she wouldn't do that."
+
+"Then has she _lent_ it to Aunt Rachel, like I lend my new toys
+sometimes?"
+
+The mother glanced across at Aunt Rachel, and then gathered the
+night-gowned figure more closely.
+
+"The darling's only half awake," she murmured.... "Poor Aunt Rachel's
+sleepy too...."
+
+Aunt Rachel, her head dropped, her hands lightly folded as if about some
+shape that none saw but herself, her face again ineffable with that
+sweet and peaceful smile, was once more rocking softly in her chair.
+
+
+
+
+HIC JACET
+
+A TALE OF ARTISTIC CONSCIENCE
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+As I lighted my guests down the stairs of my Chelsea lodgings, turned up
+the hall gas that they might see the steps at the front door, and shook
+hands with them, I bade them good night the more heartily that I was glad
+to see their backs. Lest this should seem but an inhospitable confession,
+let me state, first, that they had invited themselves, dropping in in
+ones and twos until seven or eight of them had assembled in my garret,
+and, secondly, that I was rather extraordinarily curious to know why, at
+close on midnight, the one I knew least well of all had seen fit to
+remain after the others had taken their departure. To these two
+considerations I must add a third, namely, that I had become tardily
+conscious that, if Andriaovsky had not lingered of himself, I should
+certainly have asked him to do so.
+
+It was to nothing more than a glance, swift and momentary, directed by
+Andriaovsky to myself while the others had talked, that I traced this
+desire to see more of the little Polish painter; but a glance derives its
+import from the circumstance under which it is given. That rapid turning
+of his eyes in my direction an hour before had held a hundred questions,
+implications, criticisms, incredulities, condemnations. It had been one
+of those uncovenanted gestures that hold the promise of the treasures of
+an eternal friendship. I wondered as I turned down the gas again and
+remounted the stairs what personal message and reproach in it had lumped
+me in with the others; and by the time I had reached my own door again a
+phrase had fitted itself in my mind to that quick, ironical turning of
+Andriaovsky's eyes: _"Et tu, Brute!..."_
+
+He was standing where I had left him, his small shabby figure in the
+attitude of a diminutive colossus on my hearthrug. About him were the
+recently vacated chairs, solemnly and ridiculously suggestive of still
+continuing the high and choice conversation that had lately finished. The
+same fancy had evidently taken Andriaovsky, for he was turning from chair
+to chair, his head a little on one side, mischievously and aggravatingly
+smiling. As one of them, the deep wicker chair that Jamison had occupied,
+suddenly gave a little creak of itself, as wicker will when released from
+a strain, his smile broadened to a grin. I had been on the point of
+sitting down in that chair, but I changed my mind and took another.
+
+"That's right," said Andriaovsky, in that wonderful English which he had
+picked up in less than three years, "don't sit in the wisdom-seat; you
+might profane it."
+
+I knew what he meant. I felt for my pipe and slowly filled it, not
+replying. Then, slowly wagging his head from side to side, with his eyes
+humorously and banteringly on mine, he uttered the very words I had
+mentally associated with that glance of his.
+
+_"Et tu, Brute!"_ he said, wagging away, so that with each wag the lenses
+of his spectacles caught the light of the lamp on the table.
+
+I too smiled as I felt for a match.
+
+"It _was_ rather much, wasn't it?" I said.
+
+But he suddenly stopped his wagging, and held up a not very clean
+forefinger. His whole face was altogether too confoundedly intelligent.
+
+"Oh no, you don't!" he said peremptorily. "No getting out of it like
+that the moment they've turned their backs! No running--what is it?--no
+running with the hare and hunting with the hounds! _You_ helped, you
+know!"
+
+I confess I fidgeted a little.
+
+"But hang it all, what could I do? They were in my place," I broke out.
+
+He chuckled, enjoying my discomfiture. Then his eyes fell on those absurd
+and solemn chairs again.
+
+"Look at 'em--the Art Shades in conference!" he chuckled. "That
+rush-seated one, it was talking half an hour ago about 'Scherzos in
+Silver and Grey!' ... Nice, fresh green stuff!"
+
+To shut him up I told him that he would find cigarettes and tobacco on
+the table.
+
+"'Scherzos in Silver and Grey'!" he chuckled again as he took a
+cigarette....
+
+All this, perhaps, needs some explanation. It had been the usual thing,
+usual in those days, twenty years ago--smarming about Art and the Arts
+and so forth. They--"we," as apparently Andriaovsky had lingered behind
+for the purpose of reminding me--had perhaps talked a little more
+soaringly than the ordinary, that was all. There had been Jamison in the
+wicker chair, full to the lips and running over with the Colour
+Suggestions of the late Edward Calvert; Gibbs, in a pulpy state of
+adoration of the less legitimate side of the painting of Watts; and
+Magnani, who had advanced that an Essential Oneness underlies all the
+Arts, and had triumphantly proved his thesis by analogy with the Law of
+the Co-relation of Forces. A book called Music and Morals had appeared
+about that time, and on it they--we--had risen to regions of kite-high
+lunacy about Colour Symphonies, orgies of formless colour thrown on a
+magic-lantern screen--vieux jeu enough at this time of day. A young
+newspaper man, too, had made mental notes of our adjectives, for use in
+his weekly (I nearly spelt it "weakly") half-column of Art Criticism;
+and--and here was Andriaovsky, grinning at the chairs, and mimicking
+it all with diabolical glee.
+
+"'Scherzos in Silver and Grey'--'Word Pastels'--' Lyrics in Stone!'"
+he chuckled. "And what was it the fat fellow said?' A Siren Song in
+Marble!' Phew!... Well, I'll get along. I shall just be in time to get
+a pint of bitter to wash it all down if I'm quick... Bah!" he broke out
+suddenly. "Good men build up Form and Forms--keep the Arts each after
+its kind--raise up the dikes so that we shan't all be swept away by night
+and nothingness--and these rats come nosing and burrowing and undermining
+it all!... _Et tu, Brute!_"
+
+"Well, when you've finished rubbing it in--" I grunted.
+
+"As if _you_ didn't know better!... Is that your way of getting back on
+'em, now that you've chucked drawing and gone in for writing books?
+Phew I... Well, I'll go and get my pint of beer--"
+
+But he didn't go for his pint of beer. Instead, he began to prowl about
+my room, pryingly, nosingly, touching things here and there. I watched
+him as he passed from one thing to another. He was very little, and very,
+very shabby. His trousers were frayed, and the sole of one of his boots
+flapped distressingly. His old bowler hat--he had not thought it
+necessary to wait until he got outside before thrusting it on the back of
+his head--was so limp in substance that I verily believed that had he run
+incautiously downstairs he would have found when he got to the bottom
+that its crown had sunk in of its own weight. In spite of his remark
+about the pint of beer, I doubt if he had the price of one in his pocket.
+
+"What's this, Brutus--a concertina?" he suddenly asked, stopping before
+the collapsible case in which I kept my rather old dress suit.
+
+I told him what it was, and he hoisted up his shoulders.
+
+"And these things?" he asked, moving to something else.
+
+They were a pair of boot-trees of which I had permitted myself the
+economy. I remember they cost me four shillings in the old Brompton
+Road.
+
+"And that's your bath, I suppose.... Dumb-bells too.... And--_oh, good
+Lord!_..."
+
+He had picked up, and dropped again as if it had been hot, somebody or
+other's card with the date of a "day" written across the corner of it....
+
+As I helped him on with his overcoat he made no secret of the condition
+of its armholes and lining. I don't for one moment suppose that the
+garment was his. I took a candle to light him down as soon as it should
+please him to depart.
+
+"Well, so long, and joy to you on the high road to success," he said with
+another grin for which I could have bundled him down the stairs....
+
+In later days I never looked to Andriaovsky for tact; but I stared at him
+for his lack of it that night. And as I stared I noticed for the first
+time the broad and low pylon of his forehead, his handsome mouth and
+chin, and the fire and wit and scorn that smouldered behind his cheap
+spectacles. I looked again; and his smallness, his malice, his pathetic
+little braggings about his poverty, seemed all to disappear. He had
+strolled back to my hearthrug, wishing, I have no doubt now, to be able
+to exclaim suddenly that it was too late for the pint of beer for which
+he hadn't the money, and to curse his luck; and the pigmy quality of his
+colossusship had somehow gone.
+
+As I watched him, a neighbouring clock struck the half-hour, and he
+did even as I had surmised--cursed the closing time of the English
+public-houses....
+
+I lighted him down. For one moment, under the hall gas, he almost dropped
+his jesting manner.
+
+"You _do_ know better, Harrison, you know," he said. "But, of course,
+you're going to be a famous author in almost no time. Oh, _ca se
+voit_! No garrets for _you_! It was a treat,' the way you handled those
+fellows--really ... Well don't forget us others when you're up there--I
+may want you to write my 'Life' some day...."
+
+I heard the slapping of the loose sole as he shuffled down the path. At
+the gate he turned for a moment.
+
+"Good night, Brutus," he called.
+
+When I had mounted to my garret again my eyes fell once more on that
+ridiculous assemblage of empty chairs, all solemnly talking to one
+another. I burst out into a laugh. Then I undressed, put my jacket on the
+hanger, took the morrow's boots from the trees and treed those I had
+removed, changed the pair of trousers under my mattress, and went, still
+laughing at the chairs, to bed.
+
+This was Michael Andriaovsky, the Polish painter, who died four weeks
+ago.
+
+
+I
+
+I knew the reason of Maschka's visit the moment she was announced. Even
+in the stressful moments of the funeral she had found time to whisper to
+me that she hoped to call upon me at an early date. I dismissed the
+amanuensis to whom I was dictating the last story of the fourth series of
+_Martin Renard_, gave a few hasty instructions to my secretary, and told
+the servant to show Miss Andriaovsky into the drawing-room, to ask her
+to be so good as to excuse me for five minutes, to order tea at once, and
+then to bring my visitor up to the library.
+
+A few minutes later she was shown into the room.
+
+She was dressed in the same plainly cut costume of dead black she
+had worn at the funeral, and had pushed up her heavy veil over the
+close-fitting cap of black fur that accentuated her Sclavonic appearance.
+I noticed again with distress the pallor of her face and the bistred
+rings that weeks of nursing had put under her dark eyes. I noticed also
+her resemblance, in feature and stature, to her brother. I placed a chair
+for her; the tea-tray followed her in; and without more than a murmured
+greeting she peeled off her gloves and prepared to preside at the tray.
+
+She had filled the cups, and I had handed her toast, before she spoke.
+Then:
+
+"I suppose you know what I've come about," she said.
+
+I nodded.
+
+"Long, long ago you promised it. Nobody else can do it. The only question
+is 'when.'"
+
+"That's the only question," I agreed.
+
+"We, naturally," she continued, after a glance in which her eyes mutely
+thanked me for my implied promise, "are anxious that it should be as soon
+as possible; but, of course--I shall quite understand--"
+
+She gave a momentary glance round my library. I helped her out.
+
+"You mean that I'm a very important person nowadays, and that you're
+afraid to trespass on my time. Never mind that. I shall find time
+for this. But tell me before we go any further exactly how you stand and
+precisely what it is you expect."
+
+Briefly she did so. It did not in the least surprise me to learn that her
+brother had died penniless.
+
+"And if you hadn't undertaken the 'Life,'" she said, "he might just as
+well not have worked in poverty all these years. You can, at least, see
+to his fame."
+
+I nodded again gravely, and ruminated for a moment. Then I spoke.
+
+"I can write it, fully and in detail, up to five years ago," I said. "You
+know what happened then. I tried my best to help him, but he never would
+let me. Tell me, Maschka, why he wouldn't sell me that portrait."
+
+I knew instantly, from her quick confusion, that her brother had spoken
+to her about the portrait he had refused to sell me, and had probably
+told her the reason for his refusal. I watched her as she evaded the
+question as well as she could.
+
+"You know how--queer--he was about who he sold his things to. And as for
+those five years in which you saw less of him, Schofield will tell you
+all you want to know."
+
+I relinquished the point. "Who's Schofield?" I asked instead.
+
+"He was a very good friend of Michael's--of both of us. You can talk
+quite freely to him. I want to say at the beginning that I should like
+him to be associated with you in this."
+
+I don't know how I divined on the spot her relation to Schofield, whoever
+he was. She told me that he too was a painter.
+
+"Michael thought very highly of his things," she said.
+
+"I don't know them," I replied.
+
+"You probably wouldn't," she returned....
+
+But I caught the quick drop of her eyes from their brief excursion round
+my library, and I felt something within me stiffen a little. It did not
+need Maschka Andriaovsky to remind me that I had not attained my position
+without--let us say--splitting certain differences; the looseness of
+the expression can be corrected hereafter. Life consists very largely of
+compromises. You doubtless know my name, whichever country or hemisphere
+you happen to live in, as that of the creator of Martin Renard, the
+famous and popular detective; and I was not at that moment disposed to
+apologise, either to Maschka or Schofield or anybody else, for having
+written the stories at the bidding of a gaping public. The moment the
+public showed that it wanted something better I was prepared to give it.
+In the meantime, I sat in my very comfortable library, securely shielded
+from distress by my balance at my banker's.
+
+"Well," I said after a moment, "let's see how we stand. And first
+as to what you're likely to get out of this. It goes without saying,
+of course, that by writing the 'Life' I can get you any amount of
+'fame'--advertisement, newspaper talk, and all the things that, it struck
+me, Michael always treated with especial scorn. My name alone, I say,
+will do that. But for anything else I'm by no means so sure. You see," I
+explained, "it doesn't follow that because I can sell hundreds of
+thousands of... you know what... that I can sell anything I've a mind to
+sign." I said it, confident that she had not lived all those years with
+her brother without having learned the axiomatic nature of it. To my
+discomfiture, she began to talk like a callow student.
+
+"I should have thought that it followed that if you could sell
+something--" she hesitated only for a moment, then courageously gave the
+other stuff its proper adjective, "--something rotten, you could have
+sold something good when you had the chance."
+
+"Then if you thought that you were wrong," I replied briefly and
+concisely.
+
+"_Michael_ couldn't, of course," she said, putting Michael out of the
+question with a little wave of her hand, "because Michael was--I mean,
+Michael wasn't a business man. You are."
+
+"I'm speaking as one," I replied. "I don't waste time in giving people
+what they don't want. That is business. I don't undertake your brother's
+'Life' as a matter of business, but as an inestimable privilege. I
+repeat, it doesn't follow that the public will buy it."
+
+"But--but--" she stammered, "the public will buy a _Pill_ if they see
+your name on the testimonial!"
+
+"A Pill--yes," I said sadly.... Genius and a Pill were, alas, different
+things. "But," I added more cheerfully, "you can never tell what the
+public will do. They _might_ buy it--there's no telling except by
+trying--"
+
+"Well, Schofield thinks they will," she informed me with decision.
+
+"I dare say he does, if he's an artist. They mostly do," I replied.
+
+"He doesn't think Michael will ever be popular," she emphasised the
+adjective slightly, "but he does think he has a considerable following if
+they could only be discovered."
+
+I sighed. All artists think that. They will accept any compromise except
+the one that is offered to them.... I tried to explain to Maschka that in
+this world we have to stand to the chances of all or nothing.
+
+"You've got to be one thing or the other--I don't know that it matters
+very much which," I said. "There's Michael's way, and there's... mine.
+That's all. However, we'll try it. All you can say to me, and more, I'll
+say to a publisher for you. But he'll probably wink at me."
+
+For a moment she was silent. Then she said: "Schofield rather fancies one
+publisher."
+
+"Oh? Who's he?" I asked.
+
+She mentioned a name. If I knew anything at all of business she might as
+well have offered _The Life of Michael Andriaovsky_ to The Religious
+Tract Society at once....
+
+"Hm!... And has Mr. Schofield any other suggestions?" I inquired.
+
+He had. Several. I saw that Schofield's position would have to be defined
+before we went any further.
+
+"Hm!" I said again. "Well, I shall have to rely on Schofield for those
+five years in which I saw little of Michael; but unless Schofield knows
+more of publishing than I do, and can enforce a better contract and a
+larger sum on account than I can, I really think, Maschka, that you'll do
+better to leave things to me. For one thing, it's only fair to me. My
+name hasn't much of an artistic value nowadays, but it has a very
+considerable commercial one, and my worth to publishers isn't as a writer
+of the Lives of Geniuses."
+
+I could see she didn't like it; but that couldn't be helped. It had to be
+so. Then, as we sat for a time in silence over the fire, I noticed again
+how like her brother she was. She was not, it was true, much like him as
+he had been on that last visit of mine to him ... and I sighed as I
+remembered that visit. The dreadful scene had come back to me....
+
+On account, I suppose, of the divergence of our paths, I had not even
+heard of his illness until almost the finish. Immediately I had hastened
+to the Hampstead "Home," only to find him already in the agony. He had
+not been too far gone to recognise me, however, for he had muttered
+something brokenly about "knowing better," that a spasm had interrupted.
+Besides myself, only Maschka had been there; and I had been thankful for
+the summons that had called her for a moment out of the room. I had still
+retained his already cold hand; his brow had worked with that dreadful
+struggle; and his eyes had been closed.
+
+But suddenly he had opened them, and the next moment had sat up on his
+pillow. He had striven to draw his hand from mine.
+
+"Who are you?" he had suddenly demanded, not knowing me.
+
+I had come close to him. "You know me, Andriaovsky--Harrison?" I had
+asked sorrowfully.
+
+I had been on the point of repeating my name but suddenly, after holding
+my eyes for a moment with a look the profundity and familiarity of which
+I cannot express, he had broken into the most ghastly haunting laugh I
+have ever heard.
+
+"_Harrison?_" the words had broken throatily from him.... "_Oh yes; I
+know you!... You shall very soon know that I know you if... if..._"
+
+The cough and rattle had come as Maschka had rushed into the room. In ten
+seconds Andriaovsky had fallen back, dead.
+
+
+II
+
+That same evening I began to make notes for Andriaovsky's "Life." On the
+following day, the last of the fourth series of the _Martin Renards_
+occupied me until I was thankful to get to bed. But thereafter I could
+call rather more of my time my own, and I began in good earnest to devote
+myself to the "Life."
+
+Maschka had spoken no more than the truth when she had said that of all
+men living none but I could write that "Life." His remaining behind in my
+Chelsea garret that evening after the others had left had been the
+beginning of a friendship that, barring that lapse of five years at the
+end, had been for twenty years one of completest intimacy. Whatever money
+there might or might not be in the book, I had seen _my_ opportunity in
+it--the opportunity to make it the vehicle for all the aspirations,
+faiths, enthusiasms, and exaltations we had shared; and I myself did not
+realise until I began to note them down one tithe of the subtle links and
+associations that had welded our souls together.
+
+Even the outward and visible signs of these had been wonderful. Setting
+out from one or other of the score of garrets and cheap lodgings we had
+in our time inhabited, we had wandered together, day after day, night
+after night, far down East, where, as we had threaded our way among the
+barrels of soused herrings and the stalls and barrows of unleavened
+bread, he had taught me scraps of Hebrew and Polish and Yiddish; up into
+the bright West, where he could never walk a quarter of a mile without
+meeting one of his extraordinary acquaintances--furred music-hall
+managers, hawkers of bootlaces, commercial magnates of his own Faith,
+touts, crossing-sweepers, painted women; into Soho, where he had names
+for the very horses on the cab-ranks and the dogs who slumbered under the
+counters of the sellers of French literature; out to the naphtha-lights
+and cries of the Saturday night street markets of Islington and the North
+End Road; into City churches on wintry afternoons, into the studios of
+famous artists full of handsomely dressed women, into the studios of
+artists not famous, at the ends of dark and break-neck corridors; to tea
+at the suburban homes of barmaids and chorus girls, to dinner in the
+stables of a cavalry-barracks, to supper in cabmen's shelters. He was
+possessed in some mysterious way of the passwords to doors in hoardings
+behind which excavations were in progress; he knew by name the butchers
+of the Deptford yards, the men in the blood-caked clothes, so inured to
+blood that they may not with safety to their lives swear at one another;
+he took me into an opium-cellar within a stone's-throw of Oxford Street,
+and into a roof-chamber to call upon certain friends of his ... well,
+they _said_ they were fire extinguishers, so I'd better not say they
+were bombs. Up, down; here, there; good report, but more frequently
+evil ... we had known this side of our London as well as two men may. And
+our other adventures and peregrinations, not of the body, but of the
+spirit ... but these must be spoken of in their proper place.
+
+I had arranged with Maschka that Schofield should bring me the whole of
+the work Andriaovsky had left behind him; and he arrived late one
+afternoon in a fourwheeler, with four great packages done up in brown
+paper. I found him to be a big, shaggy-browed, red-haired, raw-boned
+Lancashire man of five-and-thirty, given to confidential demonstrations
+at the length of a button-shank, quite unconscious of the gulf between
+his words and his right to employ them, and bent on asserting an equality
+that I did not dispute by a rather aggressive use of my surname.
+Andriaovsky had appointed him his executor, and he had ever the air of
+suspecting that the appointment was going to be challenged.
+
+"A'm glad to be associated with ye in this melancholy duty, Harrison," he
+said. "Now we won't waste words. Miss Andriaovsky has told me precisely
+how matters stand. I had, as ye know, the honour to be poor Michael's
+close friend for a period of five years, and my knowledge of him is
+entirely at your disposal."
+
+I answered that I should be seriously handicapped without it.
+
+"Just so. It is Miss Andriaovsky's desire that we should pull together.
+Now, in the firrst place, what is your idea about the forrm the book
+should take?"
+
+"In the first place, if you don't mind," I replied, "perhaps we'd better
+run over together the things you've brought. The daylight will be gone
+soon."
+
+"Just as ye like, Harrison," he said, "just as ye like. It's all the same
+to me...."
+
+I cleared a space about my writing-table at the window, and we turned to
+the artistic remains of Michael Andriaovsky.
+
+I was astonished, first, at the enormous quantity of the stuff, and next
+at its utter and complete revelation of the man. In a flash I realised
+how superb that portion at least of the book was going to be. And
+Schofield explained that the work he had brought represented but a
+fraction of the whole that was at our disposal.
+
+"Ye'll know with what foolish generosity poor Michael always gave his
+things away," he said. "Hallard has a grand set; so has Connolly; and
+from time to time he behaved varry handsomely to myself. Artists of varry
+considerable talents both Hallard and Connolly are; Michael thought
+varry highly of their abilities. They express the deepest interest in the
+shape your worrk will take; and that reminds me. I myself have drafted a
+rough scenario of the forrm it appeared to me the 'Life' might with
+advantage be cast in. A purely private opinion, ye'll understand,
+Harrison, which ye'll be entirely at liberty to disregard...."
+
+"Well, let's finish with the work first," I said.
+
+With boards, loose sheets, scraps of paper, notes, studies, canvases
+stretched and stripped from their stretchers, we paved half the library
+floor, Schofield keeping up all the time a running fire of "Grand,
+grand! A masterpiece! A gem, that, Harrison!" They were all that he said,
+and presently I ceased to hear his voice. The splendour of the work
+issued undimmed even from the severe test of Schofield's praise; and I
+thought again with pride how I, I, was the only man living who could
+adequately write that "Life."....
+
+"Aren't they grand? Aren't they great?" Schofield chanted monotonously.
+
+"They are," I replied, coming to a consciousness of his presence again.
+"But what's that?"
+
+Secretively he had kept one package until the last. He now removed its
+wrappings and set it against a chair.
+
+_"There!"_ he cried. "I'll thank ye, Harrison, for your opinion of
+_that!"_
+
+It was the portrait Andriaovsky had refused to sell me--a portrait of
+himself.
+
+The portrait was the climax of the display. The Lancastrian still talked;
+but I, profoundly moved, mechanically gathered up the drawings from the
+floor and returned them to their proper packages and folios. I was dining
+at home, alone, that evening, and for form's sake I asked this faithful
+dog of Andriaovsky's to share my meal; but he excused himself--he was
+dining with Hallard and Connolly. When the drawings were all put away,
+all save that portrait, he gave an inquisitive glance round my library.
+It was the same glance as Maschka had given when she had feared to
+intrude on my time; but Schofield did these things with a much more heavy
+hand. He departed, but not before telling me that even my mansion
+contained such treasures as it had never held before.
+
+That evening, after glancing at Schofield's "scenario," I carefully
+folded it up again for return to him, lest when the book should appear
+he should miss the pleasure of saying that I had had his guidance but
+had disregarded it; then I sat down at my writing-table and took out
+the loose notes I had made. I made other jottings, each on a blank sheet
+for subsequent amplification; and the sheets overspread the large
+leather-topped table and thrust one another up the standard of the
+incandescent with the pearly silk shade. The firelight shone low and
+richly in the dusky spaces of the large apartment; and the thick carpet
+and the double doors made the place so quiet that I could hear my watch
+ticking in my pocket.
+
+I worked for an hour; and then, for the purpose of making yet other
+notes, I rose, crossed the room, and took down the three or four
+illustrated books to which, in the earlier part of his career,
+Andriaovsky had put his name. I carried them to the table, and twinkled
+as I opened the first of them. It was a book of poems, and in making the
+designs for them Andriaovsky had certainly _not_ found for himself.
+Almost any one of the "Art Shades," as he had called them, could have
+done the thing equally well, and I twinkled again. I did not propose to
+have much mercy on _that_. Already Schofield's words had given birth to a
+suspicion in my mind--that Andriaovsky, in permitting these fellows,
+Hallard, Connolly, and the rest, to suppose that he "thought highly" of
+them and their work, had been giving play to that malicious humour of
+his; and they naturally did not see the joke. That joke, too, was between
+himself, dead, and me, preparing to write his "Life." As if he had been
+there to hear me, I chuckled, and spoke in a low voice.
+
+"You were pulling their legs, Michael, you know. A little rough on them
+you were. But there's a book here of yours that I'm going to tell the
+truth about. You and I won't pretend to one another. It's a rotten book,
+and both you and I know it...."
+
+I don't know what it was that caused me suddenly to see just then
+something that I had been looking at long enough without seeing--that
+portrait of himself that I had set leaning against the back of a chair at
+the end of my writing-table. It stood there, just within the soft
+penumbra of shadow cast by the silk-shaded light. The canvas had been
+enlarged, the seam of it clumsily sewn by Andriaovsky's own hand; but in
+that half-light the rough ridge of paint did not show, and I confess that
+the position and effect of the thing startled me for a moment. Had I
+cared to play a trick with my fancy I could have imagined the head
+wagging from side to side, with such rage and fire was it painted. He had
+had the temerity to dash a reflection across one of the glasses of his
+spectacles, concealing the eye behind it. The next moment I had given a
+short laugh.
+
+"So you're there, are you?... Well, I know you agree very heartily about
+that book of poems. Heigho! If I remember rightly, you made more money
+out of that book than out of the others put together. But I'm going
+to tell the truth about it. _I_ know better, you know...."
+
+Chancing, before I turned in that night, to reopen one of his folios, I
+came across a drawing, there by accident, I don't doubt, that confirmed
+me in my suspicion that Andriaovsky had had his quiet joke with
+Schofield, Hallard, Connolly and Co. It was a sketch of Schofield's,
+imitative, deplorable, a dreadful show-up of incapacity. Well enough
+"drawn," in a sense, it was ... and I remembered how Andriaovsky had ever
+urged that "drawing," of itself, did not exist. I winked at the portrait.
+I saw his point. He himself had no peer, and, rather than invite
+comparison with stars of the second magnitude, he chose his intimates
+from among the peddlers of the wares that had the least possible
+connection with his Art. He, too, had understood that the Compromise
+must be entirely accepted or totally refused; and while, in the
+divergence of our paths, he had done the one thing and I the other, we
+had each done it thoroughly, with vigour, and with persistence, and each
+could esteem the other, if not as a co-worker, at least as an honourable
+and out-and-out opposite.
+
+
+III
+
+Within a fortnight I was so deep in my task that, in the realest sense,
+the greater part of my life was in the past. The significance of those
+extraordinary peregrinations of ours had been in the opportunity they had
+afforded for a communion of brain and spirit of unusual rarity; and all
+this determined to my work with the accumulated force of its long
+penning-up. I have spoken of Andriaovsky's contempt for such as had the
+conception of their work that it was something they "did" as distinct
+from something they "were"; and unless I succeed in making it plain that,
+not as a mere figure of speech and loose hyperbole, but starkly and
+literally, Andriaovsky _was_ everything he did, my tale will be
+pointless.
+
+There was not one of the basic facts of life--of Faith, Honour,
+Truth-speaking, Falsehood, Betrayal, Sin--that he did not turn, not to
+moral interpretations, as others do, but to the holy purposes of his
+noble and passionate Art. For any man, Sin is only mortal when it is Sin
+against that which he knows to be immortally true; and the things
+Andriaovsky knew to be immortally true were the things that he had gone
+down into the depths in order to bring forth and place upon his paper or
+canvas. These things are not for the perusal of many. Unless you love the
+things that he loved with a fervour comparable in kind, if not in degree,
+with his own, you may not come near them. "Truth, 'the highest thing a
+man may keep,'" he said, "cannot be brought down; a man only attains it
+by proving his right to it"; and I think I need not further state his
+views on the democratisation of Art. Of any result from the elaborate
+processes of Art-education he held out no hope whatever. "It is in a man,
+or it isn't," he ever declared; "if it is, he must bring it out for
+himself; if it isn't, let him turn to something useful and have done with
+it." I need not press the point that in these things he was almost a
+solitary.
+
+He made of these general despotic principles the fiercest personal
+applications. I have heard his passionate outbreak of "Thief! Liar!
+Fool!" over a drawing when it has seemed to him that a man has not
+vouched with the safety of his immortal soul for the shapes and lines he
+has committed to it. I have seen him get into such a rage with the eyes
+of the artist upon him. I have heard the ice and vinegar of his words
+when a good man, for money, has consented to modify and emasculate
+his work; and there lingers in my memory his side of a telephone
+conversation in which he told a publisher who had suggested that he
+should do the same thing precisely what he thought of him. And on the
+other hand, he once walked from Aldgate to Putney Hill, with a loose heel
+on one of his boots, to see a man of whom he had seen but a single
+drawing. See him he did, too, in spite of the man's footman, his liveried
+parlourmaid, and the daunting effect of the electric brougham at the
+door.
+
+"He's a good man," he said to me afterwards, ruefully looking at the
+place where his boot-heel had been. "You've got to take your good where
+you find it. I don't care whether he's a rich amateur or skin-and-grief
+in a garret as long as he's got the stuff in him. Nobody else could have
+fetched me up from the East End this afternoon.... So long; see you in a
+week or so--"
+
+This was the only time I ever knew him break that sacred time in which he
+celebrated each year the Passover and the Feast of Tabernacles. I doubt
+whether this observance of the ritual of his Faith was of more essential
+importance to him than that other philosophical religion towards which he
+sometimes leaned. I have said what his real religion was.
+
+But to the "Life."
+
+With these things, and others, as a beginning, I began to add page to
+page, phase to phase; and, in a time the shortness of which astonished
+myself, I had pretty well covered the whole of the first ten years of our
+friendship. Maschka called rather less, and Schofield rather more
+frequently, than I could have wished; and my surmise that he, at least,
+was in love with her, quickly became a certainty. This was to be seen
+when they called together.
+
+It was when they came together that something else also became apparent.
+This was their slightly derisive attitude towards the means by which I
+had attained my success. It was not the less noticeable that it took the
+form of compliments on the outward and visible results. Singly I could
+manage them; together they were inclined to get a little out of hand.
+
+I would have taxed them fairly and squarely with this, singly or
+together, but for one thing--the beautiful ease with which the "Life" was
+proceeding. Never had I felt so completely _en rapport_ with my subject.
+So beautifully was the thing running that I had had the idle fancy of
+some actual urge from Andriaovsky himself; and each night, before sitting
+down to work, I set his portrait at my desk's end, as if it had been some
+kind of an observance. The most beautiful result of all was, that I felt
+what I had not felt for five years--that I too was not "doing" my work,
+but actually living and being it. At times I took up the sheets I had
+written as ignorant of their contents as if they had proceeded from
+another pen--so freshly they came to me. And once, I vow, I found, in my
+own handwriting, a Polish name, that I might (it is true) have
+subconsciously heard at some time or other, but that stirred no chord in
+my memory even when I saw it written. Maschka checked and confirmed it
+afterwards; and I did not tell her by what odd circumstance it had issued
+from my pen.
+
+The day did come, however, when I found I must have it out with Schofield
+about this superciliousness I have mentioned. The _Falchion_ had just
+begun to print the third series of my _Martin Renard_; and this had been
+made the occasion of another of Schofield's ponderous compliments. I
+acknowledged it with none too much graciousness; and then he said:
+
+"I've na doubt, Harrison, that by this time the famous sleuth-hound of
+crime has become quite a creature of flesh and blood to ye."
+
+It was the tone as much as the words that riled me; and I replied that
+his doubts or the lack of them were a privacy with which I did not wish
+to meddle. From being merely a bore the fellow was rapidly becoming
+insolent.
+
+"But I opine he'll get wearisome now and then, and in that case poor
+Michael's 'Life' will come as a grand relaxation," he next observed.
+
+If I meant to have it out, here was my opportunity.
+
+"I should have thought you'd have traced a closer connection than that
+between the two things," I remarked.
+
+He shot a quick glance at me from beneath his shaggy russet brows.
+
+"How so? I see varry little connection," he said suspiciously.
+
+"There's this connection--that while you speak with some freedom of what
+I do, you are quite willing to take advantage of it when it serves
+your turn."
+
+"'Advantage,' Harrison?" he said slowly.
+
+"Of the advertisement _Martin Renard_ gives you. I must point out that
+you condone a thing when you accept the benefit of it. Either you
+shouldn't have come to me at all, or you should deny yourself the
+gratification of these slurs."
+
+"Slurrrrs?" he repeated loweringly.
+
+"Both of you--you and Miss Andriaovsky, or Maschka as I call her, _tout
+court_. Don't suppose I don't know as well as you do the exact worth of
+my 'sleuth-hound,' as you call him. You didn't come to me solely because
+I knew Andriaovsky well; you came because I've got the ear of the
+public also; and I tell you plainly that, however much you dislike it,
+Michael's fame as far as I'm of any use to him, depends on the
+popularity of _Martin Renard."_
+
+He shook his big head. "This is what I feared," he said.
+
+"More," I continued, "you can depend upon it that Michael, wherever he
+is, knows all about that."
+
+"Ay, ay," he said sagely, "I misdoubt your own artistic soul's only to be
+saved by the writing of poor Michael's 'Life,' Harrison."
+
+"Leave that to me and Michael; we'll settle that. In the meantime, if you
+don't like it, write and publish the 'Life' yourself."
+
+He bent his brows on me.
+
+"It's precisely what I wanted to do from the varry first," he said. "If
+you'd cared to accept my symposium in the spirit in which it was offered,
+I cannot see that the 'Life' would have suffered. But now, when you're
+next in need of my services, ye'll mebbe send for me."
+
+He took up his hat. I assured him, and let him take it in what sense he
+liked, that I would do so; and he left me.
+
+Not for one single moment did I intend that they should bounce me like
+that. With or without their sanction and countenance, I intended to write
+and publish that "Life." Schofield--in my own house too--had had the
+advantage that a poor and ill-dressed man has over one who is not poor
+and ill-dressed; but my duty first of all was neither to him nor to
+Maschka, but to my friend.
+
+The worst of it was, however, that I had begun dimly to suspect that
+the Lancastrian had hit at least one nail on the head. "Your artistic
+soul's only to be saved by writing poor Michael's 'Life,'" he had
+informed me... and it was truer than I found it pleasant to believe.
+Perhaps, after all, my first duty was not to Andriaovsky, but to myself.
+I could have kicked myself that the fool had been perspicacious enough to
+see it, but that did not alter the fact. I saw that in the sense in which
+Andriaovsky understood Sin, I had sinned....
+
+My only defence lay in the magnitude of my sin. I had sinned
+thoroughly, out-and-out, and with a will. It had been the only
+respectable way--Andriaovsky's own way when he had cut the company
+of an Academician to hobnob with a vagabond. I had at least instituted
+no comparison, lowered no ideal, was innocent of the accursed attitude
+of facing-both-ways that degrades all lovely and moving things. I was, by
+a paradox, too black a sinner not to hope for redemption....
+
+I fell into a long musing on these things....
+
+Had any of the admirers of _Martin Renard_ entered the library of his
+author that night he would have seen an interesting thing. He would
+have seen the creator of that idol of clerks and messenger-lads and
+fourth-form boys frankly putting the case before a portrait propped up on
+a chair. He would have heard that popular author haranguing, pleading,
+curiously on his defence, turning the thing this way and that.
+
+"If _you'd_ gone over, Michael," that author argued, "you'd have done
+precisely the same thing. If I'd stuck it out, we were, after all, of a
+kind; We've got to be one thing or the other--isn't that so, Andriaovsky?
+Since I made up my mind, I've faced only one way--only one way. I've kept
+your ideal and theirs entirely separate and distinct. Not one single
+beautiful phrase will you find in the _Martin Renards;_ I've cut 'em
+out, every one. I may have ceased to worship, but I've profaned no
+temple.... And think what I _might_ have done--what they all do! They
+deal out the slush, but with an apologetic glance at the Art Shades;
+_you_ know the style!--'Oh, Harrison; he does that detective rubbish, but
+that's not Harrison; if Harrison liked to drop that he could be a fine
+artist!'--I _haven't_ done that. I _haven't_ run with the hare and hunted
+with the hounds. I _am_ just Harrison, who does that detective
+rubbish!... These other chaps, Schofield and Connolly, _they're_ the real
+sinners, Michael--the fellows who can't make up their minds to be one
+thing or the other ('artists of considerable abilities'--ha! ha!).... Of
+course you know Maschka's going to marry that chap? What'll _they_ do, do
+you think? He'll scrape up a few pounds out of the stew where I find
+thousands, marry her, and they'll set up a salon and talk the stuff the
+chairs talked that night, you remember!... But you wait until I finish
+your 'Life.'..."
+
+I laid it all before him, almost as if I sought to propitiate him. I
+might have been courting his patronage for his own "Life." Then, with a
+start, I came to, to find myself talking nonsense to the portrait that
+years before Andriaovsky had refused to sell me.
+
+
+IV
+
+The first check I experienced in the hitherto so easy flow of the "Life"
+came at the chapter that dealt with Andriaovsky's attitude towards
+"professionalism" in Art. He was inflexible on this point; there ought
+not to be professional artists. When it was pointed out that his position
+involved a premium upon the rich amateur, he merely replied that riches
+had nothing to do with the question, and that the starver in the garret
+was not excused for his poverty's sake from the observance of the
+implacable conditions. He spoke literally of the "need" to create,
+usually in the French term, _besogne_; and he was inclined to regard the
+imposition of this need on a man rather as a curse laid upon him than as
+a privilege and a pleasure. But I must not enlarge upon this further than
+to observe that this portion of his "Life" which I was approaching
+coincided in point of time with that period of my own life at which I had
+been confronted with the alternative of starving for Art's sake or
+becoming rich by supplying a clamorous trade demand.
+
+It came, this check I have spoken of, one night, as I was in the very
+middle of a sentence; and though I have cudgelled my brains in seeking
+how best I can describe it, I am reduced to the simple statement that it
+was as arresting, as sharp, actual and impossible to resist, as if my
+hand had been seized and pinned down in its passage across the paper. I
+can even see again the fragment of the sentence I had written: "... _and
+the mere contemplation of a betrayal so essential--_" Then came that
+abrupt and remarkable stop. It was such an experience as I had formerly
+known only in nightmare.
+
+I sat there looking blankly and stupidly at my own hand. And not only was
+my hand arrested, but my brain also had completely ceased to work. For
+the life of me I could not recall the conclusion of the sentence I had
+planned a moment before.
+
+I looked at my hand, and looked again; and as I looked I remembered
+something I had been reading only a few days before--a profoundly
+unsettling description of an experiment in auto-suggestion. The
+experiment had consisted of the placing of a hand upon a table, and the
+laying upon it the conjuration that, the Will notwithstanding, it should
+not move. And as I watched my own hand, pale on the paper in the pearly
+light, I knew that, by some consent to the nullification of the Will that
+did not proceed from, the Self I was accustomed to regard as my own, that
+injunction was already placed upon it. My conscious and deliberate Will
+was powerless. I could only sit there and wait until whatever inhibition
+had arrested my writing hand should permit it to move forward again.
+
+It must have been several minutes before such a tingling of the nerves as
+announces that the blood is once more returning to a cramped member
+warned me that I was about to be released. Warily I awaited my moment;
+then I plucked my hand to myself again with a suddenness that caused a
+little blot of ink to spurt from my fountain-pen on to the surface of the
+paper. I drew a deep breath. I was free again. And with the freedom came
+a resolve--that whatever portion of myself had been responsible for this
+prank should not repeat it if I could possibly prevent it.
+
+But scarcely had I come, as I may say (and not without a little gush of
+alarm now that it was over), to myself, when I was struck by a thought.
+It was a queer wild sort of thought. It fetched me out of my chair and
+set me striding across the library to a lower shelf in the farthest
+corner. This shelf was the shelf on which I kept my letter-files. I
+stooped and ran my fingers along the backs of the dusty row. I drew out
+the file for 1900, and brought it back to my writing-table. My contracts,
+I ought to say, reposed in a deed-box at my agent's office; but my files
+contained, in the form of my agent's letters, a sufficient record of my
+business transactions.
+
+I opened the file concertina-wise, and turned to the section lettered
+"R." I drew out the correspondence that related to the sale of the first
+series of the _Martin Renards_. As I did so I glanced at the movable
+calendar on my table. The date was January 20th.
+
+The file contained no letters for January of any significance whatever.
+
+The thought that had half formed in my brain immediately became nonsense.
+I replaced the letters in their compartment, and took the file back to
+its shelf again. For some minutes I paced the library irresolutely; then
+I decided I would work no more that night. When I gathered together my
+papers I was careful to place that with the half-finished sentence on the
+top, so that with the first resting of my eyes upon it on the morrow my
+memory might haply be refreshed.
+
+I tried again to finish that sentence on the morrow. With certain
+modifications that I need not particularise here, my experience was the
+same as on the previous night.
+
+It was the same when I made the attempt on the day after that.
+
+At ten o'clock of the night of the fourth day I completed the sentence
+without difficulty. I just sat down in my chair and wrote it.
+
+With equal ease I finished the chapter on professional artists.
+
+It was not likely that Schofield would have refrained from telling
+Maschka of our little difference on our last meeting; and within a week
+of the date I have just mentioned I learned that she knew all about it.
+And, as the circumstances of my learning this were in a high degree
+unusual, I will relate them with such clearness as I am able.
+
+I ought first to say, however, that the selection of the drawings that
+were to illustrate the book having been made (the drawings for which my
+own text was to serve as commentary would be the better expression), the
+superintendence of their production had been left to Schofield. He,
+Maschka, and I passed the proofs in consultation. The blocks were almost
+ready; and the reason for their call that evening was to consider the
+possibility of having all ready for production in the early spring--a
+possibility which was contingent on the state of advancement of my own
+share of the book.
+
+That evening I had experienced my second check. (I omit those that had
+immediately succeeded the first one, as resembling that one so closely in
+the manner of their coming.) It had not come by any means so completely
+and definitively as the former one, but it had sufficed to make my
+progress, both mentally and mechanically, so sluggish and struggling
+a performance that for the time being I had given up the attempt, and was
+once more regarding with a sort of perturbed stupor my hand that held the
+pen. Andriaovsky's portrait stood in its usual place, on the chair at the
+end of my writing-table; but I had eyes for nothing but that refractory
+hand of mine.
+
+Now it is true that during the past weeks I had studied Andriaovsky's
+portrait thoroughly enough to be able to call up the vivid mental image
+of it at will; but that did not entirely account for the changed aspect
+with which it now presented itself to that uncomprehended sense within
+us that makes of these shadows such startling realities. Flashing and
+life-like as was the presentation on the canvas (mind you, I was not
+looking at it, but all the time at my own hand), it was dead paint by
+comparison with that _mental image_ which I saw (if I may so use a term
+of which custom has restricted the meaning to one kind of seeing) as
+plainly as I ever saw Andriaovsky in his life. I know now that it was
+by virtue of that essential essence that bound us heart and brain and
+soul together that I so saw him, eyes glittering, head sardonically
+wagging, fine mouth shaping phrases of insight and irony. And the strange
+thing was, that I could not have located this so living image by
+confining it to any portion of the space within the four walls of my
+library. It was before me, behind me, within my head, about me, _was me_,
+invading and possessing the "me" that sat at the table. At one moment
+the eyes mockingly invited me to go on with my work; the next, a frown
+had seated itself on that massive pylon of his forehead; and then
+suddenly his countenance changed entirely.... A wave of horror broke
+over me. He was suddenly as I had seen him that last time in the
+Hampstead "Home"--sitting up on his pillow, looking into my eyes with
+that terrible look of profundity and familiarity, and asking me who I
+was.... _"Harrison--ha ha!... You shall very soon know that I know you,
+if ..."_
+
+It is but by the accidence of our limited experience that sounds are loud
+or soft to that inner ear of us; these words were at one and the same
+time a dreadful thunder and a voice interstellarly inaccessible and
+withdrawn. They, too, were before, behind, without, and within. And
+incorporated (I know not how else to express it) with these words were
+other words, in the English I knew, in the Hebrew in which he had quoted
+them from the sacred Books of his People, in all languages, in no
+language save that essential communication of which languages are but the
+inessential husk and medium--words that told me that though I took the
+Wings of the Morning and fled into the uttermost parts of the earth, yea,
+though I made my bed in Hell, I could not escape him....
+
+He had kept his word. I _did_ know that he knew who and what I was....
+
+I cannot tell whether my lips actually shaped the question that even in
+that moment burst from me.
+
+"But Form--and Forms? It _is_ then true that all things are but aspects
+of One thing?..."
+
+"Yes--in death," the voice seemed to reply.
+
+My next words, I know, were actually spoken aloud.
+
+"Then tell me--tell me--_do you not wish me to write it?"_
+
+Suddenly I leapt out of my chair with a gulping cry. A voice _had_
+spoken....
+
+"Of course we wish you to write it...."
+
+For one instant of time my vision seemed to fold on itself like smoke;
+then it was gone. The face into which I was wildly staring was Maschka's,
+and behind her stood Schofield. They had been announced, but I had heard
+nothing of it.
+
+"Were you thinking of _not_ writing it?" she demanded, while Schofield
+scowled at me.
+
+"No--no--," I stammered, as I got up and tardily placed them chairs.
+
+Schofield did not speak, but he did not remove his eyes from me. Somehow
+I could not meet them.
+
+"Well," she said, "Jack had already told me that you seemed in two minds
+about it. That's what we've called about--to know definitely what it is
+you propose to do."
+
+I saw that she had also called, if necessary, to quarrel. I began to
+recover a little.
+
+"Did you tell her that?" I demanded of Schofield. "If you did,
+you--misinterpreted me."
+
+In my house, he ignored the fact that I was in the room. He replied to
+Maschka.
+
+"I understood Mr. Harrison to say definitely, and in those words, that if
+I didn't like the way in which he was writing Michael's 'Life,' I might
+write and publish one myself," he said.
+
+"I did say that," I admitted; "but I never said that whatever _you_ did I
+should not go on with mine."
+
+"Yours!" cried Maschka. "What right have _you_ in my brother's 'Life'?"
+
+I quickly told her.
+
+"I have the right to write my recollections of him, and, subject to
+certain provisions of the Law, to base anything on them I think fit," I
+replied.
+
+"But," she cried aghast, "there can't be _two_ 'Lives'!..."
+
+"It's news to me that two were contemplated," I returned. "The point is,
+that I can get mine published, and you can't."
+
+Schofield's harsh voice sounded suddenly--but again to Maschka, not to
+me.
+
+"Ye might remind Mr. Harrison that others have capabilities in business
+besides himself. Beyond a doubt our sales will be comparatively small,
+but they'll be to such as have not made the great refusal."
+
+Think of it!... I almost laughed.
+
+"Oh!... Been trying it?" I inquired.
+
+He made no reply.
+
+"Well, those who have made the refusal have at least had something to
+refuse," I said mildly. Then, realising that this was mere quarrelling, I
+returned to the point. "Anyhow, there's no question of refusing to write
+the 'Life.' I admit that during the last fortnight I've met with certain
+difficulties; but the task isn't so easy as perhaps it looks.... I'm
+making progress."
+
+"I suppose," she said hesitatingly, after a pause, "that you don't care
+to show it as far as it is written?"
+
+For a moment I also hesitated. I thought I saw where she was. Thanks to
+that Lancashire jackanapes, there was division between us; and I had
+pretty well made up my mind, not only that he thought himself quite
+capable of writing Andriaovsky's "Life," himself, but that he had
+actually made an attempt in that direction. They had come in the
+suspicion that I was throwing them over, and, though that suspicion was
+removed, Maschka wished, if there was any throwing over to be done, to do
+it herself. In a word, she wanted to compare me with Schofield.
+
+"To see it as far as it is written," I repeated slowly.... "Well, you
+may. That is, you, Michael's sister, may. But on the condition that
+you neither show it to anybody else nor speak of it to anybody else."
+
+"Ah!" she said.... "And only on those conditions?"
+
+"Only on those conditions."
+
+I saw a quick glance between them. "Shall we tell him?" it seemed to
+say....
+
+"Including the man Michael's sister is going to marry?" she said
+abruptly.
+
+My attitude was deeply apologetic, but, "Including anybody whomsoever," I
+answered.
+
+"Then," she said, rising, "we won't bother. But will you at least let us
+know, soon, when we may expect your text?"
+
+"I will let you know," I replied slowly, "one week from to-day."
+
+On that assurance they left; and when they had gone I crossed once more
+to the lower shelf that contained my letter-files. I turned up the file
+for 1900 once more. During their visit I had had an idea.
+
+I ran through the letters, and then replaced them....
+
+Yes, I ought to be able to let them know within the week.
+
+
+V
+
+Against the day when I myself shall come to die, there are in the
+pigeon-holes of the newspaper libraries certain biographical records
+that deal roughly with the outward facts of my life; and these,
+supplemented by documents I shall place in the hands of my executors,
+will tell the story of how I leaped at a bound into wealth and fame with
+the publication of _The Cases of Martin Renard_. I will set down as much
+of that story as has its bearing on my present tale.
+
+_Martin Renard_ was not immediately accepted by the first editor to whom
+it was offered. It does not suffice that in order to be popular a thing
+shall be merely good--or bad; it must be bad--or good--in a particular
+way. For taking the responsibility when they happen to miss that
+particular way editors are paid their salaries. When they happen to hit
+it they grow fat on circulation-money: Since it becomes me ill to quarrel
+with the way in which any man earns his money, I content myself with
+merely stating the fact.
+
+By the time the fourth editor had refused my series I was about at my
+last gasp. To write the things at all I had had to sink four months in
+time; and debts, writs and pawnshops were my familiars. I was little
+better off than Andriaovsky at his very worst. I had read the first of
+the _Martin Renards_ to him, by the way; the gigantic outburst of mirth
+with which he had received it had not encouraged me to read him a second.
+I wrote the others in secret.
+
+I wrote the things in the spring and summer of 1900; and by the last day
+of September I was confident that I had at last sold them. Except by a
+flagrant breach of faith, the editor in whose desk they reposed could
+hardly decline them. As it subsequently happened, I have now nothing but
+gratitude for him that he did, after all, decline them; for I had a
+duplicate copy "on offer" in another quarter.
+
+He declined them, I say; and I was free to possess my soul again among my
+writs, debts and pawnshops.
+
+But four days later I received the alternative offer. It was from the
+_Falchion_. The _Falchion_, as you may remember, has since run no less
+than five complete series of _Martin Renards_. It bought "both sides,"
+that is to say, both British and American serial rights. Of the twelve
+_Martin Renards_ I had written, my wise agent had offered the _Falchion_
+six only. On his advice I accepted the offer.
+
+Instantaneously with the publication of those six stories came my
+success. In two continents I was "home"--home in the hearts of the
+public. I had my small cheque--it was not much more than a hundred
+pounds--but "Wait," said my agent; "let's see what we can do with the
+other six...."
+
+Precisely what he did with them only he and I know; but I don't mind
+saying that £3000 did not buy my first serial rights. Then came second
+and third rights, and after them the book rights, British, American, and
+Colonial. Then came the translation rights. In French, my creation is, of
+course, as in English, _Martin Renard_; in German he is Martin Fuchs; and
+by a similar process you can put him--my translators have put him--into
+Italian, Swedish, Norwegian, Russian, and three-fourths of the tongues of
+Europe. And this was the first series only. It was only with the second
+series that the full splendour of my success appeared. My very imitators
+grew rich; my agent's income from his comparatively small percentage on
+my royalties was handsome; and he chuckled and bade me wait for the
+dramatic rights and the day when the touring companies should get to
+business....
+
+I had "got there."
+
+And I remember, sadly enough now, my first resolution when the day came
+when I was able to survey the situation with anything approaching calm.
+It was, "Enough." For the rest of my days I need not know poverty again.
+Thenceforward I need not, unless I chose, do any but worthy work. _Martin
+Renard_ had served his purpose handsomely, and I intended to have nothing
+more to do with him.
+
+Then came that dazzling offer for the second series....
+
+I accepted it.
+
+I accepted the third likewise; and I have told you about the fourth....
+
+I have tried to kill _Martin Renard_. He was killing me. I have, in
+the pages of the _Falchion_, actually killed him; but I have had to
+resuscitate him. I cannot escape from him....
+
+I am not setting down one word more of this than bears directly on my
+tale of Andriaovsky's "Life." For those days, when my whole future had
+hung in the balance, _were the very days covered by that portion of
+Andriaovsky's life at which I had now arrived_. I had reached, and was
+hesitating at, our point of divergence. Those checks and releases which I
+had at first found so unaccountable corresponded with the vicissitudes of
+the _Martin Renard_ negotiations.
+
+The actual dates did not, of course, coincide--I had quickly discovered
+the falsity of that scent. Neither did the intervals between them, with
+the exception of those few days in which I had been unable to complete
+that half-written sentence--the few days immediately prior to my
+(parallel) acceptance by the _Falchion_. But, by that other reckoning
+of time, of mental and spiritual experience, _they tallied exactly_.
+The gambling chances of five years ago meant present stumblings and
+haltings; the breach of faith of an editor long since meant a present
+respite; and another week should bring me to that point of my so
+strangely reduplicated experience that, allowing for the furious mental
+rate at which I was now living, would make another node with that other
+point in the more slowly lived past that had marked my acceptance of the
+offer for the second half-dozen of the _Martin Renards_.
+
+It had been on this hazardous calculation that I had made my promise to
+Maschka.
+
+I passed that week in a state of constantly increasing apprehension.
+True, I worked at the "Life," even assiduously; but it was plain sailing,
+mere cataloguing of certain of Andriaovsky's works, a chapter I had
+deliberately planned _pour mieux sauter_--to enhance the value of the
+penultimate and final chapters. These were the real crux of the "Life."
+These were what I was reserving myself for. These were to show that only
+his body was dead, and that his spirit still lived and his work was
+still being done wherever a man could be found whose soul burned within
+him with the same divine ardour.
+
+But I was now realising, day by day, hour by hour more clearly, what I
+was incurring. I was penning nothing less than my own artistic damnation.
+Self-condemned, indeed, I had been this long time; but I was now making
+the world a party to the sentence. The crowning of Andriaovsky involved
+my own annihilation; his "Life" would be my "Hic Jacet." And yet I was
+prepared, nay, resolved, to write it. I had started, and I would go
+forward. I would not be spewed with the lukewarm out of the mouth of that
+Spirit from which proceeds all that is bright and pure and true. The
+vehemence with which I had rejected its divine bidding should at least be
+correspondent with my adoration of it. The snivelling claims of the
+Schofields I spurned. If, as they urged, "an artist must live," he must
+live royally or starve with a tight mouth. No complaining....
+
+And one other claim I urged in the teeth of this Spirit, which, if it
+was a human Spirit at all, it could not disregard. Those pigeon-holed
+obituaries of mine will proclaim to the world, one and all, the virtues
+of my public life. In spite of my royal earnings, I am not a rich man. I
+have not accepted wealth without accepting the personal responsibility
+for it. Sick men and women in more than one hospital lie in wards
+provided by _Martin Renard_ and myself; and I am not dishonoured in my
+Institution at Poplar. Those vagrant wanderings with Andriaovsky have
+enabled me to know the poor and those who help the poor. My personal
+labours in the administration of the Institute are great, for outside
+the necessary routine I leave little to subordinates. I have declined
+honours offered to me for my "services to Literature," and I have never
+encouraged a youth, of parts or lacking them, to make of Literature a
+profession. And so on and so forth. All this, and more, you will read
+when the day comes; and I don't doubt the _Falchion_ will publish my
+memoir in mourning borders...
+
+But to resume.
+
+I finished the chapter I have mentioned. Maschka and her fiancé kept
+punctiliously away. Then, before sitting down to the penultimate
+chapter, I permitted myself the relaxation of a day in the country.
+
+I can't tell you precisely where I went; I only know it was somewhere in
+Buckinghamshire, and that, ordering the car to await me a dozen miles
+farther on, I set out to walk. Nor can I tell you what I saw during that
+walk; I don't think I saw anything. There was a red wintry disc of a sun,
+I remember, and a land grey with rime; and that is all. I was entirely
+occupied with the attempt I was about to make. I think that even then
+I had the sense of doom, for I know not how otherwise I should have
+found myself several times making little husbandings of my force, as if
+conscious that I should need it all. For I was determined, as never in my
+life have I been determined, to write that "Life." And I intended, not to
+wait to be challenged, but to challenge.... I met the car, returning in
+search of me; and I dined at a restaurant, went home to bed, and slept
+dreamlessly.
+
+On the morrow I deliberately refrained from work until the evening. My
+challenge to Andriaovsky and the Powers he represented should be boldly
+delivered at the very gates of their own Hour. Not until half-past eight,
+with the curtains drawn, the doors locked, and orders given that on no
+account whatever was I to be disturbed, did I switch on the pearly light,
+place Andriaovsky's portrait in its now accustomed place, and draw my
+chair up to my writing-table.
+
+
+VI
+
+But before I could resume the "Life" at the point at which I had left it,
+I felt that there were certain preliminaries to be settled. It was not
+that I wished to sound a parley with any view of coming to terms; I had
+determined what the terms were to be. As a boxer who leaps from his
+corner the moment the signal is given, astounding with suddenness his
+less prompt antagonist, so I should be ready when the moment came. But I
+wished the issue to be defined. I did not propose to submit the whole of
+my manhood to the trial. I was merely asserting my right to speak of
+certain things which, if one chose to exaggerate their importance by a
+too narrow and exclusive consideration of them, I might conceivably be
+thought to have betrayed.
+
+I drew a sheet of paper towards me, and formally made out my claim. It
+occupied not more than a dozen lines, and its nature has already been
+sufficiently indicated. I put my pen down again, leaned back in my chair,
+and waited.
+
+I waited, but nothing happened. It seemed that if this was my attempt to
+justify myself, the plea was certainly not disallowed. But neither had I
+any sign that it was allowed; and presently it occurred to me that
+possibly I had couched it in terms too general. Perhaps a more particular
+claim would meet with a different reception.
+
+During the earlier stages of the book's progress I had many times
+deliberated on the desirability of a Preface that should state succinctly
+what I considered to be my qualifications for the task. Though I had
+finally decided against any such statement, the form of the Preface might
+nevertheless serve for the present occasion. I took another sheet of
+paper, headed it "Preface," and began once more to write.
+
+I covered the page; I covered a second; and half-way down the third I
+judged my statement to be sufficient. Again I laid down my pen, leaned
+back, and waited.
+
+The Preface also produced no result whatever.
+
+Again I considered; and then I saw more clearly. It came to me that, both
+in the first statement and in the Preface, I was merely talking to
+myself. I was convincing myself, and losing both time and strength in
+doing so. The Power with which I sought to come to grips was treating my
+vapourings with high disregard. To be snubbed thus by Headquarters
+would never, never do....
+
+Then I saw more clearly still. It seemed that my _right to challenge_
+was denied. I was not an adversary, with the rights and honours of an
+adversary, but a trangressor, whose trangression had already several
+times been sharply visited, and would be visited once more the moment it
+was repeated. I might, in a sense, please myself whether I brought myself
+into Court; but, once there, I was not the arraigner in the box, but the
+arraigned in the dock.
+
+And I rebelled hotly. Did I sit there, ready for the struggle, only to be
+told that there could be no struggle? Did that vengeful Angel of the Arts
+ignore my very existence?... By Yea and Nay I swore that he should take
+notice of me! Once before, a mortal had wrestled a whole night with an
+angel, and though he had been worsted, it had not been before he had
+compelled the Angel to reveal himself! And so would I...
+
+Challenge, title to challenge, tentatives, preliminaries, I suddenly cast
+them all aside. We would have it in deeds, not in further words. I opened
+a drawer, took out the whole of the "Life" so far written, and began to
+read. I wanted to grasp once more the plan of it in its entirety.
+
+Page after page, I read on, with deepening attention. Quickly I ran
+through half of it. Then I began to concentrate myself still more
+closely. There would come a point at which I should be flush with the
+stream of it again, again feel the force of its current; I felt myself
+drawing nearer to that point; when I should reach it I would go ahead
+without a pause...
+
+I read to the end of Chapter Fifteen, the last completed chapter. Then
+instantly I took my pen and wrote, "Chapter Sixteen...."
+
+I felt the change at the very first word.
+
+       *        *        *        *        *
+
+I will not retraverse any ground I have covered before. If I have not
+already made clear my former sensations of the petrefaction of hand and
+brain, I despair of being able to do so any better now. Suffice it that
+once more I felt that inhibition, and that once more I was aware of the
+ubiquitous presence of the image of the dead artist. Once more I heard
+those voices, near as thunder and yet interstellarly remote, crying that
+solemn warning, that though I took the Wings of the Morning, made my bed
+in Hell, or cried aloud upon the darkness to cover me, there was one
+Spirit from which I could not hope to escape. I felt the slight crawling
+of my flesh on my bones as I listened.
+
+But there was now a difference. On the former occasion, to hear again
+those last horrible words of his, "_You shall very soon know I know who
+you are if_..." had been the signal for the total unnerving of me and for
+that uncontrollable cry, "_Don't you then want me to write it_?" But now
+I intended to write it if I could. In order that I might tell him so I
+was now seeking him out, in what heights or depths I knew not, at what
+peril to myself I cared not. I cared not, since I now felt that I could
+not continue to live unless I pressed to the uttermost attempt. And I
+must repeat, and repeat again, and yet repeat, that in that hour
+Andriaovsky was immanent about me, in the whole of me, in the last fibre
+and cell of me, in all my thoughts, from my consciousness that I was
+sitting there at my own writing-table to my conception of God Himself.
+
+It may seem strange--whether it does so or not will depend on the kind
+ of man you yourself are--that as long as I was content to recognise this
+immanence of Andriaovsky's enlarged and liberated spirit, _and not to
+dispute with it_, I found nothing but mildness and benignity in my
+hazardous experience. More, I felt that, in that clear region to which
+in my intensified state of consciousness I was lifted, I was able to move
+(I must trust you to understand the word aright) without restraint, nay,
+with an amplitude and freedom of movement past setting down, as long as
+I was satisfied to possess my soul in quiescence. The state itself was
+inimical neither to my safety nor to my sanity. I was conscious of it
+as a transposition into another register of the scale of life. And, as
+in this life we move in ignorance and safety only by accepting the
+hair-balance of stupendous forces, so now I felt that my safety depended
+on my observation of the conditions that governed that region of light
+and clarity and Law.
+
+Of clarity and Law; save in the terms of the great abstractions I may not
+speak of it. And that is well-nigh equal to saying that I may not speak
+of it at all. The hand that would have written of it lay (I never for one
+moment ceased to be conscious) heavy as stone on a writing-table in some
+spot quite accidental in my new sense of locality; the tongue that would
+have spoken of it seemed to slumber in my mouth. And I knew that both
+dumbness and stillness were proper. Their opposites would have convicted
+me (the flat and earthly comparison must be allowed) of intrusion into
+some Place of beauty and serenity for which the soilure of my birth
+disqualified me.
+
+For beauty and serenity, austerity and benignity and peace, were the
+conditions of that Place. To other Places belonged the wingy and robed
+and starry and golden things that made the heavens of other lives than
+that which I had shared with Andriaovsky; here, white and shapely Truth
+alone reigned. None questioned, for all knew; none sinned, for sin was
+already judged and punished in its committal; none demonstrated, for
+all things were evident; and those eager to justify themselves were
+permitted no farther than the threshold....
+
+And it was to justify, to challenge, to maintain a right, that I was
+there. I was there to wrestle, if needs be, with the Angel of that Place,
+to vanquish him or to compel him to reveal himself. I had not been
+summoned; I had thrust myself there unbidden. There was a moment in which
+I noticed that my writing-table was a little more than ordinarily removed
+from me, but very little, not more than if I had been looking over the
+shoulder of another writer at it; and I saw my chapter heading. At the
+sight of it something of the egotism that had prompted me to write it
+stirred in me again; everywhere was Andriaovsky's calm face, priest and
+Angel himself; and I became conscious that I was trying to write a
+phrase. I also became conscious that I was being pitifully warned not to
+do so...
+
+Suddenly my whole being was flooded with a frightful pang of pain.
+
+It was not local. It was no more to be located than the other immanences
+of which I have spoken. It was Pain, pure, essential, dissociated; and
+with the coming of it that fair Place had grown suddenly horrible and
+black.
+
+And I knew that the shock came _of my own resistance_, and that it would
+cease to afflict me the moment I ceased to resist.
+
+I did cease. Instantly the pain passed. But as when a knife is plucked
+from a wound, so only with its passing did I shriek aloud....
+
+For I know not how many minutes I sat in stupefaction. Then, as with
+earthly pains, that are assuaged with the passing of accidental time, the
+memory of it softened a little. Blunderingly and only half consciously, I
+cast about to collect my dispersed force.
+
+For--already I was conscious of it--there still remained one claim that
+even in thought I had not advanced. I would, were I permitted, still
+write that "Life," but, since it was decreed so, I would no longer urge
+that in writing it I justified myself. So I might but write it, I would
+embrace my own portion, the portion of doom; yea, though it should be a
+pressing of the searing-iron to my lips, I would embrace it; my name
+should not appear. For the mere sake of the man I had loved I would write
+it, in self-scorn and abasement, humbly craving not to be denied....
+
+_"Oh, let me but do for Love of you what a sinful man can!"_ I
+groaned....
+
+A moment later I had again striven to do so. So do we all, when we
+think that out of a poor human Love we can alter the Laws by which our
+state exists. And with such a hideous anguish as was again mine are we
+visited....
+
+And I knew now what that anguish was. It was the twining of body from
+spirit that is called the bitterness of Death; for not all of the body
+are the pangs of that severance. With that terrible sword of impersonal
+Pain the God of Peace makes sorrowful war that Peace may come again. With
+its flame He ringed the bastions of Heaven when Satan made assault. Only
+on the Gorgon-image of that Pain in the shield may weak man look; and
+its blaze and ire had permeated with deadly nearness the "everywhere"
+where I was...
+
+"_Oh, not for Love? Not even for Love?_" broke the agonised question from
+me....
+
+The next moment I had ceased, and ceased for ever, to resist.
+Instantaneously the terrible flashing of that sword became no more
+than the play of lightning one sees far away in the wide cloudfields
+on a peaceful summer's twilight. I felt a gentle and overpowering
+sleep coming over me; and as it folded me about I saw, with the last
+look of my eyes, my own figure, busily writing at the table.
+
+Had I, then, prevailed? Had Pain so purged me that I was permitted to
+finish my task? And had my tortured cry, "Oh, not even for Love?"
+been heard?
+
+I did not know.
+
+       *        *        *        *        *
+
+I came to myself to find that my head had fallen on my desk. The light
+still shone within its pearly shade, and in the penumbra of its shadow
+the portrait of Andriaovsky occupied its accustomed place. About me were
+my papers, and my pen lay where it had fallen from my hand.
+
+At first I did not look at my papers. I merely saw that the uppermost of
+them was written on. But presently I took it up, and looked at it
+stupidly. Then, with no memory at all of how I had come to write what was
+upon it, I put it down again.
+
+It was indeed a completion.
+
+But it was not of Andriaovsky's "Life" that it was the completion. As you
+may or may not know, Andriaovsky's "Life" is written by "his friend John
+Schofield." I had been allowed to write, but it was my own condemnation
+that, in sadness and obedience, in the absence of wrath but also in the
+absence of mercy, I had written. By the Law I had broken I was broken in
+my turn. It was the draft for the fifth series of _The Cases of Martin
+Renard_.
+
+No, not for Love--not even for Love....
+
+
+
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Widdershins, by Oliver Onions
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Widdershins
+
+Author: Oliver Onions
+
+Release Date: November 26, 2004  [eBook #14168]
+[Most recently updated: October 24, 2006]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WIDDERSHINS***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan, and the Project Gutenberg
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+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.
+
+And _this_ was to have been his Beatrice, his vision! As Elsie she was to
+have gone into the furnace of his art, and she was to have come out the
+Woman all men desire! Her thoughts were to have been culled from his own
+finest, her form from his dearest dreams, and her setting wherever he
+could find one fit for her worth. He had brooded long before making the
+attempt; then one day he had felt her stir within him as a mother feels
+a quickening, and he had begun to write; and so he had added chapter to
+chapter....
+
+And those fifteen sodden chapters were what he had produced!
+
+Again he sat, softly moving his finger....
+
+Then he bestirred himself.
+
+She must go, all fifteen chapters of her. That was settled. For what was
+to take her place his mind was a blank; but one thing at a time; a man
+is not excused from taking the wrong course because the right one is not
+immediately revealed to him. Better would come if it was to come;
+in the meantime--
+
+He rose, fetched the fifteen chapters, and read them over before he
+should drop them into the fire.
+
+But instead of putting them into the fire he let them fall from his hand.
+He became conscious of the dripping of the tap again. It had a tinkling
+gamut of four or five notes, on which it rang irregular changes, and it
+was foolishly sweet and dulcimer-like. In his mind Oleron could see the
+gathering of each drop, its little tremble on the lip of the tap, and the
+tiny percussion of its fall, "Plink--plunk," minimised almost to
+inaudibility. Following the lowest note there seemed to be a brief
+phrase, irregularly repeated; and presently Oleron found himself waiting
+for the recurrence of this phrase. It was quite pretty....
+
+But it did not conduce to wakefulness, and Oleron dozed over his fire.
+
+When he awoke again the fire had burned low and the flames of the candles
+were licking the rims of the Sheffield sticks. Sluggishly he rose,
+yawned, went his nightly round of door-locks and window-fastenings, and
+passed into his bedroom. Soon he slept soundly.
+
+But a curious little sequel followed on the morrow. Mrs. Barrett usually
+tapped, not at his door, but at the wooden wall beyond which lay Oleron's
+bed; and then Oleron rose, put on his dressing-gown, and admitted her. He
+was not conscious that as he did so that morning he hummed an air; but
+Mrs. Barrett lingered with her hand on the door-knob and her face a
+little averted and smiling.
+
+"De-ar me!" her soft falsetto rose. "But that will be a very o-ald tune,
+Mr. Oleron! I will not have heard it this for-ty years!"
+
+"What tune?" Oleron asked.
+
+"The tune, indeed, that you was humming, sir."
+
+Oleron had his thumb in the flap of a letter. It remained there.
+
+"_I_ was humming?... Sing it, Mrs. Barrett."
+
+Mrs. Barrett prut-prutted.
+
+"I have no voice for singing, Mr. Oleron; it was Ann Pugh was the singer
+of our family; but the tune will be very o-ald, and it is called 'The
+Beckoning Fair One.'"
+
+"Try to sing it," said Oleron, his thumb still in the envelope; and Mrs.
+Barrett, with much dimpling and confusion, hummed the air.
+
+"They do say it was sung to a harp, Mr. Oleron, and it will be very
+o-ald," she concluded.
+
+"And _I_ was singing that?"
+
+"Indeed you wass. I would not be likely to tell you lies."
+
+With a "Very well--let me have breakfast," Oleron opened his letter; but
+the trifling circumstance struck him as more odd than he would have
+admitted to himself. The phrase he had hummed had been that which he had
+associated with the falling from the tap on the evening before.
+
+
+V
+
+Even more curious than that the commonplace dripping of an ordinary
+water-tap should have tallied so closely with an actually existing air
+was another result it had, namely, that it awakened, or seemed to awaken,
+in Oleron an abnormal sensitiveness to other noises of the old house. It
+has been remarked that silence obtains its fullest and most impressive
+quality when it is broken by some minute sound; and, truth to tell, the
+place was never still. Perhaps the mildness of the spring air operated on
+its torpid old timbers; perhaps Oleron's fires caused it to stretch its
+old anatomy; and certainly a whole world of insect life bored and
+burrowed in its baulks and joists. At any rate, Oleron had only to sit
+quiet in his chair and to wait for a minute or two in order to become
+aware of such a change in the auditory scale as comes upon a man who,
+conceiving the midsummer woods to be motionless and still, all at once
+finds his ear sharpened to the crepitation of a myriad insects.
+
+And he smiled to think of man's arbitrary distinction between that which
+has life and that which has not. Here, quite apart from such recognisable
+sounds as the scampering of mice, the falling of plaster behind his
+panelling, and the popping of purses or coffins from his fire, was a
+whole house talking to him had he but known its language. Beams settled
+with a tired sigh into their old mortices; creatures ticked in the walls;
+joints cracked, boards complained; with no palpable stirring of the air
+window-sashes changed their positions with a soft knock in their frames.
+And whether the place had life in this sense or not, it had at all events
+a winsome personality. It needed but an hour of musing for Oleron to
+conceive the idea that, as his own body stood in friendly relation to his
+soul, so, by an extension and an attenuation, his habitation might
+fantastically be supposed to stand in some relation to himself. He even
+amused himself with the far-fetched fancy that he might so identify
+himself with the place that some future tenant, taking possession, might
+regard it as in a sense haunted. It would be rather a joke if he, a
+perfectly harmless author, with nothing on his mind worse than a novel he
+had discovered he must begin again, should turn out to be laying the
+foundation of a future ghost!...
+
+In proportion, however, as he felt this growing attachment to the fabric
+of his abode, Elsie Bengough, from being merely unattracted, began to
+show a dislike of the place that was more and more marked. And she did
+not scruple to speak of her aversion.
+
+"It doesn't belong to to-day at all, and for you especially it's bad,"
+she said with decision. "You're only too ready to let go your hold on
+actual things and to slip into apathy; _you_ ought to be in a place
+with concrete floors and a patent gas-meter and a tradesmen's lift. And
+it would do you all the good in the world if you had a job that made you
+scramble and rub elbows with your fellow-men. Now, if I could get you a
+job, for, say, two or three days a week, one that would allow you heaps
+of time for your proper work--would you take it?"
+
+Somehow, Oleron resented a little being diagnosed like this. He thanked
+Miss Bengough, but without a smile.
+
+"Thank you, but I don't think so. After all each of us has his own life
+to live," he could not refrain from adding.
+
+"His own life to live!... How long is it since you were out, Paul?"
+
+"About two hours."
+
+"I don't mean to buy stamps or to post a letter. How long is it since you
+had anything like a stretch?"
+
+"Oh, some little time perhaps. I don't know."
+
+"Since I was here last?"
+
+"I haven't been out much."
+
+"And has _Romilly_ progressed much better for your being cooped up?"
+
+"I think she has. I'm laying the foundations of her. I shall begin the
+actual writing presently."
+
+It seemed as if Miss Bengough had forgotten their tussle about the first
+_Romilly_. She frowned, turned half away, and then quickly turned again.
+
+"Ah!... So you've still got that ridiculous idea in your head?"
+
+"If you mean," said Oleron slowly, "that I've discarded the old
+_Romilly_, and am at work on a new one, you're right. I have still got
+that idea in my head."
+
+Something uncordial in his tone struck her; but she was a fighter. His
+own absurd sensitiveness hardened her. She gave a "Pshaw!" of impatience.
+
+"Where is the old one?" she demanded abruptly.
+
+"Why?" asked Oleron.
+
+"I want to see it. I want to show some of it to you. I want, if you're
+not wool-gathering entirely, to bring you back to your senses."
+
+This time it was he who turned his back. But when he turned round again
+he spoke more gently.
+
+"It's no good, Elsie. I'm responsible for the way I go, and you must
+allow me to go it--even if it should seem wrong to you. Believe me, I
+am giving thought to it.... The manuscript? I was on the point of burning
+it, but I didn't. It's in that window-seat, if you must see it."
+
+Miss Bengough crossed quickly to the window-seat, and lifted the lid.
+Suddenly she gave a little exclamation, and put the back of her hand
+to her mouth. She spoke over her shoulder:
+
+"You ought to knock those nails in, Paul," she said.
+
+He strode to her side.
+
+"What? What is it? What's the matter?" he asked. "I did knock them
+in--or, rather, pulled them out."
+
+"You left enough to scratch with," she replied, showing her hand. From
+the upper wrist to the knuckle of the little finger a welling red wound
+showed.
+
+"Good--Gracious!" Oleron ejaculated.... "Here, come to the bathroom and
+bathe it quickly--"
+
+He hurried her to the bathroom, turned on warm water, and bathed and
+cleansed the bad gash. Then, still holding the hand, he turned cold water
+on it, uttering broken phrases of astonishment and concern.
+
+"Good Lord, how did that happen! As far as I knew I'd ... is this water
+too cold? Does that hurt? I can't imagine how on earth ... there; that'll
+do--"
+
+"No--one moment longer--I can bear it," she murmured, her eyes closed....
+
+Presently he led her back to the sitting-room and bound the hand in one
+of his handkerchiefs; but his face did not lose its expression of
+perplexity. He had spent half a day in opening and making serviceable the
+three window-boxes, and he could not conceive how he had come to leave an
+inch and a half of rusty nail standing in the wood. He himself had opened
+the lids of each of them a dozen times and had not noticed any nail; but
+there it was....
+
+"It shall come out now, at all events," he muttered, as he went for a
+pair of pincers. And he made no mistake about it that time.
+
+Elsie Bengough had sunk into a chair, and her face was rather white; but
+in her hand was the manuscript of _Romilly_. She had not finished with
+_Romilly_ yet. Presently she returned to the charge.
+
+"Oh, Paul, it will be the greatest mistake you ever, _ever_ made if you
+do not publish this!" she said.
+
+He hung his head, genuinely distressed. He couldn't get that incident of
+the nail out of his head, and _Romilly_ occupied a second place in his
+thoughts for the moment. But still she insisted; and when presently he
+spoke it was almost as if he asked her pardon for something.
+
+"What can I say, Elsie? I can only hope that when you see the new
+version, you'll see how right I am. And if in spite of all you _don't_
+like her, well ..." he made a hopeless gesture. "Don't you see that I
+_must_ be guided by my own lights?"
+
+She was silent.
+
+"Come, Elsie," he said gently. "We've got along well so far; don't let us
+split on this."
+
+The last words had hardly passed his lips before he regretted them. She
+had been nursing her injured hand, with her eyes once more closed; but
+her lips and lids quivered simultaneously. Her voice shook as she spoke.
+
+"I can't help saying it, Paul, but you are so greatly changed."
+
+"Hush, Elsie," he murmured soothingly; "you've had a shock; rest for a
+while. How could I change?"
+
+"I don't know, but you are. You've not been yourself ever since you came
+here. I wish you'd never seen the place. It's stopped your work, it's
+making you into a person I hardly know, and it's made me horribly anxious
+about you.... Oh, how my hand is beginning to throb!"
+
+"Poor child!" he murmured. "Will you let me take you to a doctor and have
+it properly dressed?"
+
+"No--I shall be all right presently--I'll keep it raised----"
+
+She put her elbow on the back of her chair, and the bandaged hand rested
+lightly on his shoulder.
+
+At that touch an entirely new anxiety stirred suddenly within him.
+Hundreds of times previously, on their jaunts and excursions, she had
+slipped her hand within his arm as she might have slipped it into the arm
+of a brother, and he had accepted the little affectionate gesture as a
+brother might have accepted it. But now, for the first time, there rushed
+into his mind a hundred startling questions. Her eyes were still closed,
+and her head had fallen pathetically back; and there was a lost and
+ineffable smile on her parted lips. The truth broke in upon him. Good
+God!... And he had never divined it!
+
+And stranger than all was that, now that he did see that she was lost in
+love of him, there came to him, not sorrow and humility and abasement,
+but something else that he struggled in vain against--something entirely
+strange and new, that, had he analysed it, he would have found to be
+petulance and irritation and resentment and ungentleness. The sudden
+selfish prompting mastered him before he was aware. He all but gave it
+words. What was she doing there at all? Why was she not getting on with
+her own work? Why was she here interfering with his? Who had given her
+this guardianship over him that lately she had put forward so
+assertively?--"Changed?" It was she, not himself, who had changed....
+
+But by the time she had opened her eyes again he had overcome his
+resentment sufficiently to speak gently, albeit with reserve.
+
+"I wish you would let me take you to a doctor."
+
+She rose.
+
+"No, thank you, Paul," she said. "I'll go now. If I need a dressing I'll
+get one; take the other hand, please. Good-bye--"
+
+He did not attempt to detain her. He walked with her to the foot of the
+stairs. Half-way along the narrow alley she turned.
+
+"It would be a long way to come if you happened not to be in," she said;
+"I'll send you a postcard the next time."
+
+At the gate she turned again.
+
+"Leave here, Paul," she said, with a mournful look. "Everything's wrong
+with this house."
+
+Then she was gone.
+
+Oleron returned to his room. He crossed straight to the window-box. He
+opened the lid and stood long looking at it. Then he closed it again and
+turned away.
+
+"That's rather frightening," he muttered. "It's simply not possible that
+I should not have removed that nail...."
+
+
+VI
+
+Oleron knew very well what Elsie had meant when she had said that her
+next visit would be preceded by a postcard. She, too, had realised that
+at last, at last he knew--knew, and didn't want her. It gave him a
+miserable, pitiful pang, therefore, when she came again within a week,
+knocking at the door unannounced. She spoke from the landing; she did not
+intend to stay, she said; and he had to press her before she would so
+much as enter.
+
+Her excuse for calling was that she had heard of an inquiry for short
+stories that he might be wise to follow up. He thanked her. Then, her
+business over, she seemed anxious to get away again. Oleron did not seek
+to detain her; even he saw through the pretext of the stories; and he
+accompanied her down the stairs.
+
+But Elsie Bengough had no luck whatever in that house. A second accident
+befell her. Half-way down the staircase there was the sharp sound of
+splintering wood, and she checked a loud cry. Oleron knew the woodwork to
+be old, but he himself had ascended and descended frequently enough
+without mishap....
+
+Elsie had put her foot through one of the stairs.
+
+He sprang to her side in alarm.
+
+"Oh, I say! My poor girl!"
+
+She laughed hysterically.
+
+"It's my weight--I know I'm getting fat--"
+
+"Keep still--let me clear these splinters away," he muttered between his
+teeth.
+
+She continued to laugh and sob that it was her weight--she was getting
+fat--
+
+He thrust downwards at the broken boards. The extrication was no easy
+matter, and her torn boot showed him how badly the foot and ankle
+within it must be abraded.
+
+"Good God--good God!" he muttered over and over again.
+
+"I shall be too heavy for anything soon," she sobbed and laughed.
+
+But she refused to reascend and to examine her hurt.
+
+"No, let me go quickly--let me go quickly," she repeated.
+
+"But it's a frightful gash!"
+
+"No--not so bad--let me get away quickly--I'm--I'm not wanted."
+
+At her words, that she was not wanted, his head dropped as if she had
+given him a buffet.
+
+"Elsie!" he choked, brokenly and shocked.
+
+But she too made a quick gesture, as if she put something violently
+aside.
+
+"Oh, Paul, not _that_--not _you_--of course I do mean that too in a
+sense--oh, you know what I mean!... But if the other can't be, spare
+me this now! I--I wouldn't have come, but--but--oh, I did, I _did_ try to
+keep away!"
+
+It was intolerable, heartbreaking; but what could he do--what could he
+say? He did not love her...
+
+"Let me go--I'm not wanted--let me take away what's left of me--"
+
+"Dear Elsie--you are very dear to me--"
+
+But again she made the gesture, as of putting something violently aside.
+
+"No, not that--not anything less--don't offer me anything less--leave me
+a little pride--"
+
+"Let me get my hat and coat--let me take you to a doctor," he muttered.
+
+But she refused. She refused even the support of his arm. She gave
+another unsteady laugh.
+
+"I'm sorry I broke your stairs, Paul.... You will go and see about the
+short stories, won't you?"
+
+He groaned.
+
+"Then if you won't see a doctor, will you go across the square and let
+Mrs. Barrett look at you? Look, there's Barrett passing now--"
+
+The long-nosed Barrett was looking curiously down the alley, but as
+Oleron was about to call him he made off without a word. Elsie seemed
+anxious for nothing so much as to be clear of the place, and finally
+promised to go straight to a doctor, but insisted on going alone.
+
+"Good-bye," she said.
+
+And Oleron watched her until she was past the hatchet-like "To Let"
+boards, as if he feared that even they might fall upon her and maim her.
+
+That night Oleron did not dine. He had far too much on his mind. He
+walked from room to room of his flat, as if he could have walked away
+from Elsie Bengough's haunting cry that still rang in his ears. "I'm
+not wanted--don't offer me anything less--let me take away what's left
+of me--"
+
+Oh, if he could only have persuaded himself that he loved her!
+
+He walked until twilight fell, then, without lighting candles, he stirred
+up the fire and flung himself into a chair.
+
+Poor, poor Elsie!...
+
+But even while his heart ached for her, it was out of the question.
+If only he had known! If only he had used common observation! But
+those walks, those sisterly takings of the arm--what a fool he had
+been!... Well, it was too late now. It was she, not he, who must now
+act--act by keeping away. He would help her all he could. He himself
+would not sit in her presence. If she came, he would hurry her out again
+as fast as he could.... Poor, poor Elsie!
+
+His room grew dark; the fire burned dead; and he continued to sit,
+wincing from time to time as a fresh tortured phrase rang again in his
+ears.
+
+Then suddenly, he knew not why, he found himself anxious for her in a new
+sense--uneasy about her personal safety. A horrible fancy that even then
+she might be looking over an embankment down into dark water, that she
+might even now be glancing up at the hook on the door, took him. Women
+had been known to do those things.... Then there would be an inquest, and
+he himself would be called upon to identify her, and would be asked how
+she had come by an ill-healed wound on the hand and a bad abrasion of the
+ankle. Barrett would say that he had seen her leaving his house....
+
+Then he recognised that his thoughts were morbid. By an effort of will he
+put them aside, and sat for a while listening to the faint creakings
+and tickings and rappings within his panelling.... If only he could have
+married her!... But he couldn't. Her face had risen before him again
+as he had seen it on the stairs, drawn with pain and ugly and swollen
+with tears. Ugly--yes, positively blubbered; if tears were women's
+weapons, as they were said to be, such tears were weapons turned against
+themselves ... suicide again....
+
+Then all at once he found himself attentively considering her two
+accidents.
+
+Extraordinary they had been, both of them. He _could not_ have left that
+old nail standing in the wood; why, he had fetched tools specially from
+the kitchen; and he was convinced that that step that had broken beneath
+her weight had been as sound as the others. It was inexplicable. If these
+things could happen, anything could happen. There was not a beam nor a
+jamb in the place that might not fall without warning, not a plank that
+might not crash inwards, not a nail that might not become a dagger. The
+whole place was full of life even now; as he sat there in the dark he
+heard its crowds of noises as if the house had been one great
+microphone....
+
+Only half conscious that he did so, he had been sitting for some time
+identifying these noises, attributing to each crack or creak or knock its
+material cause; but there was one noise which, again not fully conscious
+of the omission, he had not sought to account for. It had last come some
+minutes ago; it came again now--a sort of soft sweeping rustle that
+seemed to hold an almost inaudibly minute crackling. For half a minute or
+so it had Oleron's attention; then his heavy thoughts were of Elsie
+Bengough again.
+
+He was nearer to loving her in that moment than he had ever been. He
+thought how to some men their loved ones were but the dearer for those
+poor mortal blemishes that tell us we are but sojourners on earth, with a
+common fate not far distant that makes it hardly worth while to do
+anything but love for the time remaining. Strangling sobs, blearing
+tears, bodies buffeted by sickness, hearts and mind callous and hard with
+the rubs of the world--how little love there would be were these things a
+barrier to love! In that sense he did love Elsie Bengough. What her
+happiness had never moved in him her sorrow almost awoke....
+
+Suddenly his meditation went. His ear had once more become conscious
+of that soft and repeated noise--the long sweep with the almost
+inaudible crackle in it. Again and again it came, with a curious
+insistence and urgency. It quickened a little as he became increasingly
+attentive ... it seemed to Oleron that it grew louder....
+
+All at once he started bolt upright in his chair, tense and listening.
+The silky rustle came again; he was trying to attach it to something....
+
+The next moment he had leapt to his feet, unnerved and terrified. His
+chair hung poised for a moment, and then went over, setting the
+fire-irons clattering as it fell. There was only one noise in the world
+like that which had caused him to spring thus to his feet....
+
+The next time it came Oleron felt behind him at the empty air with his
+hand, and backed slowly until he found himself against the wall.
+
+"God in Heaven!" The ejaculation broke from Oleron's lips. The sound had
+ceased.
+
+The next moment he had given a high cry.
+
+"What is it? What's there? _Who's_ there?"
+
+A sound of scuttling caused his knees to bend under him for a moment; but
+that, he knew, was a mouse. That was not something that his stomach
+turned sick and his mind reeled to entertain. That other sound, the like
+of which was not in the world, had now entirely ceased; and again he
+called....
+
+He called and continued to call; and then another terror, a terror of the
+sound of his own voice, seized him. He did not dare to call again. His
+shaking hand went to his pocket for a match, but found none. He thought
+there might be matches on the mantelpiece--
+
+He worked his way to the mantelpiece round a little recess, without for a
+moment leaving the wall. Then his hand encountered the mantelpiece, and
+groped along it. A box of matches fell to the hearth. He could just see
+them in the firelight, but his hand could not pick them up until he had
+cornered them inside the fender.
+
+Then he rose and struck a light.
+
+The room was as usual. He struck a second match. A candle stood on the
+table. He lighted it, and the flame sank for a moment and then burned up
+clear. Again he looked round.
+
+There was nothing.
+
+There was nothing; but there had been something, and might still be
+something. Formerly, Oleron had smiled at the fantastic thought that,
+by a merging and interplay of identities between himself and his
+beautiful room, he might be preparing a ghost for the future; it had not
+occurred to him _that there might have been a similar merging and
+coalescence in the past_. Yet with this staggering impossibility he was
+now face to face. Something did persist in the house; it had a tenant
+other than himself; and that tenant, whatsoever or whosoever, had
+appalled Oleron's soul by producing the sound of a woman brushing her
+hair.
+
+
+VII
+
+Without quite knowing how he came to be there Oleron found himself
+striding over the loose board he had temporarily placed on the step
+broken by Miss Bengough. He was hatless, and descending the stairs. Not
+until later did there return to him a hazy memory that he had left the
+candle burning on the table, had opened the door no wider than was
+necessary to allow the passage of his body, and had sidled out, closing
+the door softly behind him. At the foot of the stairs another shock
+awaited him. Something dashed with a flurry up from the disused cellars
+and disappeared out of the door. It was only a cat, but Oleron gave a
+childish sob.
+
+He passed out of the gate, and stood for a moment under the "To Let"
+boards, plucking foolishly at his lip and looking up at the glimmer
+of light behind one of his red blinds. Then, still looking over his
+shoulder, he moved stumblingly up the square. There was a small
+public-house round the corner; Oleron had never entered it; but he
+entered it now, and put down a shilling that missed the counter by
+inches.
+
+"B--b--bran--brandy," he said, and then stooped to look for the shilling.
+
+He had the little sawdusted bar to himself; what company there
+was--carters and labourers and the small tradesmen of the
+neighbourhood--was gathered in the farther compartment, beyond the space
+where the white-haired landlady moved among her taps and bottles. Oleron
+sat down on a hardwood settee with a perforated seat, drank half his
+brandy, and then, thinking he might as well drink it as spill it,
+finished it.
+
+Then he fell to wondering which of the men whose voices he heard across
+the public-house would undertake the removal of his effects on the
+morrow.
+
+In the meantime he ordered more brandy.
+
+For he did not intend to go back to that room where he had left the
+candle burning. Oh no! He couldn't have faced even the entry and the
+staircase with the broken step--certainly not that pith-white,
+fascinating room. He would go back for the present to his old
+arrangement, of workroom and separate sleeping-quarters; he would
+go to his old landlady at once--presently--when he had finished his
+brandy--and see if she could put him up for the night. His glass was
+empty now....
+
+He rose, had it refilled, and sat down again.
+
+And if anybody asked his reason for removing again? Oh, he had reason
+enough--reason enough! Nails that put themselves back into wood again
+and gashed people's hands, steps that broke when you trod on them, and
+women who came into a man's place and brushed their hair in the dark,
+were reasons enough! He was querulous and injured about it all. He had
+taken the place for himself, not for invisible women to brush their
+hair in; that lawyer fellow in Lincoln's Inn should be told so, too,
+before many hours were out; it was outrageous, letting people in for
+agreements like that!
+
+A cut-glass partition divided the compartment where Oleron sat from the
+space where the white-haired landlady moved; but it stopped seven or
+eight inches above the level of the counter. There was no partition at
+the farther bar. Presently Oleron, raising his eyes, saw that faces were
+watching him through the aperture. The faces disappeared when he looked
+at them.
+
+He moved to a corner where he could not be seen from the other bar; but
+this brought him into line with the white-haired landlady.
+
+She knew him by sight--had doubtless seen him passing and repassing; and
+presently she made a remark on the weather. Oleron did not know what he
+replied, but it sufficed to call forth the further remark that the winter
+had been a bad one for influenza, but that the spring weather seemed to
+be coming at last.... Even this slight contact with the commonplace
+steadied Oleron a little; an idle, nascent wonder whether the landlady
+brushed her hair every night, and, if so, whether it gave out those
+little electric cracklings, was shut down with a snap; and Oleron was
+better....
+
+With his next glass of brandy he was all for going back to his flat. Not
+go back? Indeed, he would go back! They should very soon see whether he
+was to be turned out of his place like that! He began to wonder why he
+was doing the rather unusual thing he was doing at that moment, unusual
+for him--sitting hatless, drinking brandy, in a public-house. Suppose he
+were to tell the white-haired landlady all about it--to tell her that a
+caller had scratched her hand on a nail, had later had the bad luck to
+put her foot through a rotten stair, and that he himself, in an old house
+full of squeaks and creaks and whispers, had heard a minute noise and had
+bolted from it in fright--what would she think of him? That he was mad,
+of course.... Pshaw! The real truth of the matter was that he hadn't been
+doing enough work to occupy him. He had been dreaming his days away,
+filling his head with a lot of moonshine about a new _Romilly_ (as if the
+old one was not good enough), and now he was surprised that the devil
+should enter an empty head!
+
+Yes, he would go back. He would take a walk in the air first--he hadn't
+walked enough lately--and then he would take himself in hand, settle
+the hash of that sixteenth chapter of _Romilly_ (fancy, he had actually
+been fool enough to think of destroying fifteen chapters!) and
+thenceforward he would remember that he had obligations to his fellow-men
+and work to do in the world. There was the matter in a nutshell.
+
+He finished his brandy and went out.
+
+He had walked for some time before any other bearing of the matter than
+that on himself occurred to him. At first, the fresh air had increased
+the heady effect of the brandy he had drunk; but afterwards his mind grew
+clearer than it had been since morning. And the clearer it grew, the less
+final did his boastful self-assurances become, and the firmer his
+conviction that, when all explanations had been made, there remained
+something that could not be explained. His hysteria of an hour before had
+passed; he grew steadily calmer; but the disquieting conviction remained.
+A deep fear took possession of him. It was a fear for Elsie.
+
+For something in his place was inimical to her safety. Of themselves, her
+two accidents might not have persuaded him of this; but she herself had
+said it. "_I'm not wanted here_..." And she had declared that there was
+something wrong with the place. She had seen it before he had. Well and
+good. One thing stood out clearly: namely, that if this was so, she must
+be kept away for quite another reason than that which had so confounded
+and humiliated Oleron. Luckily she had expressed her intention of staying
+away; she must be held to that intention. He must see to it.
+
+And he must see to it all the more that he now saw his first impulse,
+never to set foot in the place again, was absurd. People did not do that
+kind of thing. With Elsie made secure, he could not with any respect to
+himself suffer himself to be turned out by a shadow, nor even by a danger
+merely because it was a danger. He had to live somewhere, and he would
+live there. He must return.
+
+He mastered the faint chill of fear that came with the decision, and
+turned in his walk abruptly. Should fear grow on him again he would,
+perhaps, take one more glass of brandy....
+
+But by the time he reached the short street that led to the square he was
+too late for more brandy. The little public-house was still lighted, but
+closed, and one or two men were standing talking on the kerb. Oleron
+noticed that a sudden silence fell on them as he passed, and he noticed
+further that the long-nosed Barrett, whom he passed a little lower down,
+did not return his good-night. He turned in at the broken gate, hesitated
+merely an instant in the alley, and then mounted his stairs again.
+
+Only an inch of candle remained in the Sheffield stick, and Oleron did
+not light another one. Deliberately he forced himself to take it up and
+to make the tour of his five rooms before retiring. It was as he returned
+from the kitchen across his little hall that he noticed that a letter lay
+on the floor. He carried it into his sitting-room, and glanced at the
+envelope before opening it.
+
+It was unstamped, and had been put into the door by hand. Its handwriting
+was clumsy, and it ran from beginning to end without comma or period.
+Oleron read the first line, turned to the signature, and then finished
+the letter.
+
+It was from the man Barrett, and it informed Oleron that he, Barrett,
+would be obliged if Mr. Oleron would make other arrangements for the
+preparing of his breakfasts and the cleaning-out of his place. The sting
+lay in the tail, that is to say, the postscript. This consisted of a text
+of Scripture. It embodied an allusion that could only be to Elsie
+Bengough....
+
+A seldom-seen frown had cut deeply into Oleron's brow. So! That was it!
+Very well; they would see about that on the morrow.... For the rest, this
+seemed merely another reason why Elsie should keep away....
+
+Then his suppressed rage broke out....
+
+The foul-minded lot! The devil himself could not have given a leer at
+anything that had ever passed between Paul Oleron and Elsie Bengough,
+yet this nosing rascal must be prying and talking!...
+
+Oleron crumpled the paper up, held it in the candle flame, and then
+ground the ashes under his heel.
+
+One useful purpose, however, the letter had served: it had created in
+Oleron a wrathful blaze that effectually banished pale shadows.
+Nevertheless, one other puzzling circumstance was to close the day. As he
+undressed, he chanced to glance at his bed. The coverlets bore an impress
+as if somebody had lain on them. Oleron could not remember that he
+himself had lain down during the day--off-hand, he would have said that
+certainly he had not; but after all he could not be positive. His
+indignation for Elsie, acting possibly with the residue of the brandy in
+him, excluded all other considerations; and he put out his candle, lay
+down, and passed immediately into a deep and dreamless sleep, which, in
+the absence of Mrs. Barrett's morning call, lasted almost once round the
+clock.
+
+
+VIII
+
+To the man who pays heed to that voice within him which warns him that
+twilight and danger are settling over his soul, terror is apt to appear
+an absolute thing, against which his heart must be safeguarded in a twink
+unless there is to take place an alteration in the whole range and scale
+of his nature. Mercifully, he has never far to look for safeguards. Of
+the immediate and small and common and momentary things of life, of
+usages and observances and modes and conventions, he builds up
+fortifications against the powers of darkness. He is even content that,
+not terror only, but joy also, should for working purposes be placed in
+the category of the absolute things; and the last treason he will commit
+will be that breaking down of terms and limits that strikes, not at one
+man, but at the welfare of the souls of all.
+
+In his own person, Oleron began to commit this treason. He began to
+commit it by admitting the inexplicable and horrible to an increasing
+familiarity. He did it insensibly, unconsciously, by a neglect of the
+things that he now regarded it as an impertinence in Elsie Bengough to
+have prescribed. Two months before, the words "a haunted house," applied
+to his lovely bemusing dwelling, would have chilled his marrow; now,
+his scale of sensation becoming depressed, he could ask "Haunted by
+what?" and remain unconscious that horror, when it can be proved to be
+relative, by so much loses its proper quality. He was setting aside the
+landmarks. Mists and confusion had begun to enwrap him.
+
+And he was conscious of nothing so much as of a voracious
+inquisitiveness. He wanted _to know_. He was resolved to know. Nothing
+but the knowledge would satisfy him; and craftily he cast about for means
+whereby he might attain it.
+
+He might have spared his craft. The matter was the easiest imaginable. As
+in time past he had known, in his writing, moments when his thoughts
+had seemed to rise of themselves and to embody themselves in words not to
+be altered afterwards, so now the questions he put himself seemed to be
+answered even in the moment of their asking. There was exhilaration in
+the swift, easy processes. He had known no so such joy in his own power
+since the days when his writing had been a daily freshness and a delight
+to him. It was almost as if the course he must pursue was being dictated
+to him.
+
+And the first thing he must do, of course, was to define the problem. He
+defined it in terms of mathematics. Granted that he had not the place to
+himself; granted that the old house had inexpressibly caught and engaged
+his spirit; granted that, by virtue of the common denominator of the
+place, this unknown co-tenant stood in some relation to himself: what
+next? Clearly, the nature of the other numerator must be ascertained.
+
+And how? Ordinarily this would not have seemed simple, but to Oleron it
+was now pellucidly clear. The key, _of course_, lay in his half-written
+novel--or rather, in both _Romillys_, the old and the proposed new one.
+
+A little while before Oleron would have thought himself mad to have
+embraced such an opinion; now he accepted the dizzying hypothesis without
+a quiver.
+
+He began to examine the first and second _Romillys_.
+
+From the moment of his doing so the thing advanced by leaps and bounds.
+Swiftly he reviewed the history of the _Romilly_ of the fifteen chapters.
+He remembered clearly now that he had found her insufficient on the very
+first morning on which he had sat down to work in his new place. Other
+instances of his aversion leaped up to confirm his obscure investigation.
+There had come the night when he had hardly forborne to throw the whole
+thing into the fire; and the next morning he had begun the planning of
+the new _Romilly_. It had been on that morning that Mrs. Barrett,
+overhearing him humming a brief phrase that the dripping of a tap the
+night before had suggested, had informed him that he was singing some air
+he had never in his life heard before, called "The Beckoning Fair
+One."...
+
+The Beckoning Fair One!...
+
+With scarcely a pause in thought he continued:
+
+The first _Romilly_ having been definitely thrown over, the second had
+instantly fastened herself upon him, clamouring for birth in his brain.
+He even fancied now, looking back, that there had been something like
+passion, hate almost, in the supplanting, and that more than once a stray
+thought given to his discarded creation had--(it was astonishing how
+credible Oleron found the almost unthinkable idea)--had offended the
+supplanter.
+
+Yet that a malignancy almost homicidal should be extended to his
+fiction's poor mortal prototype....
+
+In spite of his inuring to a scale in which the horrible was now a thing
+to be fingered and turned this way and that, a "Good God!" broke from
+Oleron.
+
+This intrusion of the first _Romilly's_ prototype into his thought
+again was a factor that for the moment brought his inquiry into the
+nature of his problem to a termination; the mere thought of Elsie was
+fatal to anything abstract. For another thing, he could not yet think of
+that letter of Barrett's, nor of a little scene that had followed it,
+without a mounting of colour and a quick contraction of the brow. For,
+wisely or not, he had had that argument out at once. Striding across the
+square on the following morning, he had bearded Barrett on his own
+doorstep. Coming back again a few minutes later, he had been strongly of
+opinion that he had only made matters worse. The man had been vagueness
+itself. He had not been to be either challenged or browbeaten into
+anything more definite than a muttered farrago in which the words
+"Certain things ... Mrs. Barrett ... respectable house ... if the cap
+fits ... proceedings that shall be nameless," had been constantly
+repeated.
+
+"Not that I make any charge--" he had concluded.
+
+"Charge!" Oleron had cried.
+
+"I 'ave my idears of things, as I don't doubt you 'ave yours--"
+
+"Ideas--mine!" Oleron had cried wrathfully, immediately dropping his
+voice as heads had appeared at windows of the square. "Look you here, my
+man; you've an unwholesome mind, which probably you can't help, but a
+tongue which you can help, and shall! If there is a breath of this
+repeated ..."
+
+"I'll not be talked to on my own doorstep like this by anybody,..."
+Barrett had blustered....
+
+"You shall, and I'm doing it ..."
+
+"Don't you forget there's a Gawd above all, Who 'as said..."
+
+"You're a low scandalmonger!..."
+
+And so forth, continuing badly what was already badly begun. Oleron had
+returned wrathfully to his own house, and thenceforward, looking out
+of his windows, had seen Barrett's face at odd times, lifting blinds or
+peering round curtains, as if he sought to put himself in possession of
+Heaven knew what evidence, in case it should be required of him.
+
+The unfortunate occurrence made certain minor differences in Oleron's
+domestic arrangements. Barrett's tongue, he gathered, had already been
+busy; he was looked at askance by the dwellers of the square; and he
+judged it better, until he should be able to obtain other help, to make
+his purchases of provisions a little farther afield rather than at the
+small shops of the immediate neighbourhood. For the rest, housekeeping
+was no new thing to him, and he would resume his old bachelor habits....
+
+Besides, he was deep in certain rather abstruse investigations, in which
+it was better that he should not be disturbed.
+
+He was looking out of his window one midday rather tired, not very well,
+and glad that it was not very likely he would have to stir out of doors,
+when he saw Elsie Bengough crossing the square towards his house. The
+weather had broken; it was a raw and gusty day; and she had to force
+her way against the wind that set her ample skirts bellying about her
+opulent figure and her veil spinning and streaming behind her.
+
+Oleron acted swiftly and instinctively. Seizing his hat, he sprang to the
+door and descended the stairs at a run. A sort of panic had seized him.
+She must be prevented from setting foot in the place. As he ran along the
+alley he was conscious that his eyes went up to the eaves as if something
+drew them. He did not know that a slate might not accidentally fall....
+
+He met her at the gate, and spoke with curious volubleness.
+
+"This is really too bad, Elsie! Just as I'm urgently called away! I'm
+afraid it can't be helped though, and that you'll have to think me an
+inhospitable beast." He poured it out just as it came into his head.
+
+She asked if he was going to town.
+
+"Yes, yes--to town," he replied. "I've got to call on--on Chambers. You
+know Chambers, don't you? No, I remember you don't; a big man you once
+saw me with.... I ought to have gone yesterday, and--" this he felt to be
+a brilliant effort--"and he's going out of town this afternoon. To
+Brighton. I had a letter from him this morning."
+
+He took her arm and led her up the square. She had to remind him that his
+way to town lay in the other direction.
+
+"Of course--how stupid of me!" he said, with a little loud laugh. "I'm so
+used to going the other way with you--of course; it's the other way to
+the bus. Will you come along with me? I am so awfully sorry it's happened
+like this...."
+
+They took the street to the bus terminus.
+
+This time Elsie bore no signs of having gone through interior struggles.
+If she detected anything unusual in his manner she made no comment, and
+he, seeing her calm, began to talk less recklessly through silences. By
+the time they reached the bus terminus, nobody, seeing the pallid-faced
+man without an overcoat and the large ample-skirted girl at his side,
+would have supposed that one of them was ready to sink on his knees for
+thankfulness that he had, as he believed, saved the other from a wildly
+unthinkable danger.
+
+They mounted to the top of the bus, Oleron protesting that he should not
+miss his overcoat, and that he found the day, if anything, rather
+oppressively hot. They sat down on a front seat.
+
+Now that this meeting was forced upon him, he had something else to say
+that would make demands upon his tact. It had been on his mind for some
+time, and was, indeed, peculiarly difficult to put. He revolved it for
+some minutes, and then, remembering the success of his story of a sudden
+call to town, cut the knot of his difficulty with another lie.
+
+"I'm thinking of going away for a little while, Elsie," he said.
+
+She merely said, "Oh?"
+
+"Somewhere for a change. I need a change. I think I shall go to-morrow,
+or the day after. Yes, to-morrow, I think."
+
+"Yes," she replied.
+
+"I don't quite know how long I shall be," he continued. "I shall have to
+let you know when I am back."
+
+"Yes, let me know," she replied in an even tone.
+
+The tone was, for her, suspiciously even. He was a little uneasy.
+
+"You don't ask me where I'm going," he said, with a little cumbrous
+effort to rally her.
+
+She was looking straight before her, past the bus-driver.
+
+"I know," she said.
+
+He was startled. "How, you know?"
+
+"You're not going anywhere," she replied.
+
+He found not a word to say. It was a minute or so before she continued,
+in the same controlled voice she had employed from the start.
+
+"You're not going anywhere. You weren't going out this morning. You only
+came out because I appeared; don't behave as if we were strangers, Paul."
+
+A flush of pink had mounted to his cheeks. He noticed that the wind had
+given her the pink of early rhubarb. Still he found nothing to say.
+
+"Of course, you ought to go away," she continued. "I don't know whether
+you look at yourself often in the glass, but you're rather noticeable.
+Several people have turned to look at you this morning. So, of course,
+you ought to go away. But you won't, and I know why."
+
+He shivered, coughed a little, and then broke silence.
+
+"Then if you know, there's no use in continuing this discussion," he said
+curtly.
+
+"Not for me, perhaps, but there is for you," she replied. "Shall I tell
+you what I know?"
+
+"No," he said in a voice slightly raised.
+
+"No?" she asked, her round eyes earnestly on him.
+
+"No."
+
+Again he was getting out of patience with her; again he was conscious of
+the strain. Her devotion and fidelity and love plagued him; she was only
+humiliating both herself and him. It would have been bad enough had he
+ever, by word or deed, given her cause for thus fastening herself on
+him ... but there; that was the worst of that kind of life for a woman.
+Women such as she, business women, in and out of offices all the time,
+always, whether they realised it or not, made comradeship a cover for
+something else. They accepted the unconventional status, came and
+went freely, as men did, were honestly taken by men at their own
+valuation--and then it turned out to be the other thing after all, and
+they went and fell in love. No wonder there was gossip in shops and
+squares and public houses! In a sense the gossipers were in the right of
+it. Independent, yet not efficient; with some of womanhood's graces
+forgone, and yet with all the woman's hunger and need; half
+sophisticated, yet not wise; Oleron was tired of it all....
+
+And it was time he told her so.
+
+"I suppose," he said tremblingly, looking down between his knees, "I
+suppose the real trouble is in the life women who earn their own living
+are obliged to lead."
+
+He could not tell in what sense she took the lame generality; she merely
+replied, "I suppose so."
+
+"It can't be helped," he continued, "but you do sacrifice a good deal."
+
+She agreed: a good deal; and then she added after a moment, "What, for
+instance?"
+
+"You may or may not be gradually attaining a new status, but you're in a
+false position to-day."
+
+It was very likely, she said; she hadn't thought of it much in that
+light--
+
+"And," he continued desperately, "you're bound to suffer. Your most
+innocent acts are misunderstood; motives you never dreamed of are
+attributed to you; and in the end it comes to--" he hesitated a moment
+and then took the plunge, "--to the sidelong look and the leer."
+
+She took his meaning with perfect ease. She merely shivered a little as
+she pronounced the name.
+
+"Barrett?"
+
+His silence told her the rest.
+
+Anything further that was to be said must come from her. It came as the
+bus stopped at a stage and fresh passengers mounted the stairs.
+
+"You'd better get down here and go back, Paul," she said. "I understand
+perfectly--perfectly. It isn't Barrett. You'd be able to deal with
+Barrett. It's merely convenient for you to say it's Barrett. I know what
+it is ... but you said I wasn't to tell you that. Very well. But before
+you go let me tell you why I came up this morning."
+
+In a dull tone he asked her why. Again she looked straight before her as
+she replied:
+
+"I came to force your hand. Things couldn't go on as they have been
+going, you know; and now that's all over."
+
+"All over," he repeated stupidly.
+
+"All over. I want you now to consider yourself, as far as I'm concerned,
+perfectly free. I make only one reservation."
+
+He hardly had the spirit to ask her what that was.
+
+"If _I_ merely need _you_," she said, "please don't give that a thought;
+that's nothing; I shan't come near for that. But," she dropped her voice,
+"if _you're_ in need of _me_, Paul--I shall know if you are, _and you
+will be_--then I shall come at no matter what cost. You understand that?"
+
+He could only groan.
+
+"So that's understood," she concluded. "And I think that's all. Now go
+back. I should advise you to walk back, for you're shivering--good-bye--"
+
+She gave him a cold hand, and he descended. He turned on the edge of the
+kerb as the bus started again. For the first time in all the years he had
+known her she parted from him with no smile and no wave of her long arm.
+
+
+IX
+
+He stood on the kerb plunged in misery, looking after her as long as she
+remained in sight; but almost instantly with her disappearance he felt
+the heaviness lift a little from his spirit. She had given him his
+liberty; true, there was a sense in which he had never parted with it,
+but now was no time for splitting hairs; he was free to act, and all was
+clear ahead. Swiftly the sense of lightness grew on him: it became a
+positive rejoicing in his liberty; and before he was halfway home he had
+decided what must be done next.
+
+The vicar of the parish in which his dwelling was situated lived within
+ten minutes of the square. To his house Oleron turned his steps. It was
+necessary that he should have all the information he could get about this
+old house with the insurance marks and the sloping "To Let" boards, and
+the vicar was the person most likely to be able to furnish it. This last
+preliminary out of the way, and--aha! Oleron chuckled--things might be
+expected to happen!
+
+But he gained less information than he had hoped for. The house, the
+vicar said, was old--but there needed no vicar to tell Oleron that; it
+was reputed (Oleron pricked up his ears) to be haunted--but there were
+few old houses about which some such rumour did not circulate among the
+ignorant; and the deplorable lack of Faith of the modern world, the vicar
+thought, did not tend to dissipate these superstitions. For the rest,
+his manner was the soothing manner of one who prefers not to make
+statements without knowing how they will be taken by his hearer. Oleron
+smiled as he perceived this.
+
+"You may leave my nerves out of the question," he said. "How long has the
+place been empty?"
+
+"A dozen years, I should say," the vicar replied.
+
+"And the last tenant--did you know him--or her?" Oleron was conscious of
+a tingling of his nerves as he offered the vicar the alternative of sex.
+
+"Him," said the vicar. "A man. If I remember rightly, his name was
+Madley; an artist. He was a great recluse; seldom went out of the place,
+and--" the vicar hesitated and then broke into a little gush of candour
+"--and since you appear to have come for this information, and since it
+is better that the truth should be told than that garbled versions should
+get about, I don't mind saying that this man Madley died there, under
+somewhat unusual circumstances. It was ascertained at the post-mortem
+that there was not a particle of food in his stomach, although he was
+found to be not without money. And his frame was simply worn out. Suicide
+was spoken of, but you'll agree with me that deliberate starvation is, to
+say the least, an uncommon form of suicide. An open verdict was
+returned."
+
+"Ah!" said Oleron.... "Does there happen to be any comprehensive history
+of this parish?"
+
+"No; partial ones only. I myself am not guiltless of having made a number
+of notes on its purely ecclesiastical history, its registers and so
+forth, which I shall be happy to show you if you would care to see them;
+but it is a large parish, I have only one curate, and my leisure, as you
+will readily understand ..."
+
+The extent of the parish and the scantiness of the vicar's leisure
+occupied the remainder of the interview, and Oleron thanked the vicar,
+took his leave, and walked slowly home.
+
+He walked slowly for a reason, twice turning away from the house within a
+stone's-throw of the gate and taking another turn of twenty minutes or
+so. He had a very ticklish piece of work now before him; it required the
+greatest mental concentration; it was nothing less than to bring his
+mind, if he might, into such a state of unpreoccupation and receptivity
+that he should see the place as he had seen it on that morning when,
+his removal accomplished, he had sat down to begin the sixteenth chapter
+of the first _Romilly_.
+
+For, could he recapture that first impression, he now hoped for far more
+from it. Formerly, he had carried no end of mental lumber. Before the
+influence of the place had been able to find him out at all, it had had
+the inertia of those dreary chapters to overcome. No results had shown.
+The process had been one of slow saturation, charging, filling up to a
+brim. But now he was light, unburdened, rid at last both of that
+_Romilly_ and of her prototype. Now for the new unknown, coy, jealous,
+bewitching, Beckoning Fair!...
+
+At half-past two of the afternoon he put his key into the Yale lock,
+entered, and closed the door behind him....
+
+His fantastic attempt was instantly and astonishingly successful. He
+could have shouted with triumph as he entered the room; it was as if he
+had _escaped_ into it. Once more, as in the days when his writing had had
+a daily freshness and wonder and promise for him, he was conscious of
+that new ease and mastery and exhilaration and release. The air of the
+place seemed to hold more oxygen; as if his own specific gravity had
+changed, his very tread seemed less ponderable. The flowers in the bowls,
+the fair proportions of the meadowsweet-coloured panels and mouldings,
+the polished floor, and the lofty and faintly starred ceiling, fairly
+laughed their welcome. Oleron actually laughed back, and spoke aloud.
+
+"Oh, you're pretty, pretty!" he flattered it.
+
+Then he lay down on his couch.
+
+He spent that afternoon as a convalescent who expected a dear visitor
+might have spent it--in a delicious vacancy, smiling now and then as
+if in his sleep, and ever lifting drowsy and contented eyes to his
+alluring surroundings. He lay thus until darkness came, and, with
+darkness, the nocturnal noises of the old house....
+
+But if he waited for any specific happening, he waited in vain.
+
+He waited similarly in vain on the morrow, maintaining, though with less
+ease, that sensitised-plate-like condition of his mind. Nothing occurred
+to give it an impression. Whatever it was which he so patiently wooed, it
+seemed to be both shy and exacting.
+
+Then on the third day he thought he understood. A look of gentle drollery
+and cunning came into his eyes, and he chuckled.
+
+"Oho, oho!... Well, if the wind sits in _that_ quarter we must see what
+else there is to be done. What is there, now?... No, I won't send for
+Elsie; we don't need a wheel to break the butterfly on; we won't go to
+those lengths, my butterfly...."
+
+He was standing musing, thumbing his lean jaw, looking aslant; suddenly
+he crossed to his hall, took down his hat, and went out.
+
+"My lady is coquettish, is she? Well, we'll see what a little neglect
+will do," he chuckled as he went down the stairs.
+
+He sought a railway station, got into a train, and spent the rest of the
+day in the country. Oh, yes: Oleron thought _he_ was the man to deal with
+Fair Ones who beckoned, and invited, and then took refuge in shyness and
+hanging back!
+
+He did not return until after eleven that night.
+
+"_Now_, my Fair Beckoner!" he murmured as he walked along the alley and
+felt in his pocket for his keys....
+
+Inside his flat, he was perfectly composed, perfectly deliberate,
+exceedingly careful not to give himself away. As if to intimate that he
+intended to retire immediately, he lighted only a single candle; and as
+he set out with it on his nightly round he affected to yawn. He went
+first into his kitchen. There was a full moon, and a lozenge of
+moonlight, almost peacock-blue by contrast with his candle-frame, lay on
+the floor. The window was uncurtained, and he could see the reflection of
+the candle, and, faintly, that of his own face, as he moved about. The
+door of the powder-closet stood a little ajar, and he closed it before
+sitting down to remove his boots on the chair with the cushion made of
+the folded harp-bag. From the kitchen he passed to the bathroom. There,
+another slant of blue moonlight cut the windowsill and lay across the
+pipes on the wall. He visited his seldom-used study, and stood for a
+moment gazing at the silvered roofs across the square. Then, walking
+straight through his sitting-room, his stockinged feet making no noise,
+he entered his bedroom and put the candle on the chest of drawers. His
+face all this time wore no expression save that of tiredness. He had
+never been wilier nor more alert.
+
+His small bedroom fireplace was opposite the chest of drawers on which
+the mirror stood, and his bed and the window occupied the remaining
+sides of the room. Oleron drew down his blind, took off his coat, and
+then stooped to get his slippers from under the bed.
+
+He could have given no reason for the conviction, but that the
+manifestation that for two days had been withheld was close at hand he
+never for an instant doubted. Nor, though he could not form the faintest
+guess of the shape it might take, did he experience fear. Startling or
+surprising it might be; he was prepared for that; but that was all; his
+scale of sensation had become depressed. His hand moved this way and that
+under the bed in search of his slippers....
+
+But for all his caution and method and preparedness, his heart all at
+once gave a leap and a pause that was almost horrid. His hand had found
+the slippers, but he was still on his knees; save for this circumstance
+he would have fallen. The bed was a low one; the groping for the slippers
+accounted for the turn of his head to one side; and he was careful to
+keep the attitude until he had partly recovered his self-possession. When
+presently he rose there was a drop of blood on his lower lip where he had
+caught at it with his teeth, and his watch had jerked out of the pocket
+of his waistcoat and was dangling at the end of its short leather
+guard....
+
+Then, before the watch had ceased its little oscillation, he was himself
+again.
+
+In the middle of his mantelpiece there stood a picture, a portrait of his
+grandmother; he placed himself before this picture, so that he could see
+in the glass of it the steady flame of the candle that burned behind him
+on the chest of drawers. He could see also in the picture-glass the
+little glancings of light from the bevels and facets of the objects about
+the mirror and candle. But he could see more. These twinklings and
+reflections and re-reflections did not change their position; but there
+was one gleam that had motion. It was fainter than the rest, and it moved
+up and down through the air. It was the reflection of the candle on
+Oleron's black vulcanite comb, and each of its downward movements was
+accompanied by a silky and crackling rustle.
+
+Oleron, watching what went on in the glass of his grandmother's portrait,
+continued to play his part. He felt for his dangling watch and began
+slowly to wind it up. Then, for a moment ceasing to watch, he began to
+empty his trousers pockets and to place methodically in a little row on
+the mantelpiece the pennies and halfpennies he took from them. The
+sweeping, minutely electric noise filled the whole bedroom, and had
+Oleron altered his point of observation he could have brought the dim
+gleam of the moving comb so into position that it would almost have
+outlined his grandmother's head.
+
+Any other head of which it might have been following the outline was
+invisible.
+
+Oleron finished the emptying of his pockets; then, under cover of another
+simulated yawn, not so much summoning his resolution as overmastered by
+an exhorbitant curiosity, he swung suddenly round. That which was being
+combed was still not to be seen, but the comb did not stop. It had
+altered its angle a little, and had moved a little to the left. It was
+passing, in fairly regular sweeps, from a point rather more than five
+feet from the ground, in a direction roughly vertical, to another point a
+few inches below the level of the chest of drawers.
+
+Oleron continued to act to admiration. He walked to his little washstand
+in the corner, poured out water, and began to wash his hands. He removed
+his waistcoat, and continued his preparations for bed. The combing did
+not cease, and he stood for a moment in thought. Again his eyes twinkled.
+The next was very cunning--
+
+"Hm!... _I think I'll read for a quarter of an hour_," he said aloud....
+
+He passed out of the room.
+
+He was away a couple of minutes; when he returned again the room was
+suddenly quiet. He glanced at the chest of drawers; the comb lay still,
+between the collar he had removed and a pair of gloves. Without
+hesitation Oleron put out his hand and picked it up. It was an ordinary
+eighteenpenny comb, taken from a card in a chemist's shop, of a substance
+of a definite specific gravity, and no more capable of rebellion against
+the Laws by which it existed than are the worlds that keep their orbits
+through the void. Oleron put it down again; then he glanced at the bundle
+of papers he held in his hand. What he had gone to fetch had been the
+fifteen chapters of the original _Romilly_.
+
+"Hm!" he muttered as he threw the manuscript into a chair.... "As I
+thought.... She's just blindly, ragingly, murderously jealous."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the night after that, and on the following night, and for many nights
+and days, so many that he began to be uncertain about the count of them,
+Oleron, courting, cajoling, neglecting, threatening, beseeching, eaten
+out with unappeased curiosity and regardless that his life was becoming
+one consuming passion and desire, continued his search for the unknown
+co-numerator of his abode.
+
+
+X
+
+As time went on, it came to pass that few except the postman mounted
+Oleron's stairs; and since men who do not write letters receive few, even
+the postman's tread became so infrequent that it was not heard more than
+once or twice a week. There came a letter from Oleron's publishers,
+asking when they might expect to receive the manuscript of his new book;
+he delayed for some days to answer it, and finally forgot it. A second
+letter came, which also he failed to answer. He received no third.
+
+The weather grew bright and warm. The privet bushes among the
+chopper-like notice-boards flowered, and in the streets where Oleron did
+his shopping the baskets of flower-women lined the kerbs. Oleron
+purchased flowers daily; his room clamoured for flowers, fresh and
+continually renewed; and Oleron did not stint its demands. Nevertheless,
+the necessity for going out to buy them began to irk him more and more,
+and it was with a greater and ever greater sense of relief that he
+returned home again. He began to be conscious that again his scale of
+sensation had suffered a subtle change--a change that was not restoration
+to its former capacity, but an extension and enlarging that once more
+included terror. It admitted it in an entirely new form. _Lux orco,
+tenebrae Jovi_. The name of this terror was agoraphobia. Oleron had begun
+to dread air and space and the horror that might pounce upon the
+unguarded back.
+
+Presently he so contrived it that his food and flowers were delivered
+daily at his door. He rubbed his hands when he had hit upon this
+expedient. That was better! Now he could please himself whether he went
+out or not....
+
+Quickly he was confirmed in his choice. It became his pleasure to remain
+immured.
+
+But he was not happy--or, if he was, his happiness took an extraordinary
+turn. He fretted discontentedly, could sometimes have wept for mere
+weakness and misery; and yet he was dimly conscious that he would not
+have exchanged his sadness for all the noisy mirth of the world outside.
+And speaking of noise: noise, much noise, now caused him the acutest
+discomfort. It was hardly more to be endured than that new-born fear that
+kept him, on the increasingly rare occasions when he did go out, sidling
+close to walls and feeling friendly railings with his hand. He moved from
+room to room softly and in slippers, and sometimes stood for many seconds
+closing a door so gently that not a sound broke the stillness that was in
+itself a delight. Sunday now became an intolerable day to him, for, since
+the coming of the fine weather, there had begun to assemble in the square
+under his windows each Sunday morning certain members of the sect to
+which the long-nosed Barrett adhered. These came with a great drum and
+large brass-bellied instruments; men and women uplifted anguished voices,
+struggling with their God; and Barrett himself, with upraised face and
+closed eyes and working brows, prayed that the sound of his voice might
+penetrate the ears of all unbelievers--as it certainly did Oleron's. One
+day, in the middle of one of these rhapsodies, Oleron sprang to his blind
+and pulled it down, and heard as he did so his own name made the subject
+of a fresh torrent of outpouring.
+
+And sometimes, but not as expecting a reply, Oleron stood still and
+called softly. Once or twice he called "Romilly!" and then waited; but
+more often his whispering did not take the shape of a name.
+
+There was one spot in particular of his abode that he began to haunt with
+increasing persistency. This was just within the opening of his bedroom
+door. He had discovered one day that by opening every door in his place
+(always excepting the outer one, which he only opened unwillingly) and by
+placing himself on this particular spot, he could actually see to a
+greater or less extent into each of his five rooms without changing his
+position. He could see the whole of his sitting-room, all of his bedroom
+except the part hidden by the open door, and glimpses of his kitchen,
+bathroom, and of his rarely used study. He was often in this place,
+breathless and with his finger on his lip. One day, as he stood there, he
+suddenly found himself wondering whether this Madley, of whom the vicar
+had spoken, had ever discovered the strategic importance of the bedroom
+entry.
+
+Light, moreover, now caused him greater disquietude than did darkness.
+Direct sunlight, of which, as the sun passed daily round the house, each
+of his rooms had now its share, was like a flame in his brain; and even
+diffused light was a dull and numbing ache. He began, at successive hours
+of the day, one after another, to lower his crimson blinds. He made short
+and daring excursions in order to do this; but he was ever careful to
+leave his retreat open, in case he should have sudden need of it.
+Presently this lowering of the blinds had become a daily methodical
+exercise, and his rooms, when he had been his round, had the blood-red
+half-light of a photographer's darkroom.
+
+One day, as he drew down the blind of his little study and backed in good
+order out of the room again, he broke into a soft laugh.
+
+"_That_ bilks Mr. Barrett!" he said; and the baffling of Barrett
+continued to afford him mirth for an hour.
+
+But on another day, soon after, he had a fright that left him trembling
+also for an hour. He had seized the cord to darken the window over the
+seat in which he had found the harp-bag, and was standing with his back
+well protected in the embrasure, when he thought he saw the tail of a
+black-and-white check skirt disappear round the corner of the house. He
+could not be sure--had he run to the window of the other wall, which was
+blinded, the skirt must have been already past--but he was _almost_ sure
+that it was Elsie. He listened in an agony of suspense for her tread on
+the stairs....
+
+But no tread came, and after three or four minutes he drew a long breath
+of relief.
+
+"By Jove, but that would have compromised me horribly!" he muttered....
+
+And he continued to mutter from time to time, "Horribly
+compromising ... _no_ woman would stand that ... not _any_ kind of
+woman ... oh, compromising in the extreme!"
+
+Yet he was not happy. He could not have assigned the cause of the fits of
+quiet weeping which took him sometimes; they came and went, like the
+fitful illumination of the clouds that travelled over the square; and
+perhaps, after all, if he was not happy, he was not unhappy. Before
+he could be unhappy something must have been withdrawn, and nothing had
+yet been withdrawn from him, for nothing had been granted. He was waiting
+for that granting, in that flower-laden, frightfully enticing apartment
+of his, with the pith-white walls tinged and subdued by the crimson
+blinds to a blood-like gloom.
+
+He paid no heed to it that his stock of money was running perilously low,
+nor that he had ceased to work. Ceased to work? He had not ceased to
+work. They knew very little about it who supposed that Oleron had ceased
+to work! He was in truth only now beginning to work. He was preparing
+such a work ... such a work ... such a Mistress was a-making in the
+gestation of his Art ... let him but get this period of probation and
+poignant waiting over and men should see.... How _should_ men know her,
+this Fair One of Oleron's, until Oleron himself knew her? Lovely radiant
+creations are not thrown off like How-d'ye-do's. The men to whom it is
+committed to father them must weep wretched tears, as Oleron did, must
+swell with vain presumptuous hopes, as Oleron did, must pursue, as Oleron
+pursued, the capricious, fair, mocking, slippery, eager Spirit that, ever
+eluding, ever sees to it that the chase does not slacken. Let Oleron but
+hunt this Huntress a little longer... he would have her sparkling
+and panting in his arms yet.... Oh no: they were very far from the truth
+who supposed that Oleron had ceased to work!
+
+And if all else was falling away from Oleron, gladly he was letting it
+go. So do we all when our Fair Ones beckon. Quite at the beginning we
+wink, and promise ourselves that we will put Her Ladyship through her
+paces, neglect her for a day, turn her own jealous wiles against her,
+flout and ignore her when she comes wheedling; perhaps there lurks within
+us all the time a heartless sprite who is never fooled; but in the end
+all falls away. She beckons, beckons, and all goes....
+
+And so Oleron kept his strategic post within the frame of his bedroom
+door, and watched, and waited, and smiled, with his finger on his
+lips.... It was his duteous service, his worship, his troth-plighting,
+all that he had ever known of Love. And when he found himself, as he now
+and then did, hating the dead man Madley, and wishing that he had never
+lived, he felt that that, too, was an acceptable service....
+
+But, as he thus prepared himself, as it were, for a Marriage, and moped
+and chafed more and more that the Bride made no sign, he made a discovery
+that he ought to have made weeks before.
+
+It was through a thought of the dead Madley that he made it. Since that
+night when he had thought in his greenness that a little studied neglect
+would bring the lovely Beckoner to her knees, and had made use of her own
+jealousy to banish her, he had not set eyes on those fifteen discarded
+chapters of _Romilly_. He had thrown them back into the window-seat,
+forgotten their very existence. But his own jealousy of Madley put him in
+mind of hers of her jilted rival of flesh and blood, and he remembered
+them.... Fool that he had been! Had he, then, expected his Desire to
+manifest herself while there still existed the evidence of his divided
+allegiance? What, and she with a passion so fierce and centred that it
+had not hesitated at the destruction, twice attempted, of her rival? Fool
+that he had been!...
+
+But if _that_ was all the pledge and sacrifice she required she should
+have it--ah, yes, and quickly!
+
+He took the manuscript from the window-seat, and brought it to the fire.
+
+He kept his fire always burning now; the warmth brought out the last
+vestige of odour of the flowers with which his room was banked. He did
+not know what time it was; long since he had allowed his clock to run
+down--it had seemed a foolish measurer of time in regard to the
+stupendous things that were happening to Oleron; but he knew it was late.
+He took the _Romilly_ manuscript and knelt before the fire.
+
+But he had not finished removing the fastening that held the sheets
+together before he suddenly gave a start, turned his head over his
+shoulder, and listened intently. The sound he had heard had not been
+loud--it had been, indeed, no more than a tap, twice or thrice
+repeated--but it had filled Oleron with alarm. His face grew dark as
+it came again.
+
+He heard a voice outside on his landing.
+
+"Paul!... Paul!..."
+
+It was Elsie's voice.
+
+"Paul!... I know you're in... I want to see you...."
+
+He cursed her under his breath, but kept perfectly still. He did not
+intend to admit her.
+
+"Paul!... You're in trouble.... I believe you're in danger... at least
+come to the door!..."
+
+Oleron smothered a low laugh. It somehow amused him that she, in such
+danger herself, should talk to him of _his_ danger!... Well, if she was,
+serve her right; she knew, or said she knew, all about it....
+
+"Paul!... Paul!..."
+
+"_Paul!... Paul!_..." He mimicked her under his breath.
+
+"Oh, Paul, it's _horrible_!..."
+
+Horrible, was it? thought Oleron. Then let her get away....
+
+"I only want to help you, Paul.... I didn't promise not to come if you
+needed me...."
+
+He was impervious to the pitiful sob that interrupted the low cry. The
+devil take the woman! Should he shout to her to go away and not come
+back? No: let her call and knock and sob. She had a gift for sobbing; she
+mustn't think her sobs would move him. They irritated him, so that he set
+his teeth and shook his fist at her, but that was all. Let her sob.
+
+"_Paul!... Paul!_..."
+
+With his teeth hard set, he dropped the first page of _Romilly_ into the
+fire. Then he began to drop the rest in, sheet by sheet.
+
+For many minutes the calling behind his door continued; then suddenly it
+ceased. He heard the sound of feet slowly descending the stairs. He
+listened for the noise of a fall or a cry or the crash of a piece of the
+handrail of the upper landing; but none of these things came. She was
+spared. Apparently her rival suffered her to crawl abject and beaten
+away. Oleron heard the passing of her steps under his window; then she
+was gone.
+
+He dropped the last page into the fire, and then, with a low laugh rose.
+He looked fondly round his room.
+
+"Lucky to get away like that," he remarked. "She wouldn't have got away
+if I'd given her as much as a word or a look! What devils these women
+are!... But no; I oughtn't to say that; one of 'em showed
+forbearance...."
+
+Who showed forbearance? And what was forborne? Ah, Oleron
+knew!... Contempt, no doubt, had been at the bottom of it, but that
+didn't matter: the pestering creature had been allowed to go unharmed.
+Yes, she was lucky; Oleron hoped she knew it....
+
+And now, now, now for his reward!
+
+Oleron crossed the room. All his doors were open; his eyes shone as he
+placed himself within that of his bedroom.
+
+Fool that he had been, not to think of destroying the manuscript
+sooner!...
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+How, in a houseful of shadows, should he know his own Shadow? How, in a
+houseful of noises, distinguish the summons he felt to be at hand? Ah,
+trust him! He would know! The place was full of a jugglery of dim lights.
+The blind at his elbow that allowed the light of a street lamp to
+struggle vaguely through--the glimpse of greeny blue moonlight seen
+through the distant kitchen door--the sulky glow of the fire under the
+black ashes of the burnt manuscript--the glimmering of the tulips and the
+moon-daisies and narcissi in the bowls and jugs and jars--these did not
+so trick and bewilder his eyes that he would not know his Own! It was he,
+not she, who had been delaying the shadowy Bridal; he hung his head for a
+moment in mute acknowledgment; then he bent his eyes on the deceiving,
+puzzling gloom again. He would have called her name had he known it--but
+now he would not ask her to share even a name with the other....
+
+His own face, within the frame of the door, glimmered white as the
+narcissi in the darkness....
+
+A shadow, light as fleece, seemed to take shape in the kitchen (the time
+had been when Oleron would have said that a cloud had passed over the
+unseen moon). The low illumination on the blind at his elbow grew dimmer
+(the time had been when Oleron would have concluded that the lamplighter
+going his rounds had turned low the flame of the lamp). The fire settled,
+letting down the black and charred papers; a flower fell from a bowl,
+and lay indistinct upon the floor; all was still; and then a stray
+draught moved through the old house, passing before Oleron's face....
+
+Suddenly, inclining his head, he withdrew a little from the door-jamb.
+The wandering draught caused the door to move a little on its hinges.
+Oleron trembled violently, stood for a moment longer, and then, putting
+his hand out to the knob, softly drew the door to, sat down on the
+nearest chair, and waited, as a man might await the calling of his name
+that should summon him to some weighty, high and privy Audience....
+
+
+XI
+
+One knows not whether there can be human compassion for anemia of the
+soul. When the pitch of Life is dropped, and the spirit is so put over
+and reversed that that only is horrible which before was sweet and
+worldly and of the day, the human relation disappears. The sane soul
+turns appalled away, lest not merely itself, but sanity should suffer.
+We are not gods. We cannot drive out devils. We must see selfishly
+to it that devils do not enter into ourselves.
+
+And this we must do even though Love so transfuse us that we may well
+deem our nature to be half divine. We shall but speak of honour and duty
+in vain. The letter dropped within the dark door will lie unregarded, or,
+if regarded for a brief instant between two unspeakable lapses, left and
+forgotten again. The telegram will be undelivered, nor will the whistling
+messenger (wiselier guided than he knows to whistle) be conscious as he
+walks away of the drawn blind that is pushed aside an inch by a finger
+and then fearfully replaced again. No: let the miserable wrestle with his
+own shadows; let him, if indeed he be so mad, clip and strain and enfold
+and couch the succubus; but let him do so in a house into which not an
+air of Heaven penetrates, nor a bright finger of the sun pierces the
+filthy twilight. The lost must remain lost. Humanity has other business
+to attend to.
+
+For the handwriting of the two letters that Oleron, stealing noiselessly
+one June day into his kitchen to rid his sitting-room of an armful of
+fetid and decaying flowers, had seen on the floor within his door, had
+had no more meaning for him than if it had belonged to some dim and
+faraway dream. And at the beating of the telegraph-boy upon the door,
+within a few feet of the bed where he lay, he had gnashed his teeth and
+stopped his ears. He had pictured the lad standing there, just beyond his
+partition, among packets of provisions and bundles of dead and dying
+flowers. For his outer landing was littered with these. Oleron had feared
+to open his door to take them in. After a week, the errand lads had
+reported that there must be some mistake about the order, and had left no
+more. Inside, in the red twilight, the old flowers turned brown and fell
+and decayed where they lay.
+
+Gradually his power was draining away. The Abomination fastened on
+Oleron's power. The steady sapping sometimes left him for many hours
+of prostration gazing vacantly up at his red-tinged ceiling, idly
+suffering such fancies as came of themselves to have their way with him.
+Even the strongest of his memories had no more than a precarious hold
+upon his attention. Sometimes a flitting half-memory, of a novel to be
+written, a novel it was important that he should write, tantalised him
+for a space before vanishing again; and sometimes whole novels, perfect,
+splendid, established to endure, rose magically before him. And sometimes
+the memories were absurdly remote and trivial, of garrets he had
+inhabited and lodgings that had sheltered him, and so forth. Oleron had
+known a good deal about such things in his time, but all that was now
+past. He had at last found a place which he did not intend to leave until
+they fetched him out--a place that some might have thought a little on
+the green-sick side, that others might have considered to be a little too
+redolent of long-dead and morbid things for a living man to be mewed up
+in, but ah, so irresistible, with such an authority of its own, with such
+an associate of its own, and a place of such delights when once a man had
+ceased to struggle against its inexorable will! A novel? Somebody ought
+to write a novel about a place like that! There must be lots to write
+about in a place like that if one could but get to the bottom of it! It
+had probably already been painted, by a man called Madley who had lived
+there ... but Oleron had not known this Madley--had a strong feeling
+that he wouldn't have liked him--would rather he had lived somewhere
+else--really couldn't stand the fellow--hated him, Madley, in fact. (Aha!
+That was a joke!). He seriously doubted whether the man had led the life
+he ought; Oleron was in two minds sometimes whether he wouldn't tell that
+long-nosed guardian of the public morals across the way about him; but
+probably he knew, and had made his praying hullabaloos for him also.
+That was his line. Why, Oleron himself had had a dust-up with him about
+something or other ... some girl or other ... Elsie Bengough her name
+was, he remembered....
+
+Oleron had moments of deep uneasiness about this Elsie Bengough. Or
+rather, he was not so much uneasy about her as restless about the things
+she did. Chief of these was the way in which she persisted in thrusting
+herself into his thoughts; and, whenever he was quick enough, he sent her
+packing the moment she made her appearance there. The truth was that she
+was not merely a bore; she had always been that; it had now come to the
+pitch when her very presence in his fancy was inimical to the full
+enjoyment of certain experiences.... She had no tact; really ought to
+have known that people are not at home to the thoughts of everybody all
+the time; ought in mere politeness to have allowed him certain seasons
+quite to himself; and was monstrously ignorant of things if she did not
+know, as she appeared not to know, that there were certain special hours
+when a man's veins ran with fire and daring and power, in which ... well,
+in which he had a reasonable right to treat folk as he had treated that
+prying Barrett--to shut them out completely.... But no: up she popped,
+the thought of her, and ruined all. Bright towering fabrics, by the side
+of which even those perfect, magical novels of which he dreamed were dun
+and grey, vanished utterly at her intrusion. It was as if a fog should
+suddenly quench some fair-beaming star, as if at the threshold of some
+golden portal prepared for Oleron a pit should suddenly gape, as if a
+bat-like shadow should turn the growing dawn to mirk and darkness
+again.... Therefore, Oleron strove to stifle even the nascent thought
+of her.
+
+Nevertheless, there came an occasion on which this woman Bengough
+absolutely refused to be suppressed. Oleron could not have told exactly
+when this happened; he only knew by the glimmer of the street lamp on his
+blind that it was some time during the night, and that for some time she
+had not presented herself.
+
+He had no warning, none, of her coming; she just came--was there. Strive
+as he would, he could not shake off the thought of her nor the image of
+her face. She haunted him.
+
+But for her to come at that moment of all moments!... Really, it was past
+belief! How she could endure it, Oleron could not conceive! Actually, to
+look on, as it were, at the triumph of a Rival.... Good God! It was
+monstrous! tact--reticence--he had never credited her with an
+overwhelming amount of either: but he had never attributed mere--oh,
+there was no word for it! Monstrous--monstrous! Did she intend
+thenceforward.... Good God! To look on!...
+
+Oleron felt the blood rush up to the roots of his hair with anger against
+her.
+
+"Damnation take her!" he choked....
+
+But the next moment his heat and resentment had changed to a cold sweat
+of cowering fear. Panic-stricken, he strove to comprehend what he had
+done. For though he knew not what, he knew he had done something,
+something fatal, irreparable, blasting. Anger he had felt, but not _this_
+blaze of ire that suddenly flooded the twilight of his consciousness with
+a white infernal light. _That_ appalling flash was not his--not his
+_that_ open rift of bright and searing Hell--not his, not his! His had
+been the hand of a child, preparing a puny blow; but what was _this
+other_ horrific hand that was drawn back to strike in the same place? Had
+_he_ set that in motion? Had _he_ provided the spark that had touched off
+the whole accumulated power of that formidable and relentless place? He
+did not know. He only knew that that poor igniting particle in himself
+was blown out, that--Oh, impossible!--a clinging kiss (how else to
+express it?) had changed on his very lips to a gnashing and a removal,
+and that for very pity of the awful odds he must cry out to her against
+whom he had lately raged to guard herself ... guard herself....
+
+"_Look out!_" he shrieked aloud....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The revulsion was instant. As if a cold slow billow had broken over him,
+he came to to find that he was lying in his bed, that the mist and horror
+that had for so long enwrapped him had departed, that he was Paul Oleron,
+and that he was sick, naked, helpless, and unutterably abandoned and
+alone. His faculties, though weak, answered at last to his calls upon
+them; and he knew that it must have been a hideous nightmare that had
+left him sweating and shaking thus.
+
+Yes, he was himself, Paul Oleron, a tired novelist, already past the
+summit of his best work, and slipping downhill again empty-handed from it
+all. He had struck short in his life's aim. He had tried too much, had
+over-estimated his strength, and was a failure, a failure....
+
+It all came to him in the single word, enwrapped and complete; it needed
+no sequential thought; he was a failure. He had missed....
+
+And he had missed not one happiness, but two. He had missed the ease of
+this world, which men love, and he had missed also that other shining
+prize for which men forgo ease, the snatching and holding and triumphant
+bearing up aloft of which is the only justification of the mad adventurer
+who hazards the enterprise. And there was no second attempt. Fate has no
+morrow. Oleron's morrow must be to sit down to profitless, ill-done,
+unrequired work again, and so on the morrow after that, and the morrow
+after that, and as many morrows as there might be....
+
+He lay there, weakly yet sanely considering it....
+
+And since the whole attempt had failed, it was hardly worth while to
+consider whether a little might not be saved from the general wreck. No
+good would ever come of that half-finished novel. He had intended that it
+should appear in the autumn; was under contract that it should appear; no
+matter; it was better to pay forfeit to his publishers than to waste what
+days were left. He was spent; age was not far off; and paths of wisdom
+and sadness were the properest for the remainder of the journey....
+
+If only he had chosen the wife, the child the faithful friend at the
+fireside, and let them follow an _ignis fatuus_ that list!...
+
+In the meantime it began to puzzle him exceedingly what he should be so
+weak, that his room should smell so overpoweringly of decaying vegetable
+matter, and that his hand, chancing to stray to his face in the darkness,
+should encounter a beard.
+
+"Most extraordinary!" he began to mutter to himself. "Have I been ill? Am
+I ill now? And if so, why have they left me alone?... Extraordinary!..."
+
+He thought he heard a sound from the kitchen or bathroom. He rose a
+little on his pillow, and listened.... Ah! He was not alone, then! It
+certainly would have been extraordinary if they had left him ill and
+alone--Alone? Oh no. He would be looked after. He wouldn't be left, ill,
+to shift for himself. If everybody else had forsaken him, he could trust
+Elsie Bengough, the dearest chum he had, for that ... bless her faithful
+heart!
+
+But suddenly a short, stifled, spluttering cry rang sharply out:
+
+"_Paul!_"
+
+It came from the kitchen.
+
+And in the same moment it flashed upon Oleron, he knew not how, that two,
+three, five, he knew not how many minutes before, another sound, unmarked
+at the time but suddenly transfixing his attention now, had striven to
+reach his intelligence. This sound had been the slight touch of metal on
+metal--just such a sound as Oleron made when he put his key into the
+lock.
+
+"Hallo!... Who's that?" he called sharply from his bed.
+
+He had no answer.
+
+He called again. "Hallo!... Who's there?... Who is it?"
+
+This time he was sure he heard noises, soft and heavy, in the kitchen.
+
+"This is a queer thing altogether," he muttered. "By Jove, I'm as weak as
+a kitten too.... Hallo, there! Somebody called, didn't they?... Elsie! Is
+that you?..."
+
+Then he began to knock with his hand on the wall at the side of his bed.
+
+"Elsie!... Elsie!... You called, didn't you?... Please come here, whoever
+it is!..."
+
+There was a sound as of a closing door, and then silence. Oleron began to
+get rather alarmed.
+
+"It may be a nurse," he muttered; "Elsie'd have to get me a nurse, of
+course. She'd sit with me as long as she could spare the time, brave
+lass, and she'd get a nurse for the rest.... But it was awfully like her
+voice.... Elsie, or whoever it is!... I can't make this out at all. I
+must go and see what's the matter...."
+
+He put one leg out of bed. Feeling its feebleness, he reached with his
+hand for the additional support of the wall....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But before putting out the other leg he stopped and considered, picking
+at his new-found beard. He was suddenly wondering whether he _dared_ go
+into the kitchen. It was such a frightfully long way; no man knew what
+horror might not leap and huddle on his shoulders if he went so far;
+when a man has an overmastering impulse to get back into bed he ought to
+take heed of the warning and obey it. Besides, why should he go? What
+was there to go for? If it was that Bengough creature again, let her look
+after herself; Oleron was not going to have things cramp themselves on
+his defenceless back for the sake of such a spoilsport as _she_!... If
+she was in, let her let herself out again, and the sooner the better for
+her! Oleron simply couldn't be bothered. He had his work to do. On the
+morrow, he must set about the writing of a novel with a heroine so
+winsome, capricious, adorable, jealous, wicked, beautiful, inflaming, and
+altogether evil, that men should stand amazed. She was coming over him
+now; he knew by the alteration of the very air of the room when she was
+near him; and that soft thrill of bliss that had begun to stir in him
+never came unless she was beckoning, beckoning....
+
+He let go the wall and fell back into bed again as--oh, unthinkable!--the
+other half of that kiss that a gnash had interrupted was placed (how else
+convey it?) on his lips, robbing him of very breath....
+
+
+XII
+
+In the bright June sunlight a crowd filled the square, and looked up at
+the windows of the old house with the antique insurance marks in its
+walls of red brick and the agents' notice-boards hanging like wooden
+choppers over the paling. Two constables stood at the broken gate of the
+narrow entrance-alley, keeping folk back. The women kept to the outskirts
+of the throng, moving now and then as if to see the drawn red blinds of
+the old house from a new angle, and talking in whispers. The children
+were in the houses, behind closed doors.
+
+A long-nosed man had a little group about him, and he was telling some
+story over and over again; and another man, little and fat and wide-eyed,
+sought to capture the long-nosed man's audience with some relation in
+which a key figured.
+
+"... and it was revealed to me that there'd been something that very
+afternoon," the long-nosed man was saying. "I was standing there, where
+Constable Saunders is--or rather, I was passing about my business, when
+they came out. There was no deceiving me, oh, no deceiving _me! I_ saw
+her face...."
+
+"What was it like, Mr. Barrett?" a man asked.
+
+"It was like hers whom our Lord said to, 'Woman, doth any man accuse
+thee?'--white as paper, and no mistake! Don't tell _me_!... And so I
+walks straight across to Mrs. Barrett, and 'Jane,' I says, 'this must
+stop, and stop at once; we are commanded to avoid evil,' I says, 'and it
+must come to an end now; let him get help elsewhere.'
+
+"And she says to me, 'John,' she says, 'it's four-and-sixpence a
+week'--them was her words.
+
+"'Jane,' I says, 'if it was forty-six thousand pounds it should
+stop'... and from that day to this she hasn't set foot inside that gate."
+
+There was a short silence: then,
+
+"Did Mrs. Barrett ever..._ see_ anythink, like?" somebody vaguely
+inquired.
+
+Barrett turned austerely on the speaker.
+
+"What Mrs. Barrett saw and Mrs. Barrett didn't see shall not pass these
+lips; even as it is written, keep thy tongue from speaking evil," he
+said.
+
+Another man spoke.
+
+"He was pretty near canned up in the _Waggon and Horses_ that night,
+weren't he, Jim?"
+
+"Yes, 'e 'adn't 'alf copped it...."
+
+"Not standing treat much, neither; he was in the bar, all on his own...."
+
+"So 'e was; we talked about it...."
+
+The fat, scared-eyed man made another attempt.
+
+"She got the key off of me--she 'ad the number of it--she come into my
+shop of a Tuesday evening...."
+
+Nobody heeded him.
+
+"Shut your heads," a heavy labourer commented gruffly, "she hasn't been
+found yet. 'Ere's the inspectors; we shall know more in a bit."
+
+Two inspectors had come up and were talking to the constables who guarded
+the gate. The little fat man ran eagerly forward, saying that she had
+bought the key of him. "I remember the number, because of it's being
+three one's and three three's--111333!" he exclaimed excitedly.
+
+An inspector put him aside.
+
+"Nobody's been in?" he asked of one of the constables.
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Then you, Brackley, come with us; you, Smith, keep the gate. There's a
+squad on its way."
+
+The two inspectors and the constable passed down the alley and entered
+the house. They mounted the wide carved staircase.
+
+"This don't look as if he'd been out much lately," one of the inspectors
+muttered as he kicked aside a litter of dead leaves and paper that lay
+outside Oleron's door. "I don't think we need knock--break a pane,
+Brackley."
+
+The door had two glazed panels; there was a sound of shattered glass; and
+Brackley put his hand through the hole his elbow had made and drew back
+the latch.
+
+"Faugh!"... choked one of the inspectors as they entered. "Let some light
+and air in, quick. It stinks like a hearse--"
+
+The assembly out in the square saw the red blinds go up and the windows
+of the old house flung open.
+
+"That's better," said one of the inspectors, putting his head out of a
+window and drawing a deep breath.... "That seems to be the bedroom in
+there; will you go in, Simms, while I go over the rest?..."
+
+They had drawn up the bedroom blind also, and the waxy-white, emaciated
+man on the bed had made a blinker of his hand against the torturing
+flood of brightness. Nor could he believe that his hearing was not
+playing tricks with him, for there were two policemen in his room,
+bending over him and asking where "she" was. He shook his head.
+
+"This woman Bengough... goes by the name of Miss Elsie Bengough... d'ye
+hear? Where is she?... No good, Brackley; get him up; be careful with
+him; I'll just shove _my_ head out of the window, I think...."
+
+The other inspector had been through Oleron's study and had found
+nothing, and was now in the kitchen, kicking aside an ankle-deep mass of
+vegetable refuse that cumbered the floor. The kitchen window had no
+blind, and was over-shadowed by the blank end of the house across the
+alley. The kitchen appeared to be empty.
+
+But the inspector, kicking aside the dead flowers, noticed that a
+shuffling track that was not of his making had been swept to a cupboard
+in the corner. In the upper part of the door of the cupboard was a square
+panel that looked as if it slid on runners. The door itself was closed.
+
+The inspector advanced, put out his hand to the little knob, and slid the
+hatch along its groove.
+
+Then he took an involuntary step back again.
+
+Framed in the aperture, and falling forward a little before it jammed
+again in its frame, was something that resembled a large lumpy pudding,
+done up in a pudding-bag of faded browny red frieze.
+
+"Ah!" said the inspector.
+
+To close the hatch again he would have had to thrust that pudding back
+with his hand; and somehow he did not quite like the idea of touching
+it. Instead, he turned the handle of the cupboard itself. There was
+weight behind it, so much weight that, after opening the door three or
+four inches and peering inside, he had to put his shoulder to it in order
+to close it again. In closing it he left sticking out, a few inches from
+the floor, a triangle of black and white check skirt.
+
+He went into the small hall.
+
+"All right!" he called.
+
+They had got Oleron into his clothes. He still used his hands as
+blinkers, and his brain was very confused. A number of things were
+happening that he couldn't understand. He couldn't understand the
+extraordinary mess of dead flowers there seemed to be everywhere; he
+couldn't understand why there should be police officers in his room; he
+couldn't understand why one of these should be sent for a four-wheeler
+and a stretcher; and he couldn't understand what heavy article they
+seemed to be moving about in the kitchen--his kitchen....
+
+"What's the matter?" he muttered sleepily....
+
+Then he heard a murmur in the square, and the stopping of a four-wheeler
+outside. A police officer was at his elbow again, and Oleron wondered
+why, when he whispered something to him, he should run off a string of
+words--something about "used in evidence against you." They had lifted
+him to his feet, and were assisting him towards the door....
+
+No, Oleron couldn't understand it at all.
+
+They got him down the stairs and along the alley. Oleron was aware of
+confused angry shoutings; he gathered that a number of people wanted to
+lynch somebody or other. Then his attention became fixed on a little fat
+frightened-eyed man who appeared to be making a statement that an officer
+was taking down in a notebook.
+
+"I'd seen her with him ... they was often together ... she came into my
+shop and said it was for him ... I thought it was all right ... 111333
+the number was," the man was saying.
+
+The people seemed to be very angry; many police were keeping them back;
+but one of the inspectors had a voice that Oleron thought quite kind and
+friendly. He was telling somebody to get somebody else into the cab
+before something or other was brought out; and Oleron noticed that a
+four-wheeler was drawn up at the gate. It appeared that it was himself
+who was to be put into it; and as they lifted him up he saw that the
+inspector tried to stand between him and something that stood behind the
+cab, but was not quick enough to prevent Oleron seeing that this
+something was a hooded stretcher. The angry voices sounded like a sea;
+something hard, like a stone, hit the back of the cab; and the inspector
+followed Oleron in and stood with his back to the window nearer the side
+where the people were. The door they had put Oleron in at remained open,
+apparently till the other inspector should come; and through the opening
+Oleron had a glimpse of the hatchet-like "To Let" boards among the
+privet-trees. One of them said that the key was at Number Six....
+
+Suddenly the raging of voices was hushed. Along the entrance-alley
+shuffling steps were heard, and the other inspector appeared at the
+cab door.
+
+"Right away," he said to the driver.
+
+He entered, fastened the door after him, and blocked up the second window
+with his back. Between the two inspectors Oleron slept peacefully. The
+cab moved down the square, the other vehicle went up the hill. The
+mortuary lay that way.
+
+
+
+
+PHANTAS
+
+
+     _"For, barring all pother,
+      With this, or the other,
+Still Britons are Lords of the Main._"
+
+
+THE CHAPTER OF ADMIRALS
+
+
+I
+
+As Abel Keeling lay on the galleon's deck, held from rolling down it only
+by his own weight and the sun-blackened hand that lay outstretched upon
+the planks, his gaze wandered, but ever returned to the bell that hung,
+jammed with the dangerous heel-over of the vessel, in the small
+ornamental belfry immediately abaft the mainmast. The bell was of cast
+bronze, with half-obliterated bosses upon it that had been the heads of
+cherubs; but wind and salt spray had given it a thick incrustation of
+bright, beautiful, lichenous green. It was this colour that Abel
+Keeling's eyes liked.
+
+For wherever else on the galleon his eyes rested they found only
+whiteness--the whiteness of extreme eld. There were slightly varying
+degrees in her whiteness; here she was of a white that glistened like
+salt-granules, there of a greyish chalky white, and again her whiteness
+had the yellowish cast of decay; but everywhere it was the mild,
+disquieting whiteness of materials out of which the life had departed.
+Her cordage was bleached as old straw is bleached, and half her ropes
+kept their shape little more firmly than the ash of a string keeps its
+shape after the fire has passed; her pallid timbers were white and clean
+as bones found in sand; and even the wild frankincense with which (for
+lack of tar, at her last touching of land) she had been pitched, had
+dried to a pale hard gum that sparkled like quartz in her open seams. The
+sun was yet so pale a buckler of silver through the still white mists
+that not a cord or timber cast a shadow; and only Abel Keeling's face and
+hands were black, carked and cinder-black from exposure to his pitiless
+rays.
+
+The galleon was the _Mary of the Tower_, and she had a frightful list to
+starboard. So canted was she that her mainyard dipped one of its steel
+sickles into the glassy water, and, had her foremast remained, or more
+than the broken stump of her bonaventure mizzen, she must have turned
+over completely. Many days ago they had stripped the mainyard of its
+course, and had passed the sail under the Mary's bottom, in the hope that
+it would stop the leak. This it had partly done as long as the galleon
+had continued to glide one way; then, without coming about, she had begun
+to glide the other, the ropes had parted, and she had dragged the sail
+after her, leaving a broad tarnish on the silver sea.
+
+For it was broadside that the galleon glided, almost imperceptibly, ever
+sucking down. She glided as if a loadstone drew her, and, at first, Abel
+Keeling had thought it was a loadstone, pulling at her iron, drawing her
+through the pearly mists that lay like face-cloths to the water and hid
+at a short distance the tarnish left by the sail. But later he had known
+that it was no loadstone drawing at her iron. The motion was due--must
+be due--to the absolute deadness of the calm in that silent, sinister,
+three-miles-broad waterway. With the eye of his mind he saw that
+loadstone now as he lay against a gun-truck, all but toppling down the
+deck. Soon that would happen again which had happened for five days past.
+He would hear again the chattering of monkeys and the screaming of
+parrots, the mat of green and yellow weeds would creep in towards the
+Mary over the quicksilver sea, once more the sheer wall of rock would
+rise, and the men would run....
+
+But no; the men would not run this time to drop the fenders. There were
+no men left to do so, unless Bligh was still alive. Perhaps Bligh was
+still alive. He had walked half-way down the quarter-deck steps a little
+before the sudden nightfall of the day before, had then fallen and lain
+for a minute (dead, Abel Keeling had supposed, watching him from his
+place by the gun-truck), and had then got up again and tottered forward
+to the forecastle, his tall figure swaying and his long arms waving. Abel
+Keeling had not seen him since. Most likely, he had died in the
+forecastle during the night. If he had not been dead he would have come
+aft again for water....
+
+At the remembrance of the water Abel Keeling lifted his head. The strands
+of lean muscle about his emaciated mouth worked, and he made a little
+pressure of his sun-blackened hand on the deck, as if to verify its
+steepness and his own balance. The mainmast was some seven or eight yards
+away.... He put one stiff leg under him and began, seated as he was, to
+make shuffling movements down the slope.
+
+To the mainmast, near the belfry, was affixed his contrivance for
+catching water. It consisted of a collar of rope set lower at one side
+than at the other (but that had been before the mast had steeved so many
+degrees away from the zenith), and tallowed beneath. The mists lingered
+later in that gully of a strait than they did on the open ocean, and the
+collar of rope served as a collector for the dews that condensed on the
+mast. The drops fell into a small earthen pipkin placed on the deck
+beneath it.
+
+Abel Keeling reached the pipkin and looked into it. It was nearly a third
+full of fresh water. Good. If Bligh, the mate, was dead, so much the more
+water for Abel Keeling, master of the _Mary of the Tower_. He dipped two
+fingers into the pipkin and put them into his mouth. This he did several
+times. He did not dare to raise the pipkin to his black and broken lips
+for dread of a remembered agony, he could not have told how many days
+ago, when a devil had whispered to him, and he had gulped down the
+contents of the pipkin in the morning, and for the rest of the day had
+gone waterless.... Again he moistened his fingers and sucked them; then
+he lay sprawling against the mast, idly watching the drops of water
+as they fell.
+
+It was odd how the drops formed. Slowly they collected at the edge of the
+tallowed collar, trembled in their fullness for an instant, and fell,
+another beginning the process instantly. It amused Abel Keeling to watch
+them. Why (he wondered) were all the drops the same size? What cause and
+compulsion did they obey that they never varied, and what frail tenuity
+held the little globules intact? It must be due to some Cause.... He
+remembered that the aromatic gum of the wild frankincense with which they
+had parcelled the seams had hung on the buckets in great sluggish gouts,
+obedient to a different compulsion; oil was different again, and so were
+juices and balsams. Only quicksilver (perhaps the heavy and motionless
+sea put him in mind of quicksilver) seemed obedient to no law.... Why was
+it so?
+
+Bligh, of course, would have had his explanation: it was the Hand of God.
+That sufficed for Bligh, who had gone forward the evening before, and
+whom Abel Keeling now seemed vaguely and as at a distance to remember as
+the deep-voiced fanatic who had sung his hymns as, man by man, he had
+committed the bodies of the ship's company to the deep. Bligh was that
+sort of man; accepted things without question; was content to take things
+as they were and be ready with the fenders when the wall of rock rose out
+of the opalescent mists. Bligh, too, like the waterdrops, had his Law,
+that was his and nobody else's....
+
+There floated down from some rotten rope up aloft a flake of scurf, that
+settled in the pipkin. Abel Keeling watched it dully as it settled
+towards the pipkin's rim. When presently he again dipped his fingers into
+the vessel the water ran into a little vortex, drawing the flake with it.
+The water settled again; and again the minute flake determined towards
+the rim and adhered there, as if the rim had power to draw it....
+
+It was exactly so that the galleon was gliding towards the wall of rock,
+the yellow and green weeds, and the monkeys and parrots. Put out into
+mid-water again (while there had been men to put her out) she had glided
+to the other wall. One force drew the chip in the pipkin and the ship
+over the tranced sea. It was the Hand of God, said Bligh....
+
+Abel Keeling, his mind now noting minute things and now clouded with
+torpor, did not at first hear a voice that was quakingly lifted up
+over by the forecastle--a voice that drew nearer, to an accompaniment of
+swirling water.
+
+_"O Thou, that Jonas in the fish
+  Three days didst keep from pain,
+Which was a figure of Thy death
+  And rising up again--"_
+
+It was Bligh, singing one of his hymns:
+
+_"O Thou, that Noah keptst from flood
+  And Abram, day by day,
+As he along through Egypt passed
+  Didst guide him in the way--"_
+
+The voice ceased, leaving the pious period uncompleted. Bligh was alive,
+at any rate.... Abel Keeling resumed his fitful musing.
+
+Yes, that was the Law of Bligh's life, to call things the Hand of God;
+but Abel Keeling's Law was different; no better, no worse, only
+different. The Hand of God, that drew chips and galleons, must work by
+some method; and Abel Keeling's eyes were dully on the pipkin again as if
+he sought the method there....
+
+Then conscious thought left him for a space, and when he resumed it was
+without obvious connection.
+
+Oars, of course, were the thing. With oars, men could laugh at calms.
+Oars, that only pinnaces and galliasses now used, had had their
+advantages. But oars (which was to say a method, for you could say if you
+liked that the Hand of God grasped the oar-loom, as the Breath of God
+filled the sail)--oars were antiquated, belonged to the past, and meant a
+throwing-over of all that was good and new and a return to fine lines, a
+battle-formation abreast to give effect to the shock of the ram, and a
+day or two at sea and then to port again for provisions. Oars ... no.
+Abel Keeling was one of the new men, the men who swore by the line-ahead,
+the broadside fire of sakers and demi-cannon, and weeks and months
+without a landfall. Perhaps one day the wits of such men as he would
+devise a craft, not oar-driven (because oars could not penetrate into the
+remote seas of the world)--not sail-driven (because men who trusted to
+sails found themselves in an airless, three-mile strait, suspended
+motionless between cloud and water, ever gliding to a wall of rock)--but
+a ship ... a ship ...
+
+"_To Noah and his sons with him
+  God spake, and thus said He:
+A covenant set I up with you
+  And your posterity_--"
+
+It was Bligh again, wandering somewhere in the waist. Abel Keeling's mind
+was once more a blank. Then slowly, slowly, as the water drops collected
+on the collar of rope, his thought took shape again.
+
+A galliasse? No, not a galliasse. The galliasse made shift to be two
+things, and was neither. This ship, that the hand of man should one day
+make for the Hand of God to manage, should be a ship that should take and
+conserve the force of the wind, take it and store it as she stored her
+victuals; at rest when she wished, going ahead when she wished; turning
+the forces both of calm and storm against themselves. For, of course, her
+force must be wind--stored wind--a bag of the winds, as the children's
+tale had it--wind probably directed upon the water astern, driving it
+away and urging forward the ship, acting by reaction. She would have a
+wind-chamber, into which wind would be pumped with pumps.... Bligh would
+call that equally the Hand of God, this driving-force of the ship of the
+future that Abel Keeling dimly foreshadowed as he lay between the
+mainmast and the belfry, turning his eyes now and then from ashy white
+timbers to the vivid green bronze-rust of the bell above him....
+
+Bligh's face, liver-coloured with the sun and ravaged from inwards by the
+faith that consumed him, appeared at the head of the quarter-deck steps.
+His voice beat uncontrolledly out.
+
+_"And in the earth here is no place
+    Of refuge to be found,
+Nor in the deep and water-course
+    That passeth under ground--"_
+
+
+II
+
+Bligh's eyes were lidded, as if in contemplation of his inner ecstasy.
+His head was thrown back, and his brows worked up and down tormentedly.
+His wide mouth remained open as his hymn was suddenly interrupted on the
+long-drawn note. From somewhere in the shimmering mists the note was
+taken up, and there drummed and rang and reverberated through the strait
+a windy, hoarse, and dismal bellow, alarming and sustained. A tremor rang
+through Bligh. Moving like a sightless man, he stumbled forward from the
+head of the quarter-deck steps, and Abel Keeling was aware of his gaunt
+figure behind him, taller for the steepness of the deck. As that vast
+empty sound died away, Bligh laughed in his mania.
+
+"Lord, hath the grave's wide mouth a tongue to praise Thee? Lo, again--"
+
+Again the cavernous sound possessed the air, louder and nearer. Through
+it came another sound, a slow throb, throb--throb, throb--Again the
+sounds ceased.
+
+"Even Leviathan lifteth up his voice in praise!" Bligh sobbed.
+
+Abel Keeling did not raise his head. There had returned to him the memory
+of that day when, before the morning mists had lifted from the strait, he
+had emptied the pipkin of the water that was the allowance until night
+should fall again. During that agony of thirst he had seen shapes and
+heard sounds with other than his mortal eyes and ears, and even in the
+moments that had alternated with his lightness, when he had known these
+to be hallucinations, they had come again. He had heard the bells on a
+Sunday in his own Kentish home, the calling of children at play, the
+unconcerned singing of men at their daily labour, and the laughter and
+gossip of the women as they had spread the linen on the hedge or
+distributed bread upon the platters. These voices had rung in his brain,
+interrupted now and then by the groans of Bligh and of two other men who
+had been alive then. Some of the voices he had heard had been silent on
+earth this many a long year, but Abel Keeling, thirst-tortured, had heard
+them, even as he was now hearing that vacant moaning with the
+intermittent throbbing that filled the strait with alarm....
+
+"Praise Him, praise Him, praise Him!" Bligh was calling deliriously.
+
+Then a bell seemed to sound in Abel Keeling's ears, and, as if something
+in the mechanism of his brain had slipped, another picture rose in his
+fancy--the scene when the _Mary of the Tower_ had put out, to a bravery
+of swinging bells and shrill fifes and valiant trumpets. She had not been
+a leper-white galleon then. The scroll-work on her prow had twinkled with
+gilding; her belfry and stern-galleries and elaborate lanterns had
+flashed in the sun with gold; and her fighting-tops and the war-pavesse
+about her waist had been gay with painted coats and scutcheons. To her
+sails had been stitched gaudy ramping lions of scarlet saye, and from her
+mainyard, now dipping in the water, had hung the broad two-tailed pennant
+with the Virgin and Child embroidered upon it....
+
+Then suddenly a voice about him seemed to be saying, "_And a
+half-seven--and a half-seven--_" and in a twink the picture in Abel
+Keeling's brain changed again. He was at home again, instructing his son,
+young Abel, in the casting of the lead from the skiff they had pulled out
+of the harbour.
+
+"_And a half-seven!_" the boy seemed to be calling.
+
+Abel Keeling's blackened lips muttered: "Excellently well cast, Abel,
+excellently well cast!"
+
+"_And a half-seven--and a half-seven--seven--seven--_"
+
+"Ah," Abel Keeling murmured, "that last was not a clear cast--give me the
+line--thus it should go ... ay, so.... Soon you shall sail the seas with
+me in the _Mary of the Tower_. You are already perfect in the stars and
+the motions of the planets; to-morrow I will instruct you in the use of
+the backstaff...."
+
+For a minute or two he continued to mutter; then he dozed. When again he
+came to semi-consciousness it was once more to the sound of bells, at
+first faint, then louder, and finally becoming a noisy clamour
+immediately above his head. It was Bligh. Bligh, in a fresh attack of
+delirium, had seized the bell-lanyard and was ringing the bell insanely.
+The cord broke in his fingers, but he thrust at the bell with his hand,
+and again called aloud.
+
+"Upon an harp and an instrument of ten strings ... let Heaven and Earth
+praise Thy Name!..."
+
+He continued to call aloud, and to beat on the bronze-rusted bell.
+
+_"Ship ahoy! What ship's that?"_
+
+One would have said that a veritable hail had come out of the mists; but
+Abel Keeling knew those hails that came out of the mists. They came from
+ships which were not there. "Ay, ay, keep a good look-out, and have a
+care to your lodemanage," he muttered again to his son....
+
+But, as sometimes a sleeper sits up in his dream, or rises from his couch
+and walks, so all of a sudden Abel Keeling found himself on his hands and
+knees on the deck, looking back over his shoulder. In some deep-seated
+region of his consciousness he was dimly aware that the cant of the deck
+had become more perilous, but his brain received the intelligence and
+forgot it again. He was looking out into the bright and baffling mists.
+The buckler of the sun was of a more ardent silver; the sea below it was
+lost in brilliant evaporation; and between them, suspended in the haze,
+no more substantial than the vague darknesses that float before dazzled
+eyes, a pyramidal phantom-shape hung. Abel Keeling passed his hand over
+his eyes, but when he removed it the shape was still there, gliding
+slowly towards the _Mary's_ quarter. Its form changed as he watched it.
+The spirit-grey shape that had been a pyramid seemed to dissolve into
+four upright members, slightly graduated in tallness, that nearest the
+_Mary's_ stern the tallest and that to the left the lowest. It might have
+been the shadow of the gigantic set of reed-pipes on which that vacant
+mournful note had been sounded.
+
+And as he looked, with fooled eyes, again his ears became fooled:
+
+_"Ahoy there! What ship's that? Are you a ship?... Here, give me that
+trumpet--"_ Then a metallic barking. _"Ahoy there! What the devil are
+you? Didn't you ring a bell? Ring it again, or blow a blast or something,
+and go dead slow!"_
+
+All this came, as it were, indistinctly, and through a sort of high
+singing in Abel Keeling's own ears. Then he fancied a short bewildered
+laugh, followed by a colloquy from somewhere between sea and sky.
+
+"Here, Ward, just pinch me, will you? Tell me what you see there. I want
+to know if I'm awake."
+
+"See where?"
+
+"There, on the starboard bow. (Stop that ventilating fan; I can't
+hear myself think.) See anything? Don't tell me it's that damned
+Dutchman--don't pitch me that old Vanderdecken tale--give me an easy
+one first, something about a sea-serpent.... You did hear that bell,
+didn't you?"
+
+"Shut up a minute--listen--"
+
+Again Bligh's voice was lifted up.
+
+_"This is the cov'nant that I make:
+  From henceforth nevermore
+Will I again the world destroy
+  With water, as before."_
+
+Bligh's voice died away again in Abel Keeling's ears.
+
+"_Oh--my--fat--Aunt--Julia!_" the voice that seemed to come from between
+sea and sky sounded again. Then it spoke more loudly. "_I say,_" it began
+with careful politeness, "_if you are a ship, do you mind telling us
+where the masquerade is to be? Our wireless is out of order, and we
+hadn't heard of it.... Oh, you do see it, Ward, don't you?... Please,
+please tell us what the hell you are!_"
+
+Again Abel Keeling had moved as a sleepwalker moves. He had raised
+himself up by the belfry timbers, and Bligh had sunk in a heap on the
+deck. Abel Keeling's movement overturned the pipkin, which raced the
+little trickle of its contents down the deck and lodged where the still
+and brimming sea made, as it were, a chain with the carved balustrade of
+the quarter-deck--one link a still gleaming edge, then a dark baluster,
+and then another gleaming link. For one moment only Abel Keeling found
+himself noticing that that which had driven Bligh aft had been the
+rising of the water in the waist as the galleon settled by the head--the
+waist was now entirely submerged; then once more he was absorbed in
+his dream, its voices, and its shape in the mist, which had again taken
+the form of a pyramid before his eyeballs.
+
+"_Of course_," a voice seemed to be complaining anew, and still through
+that confused dinning in Abel Keeling's ears, "_we can't turn a four-inch
+on it.... And, of course, Ward, I don't believe in 'em. D'you hear, Ward?
+I don't believe in 'em, I say.... Shall we call down to old A. B.? This
+might interest His Scientific Skippership...._"
+
+"Oh, lower a boat and pull out to it--into it--over it--through it--"
+
+"Look at our chaps crowded on the barbette yonder. They've seen it.
+Better not give an order you know won't be obeyed...."
+
+Abel Keeling, cramped against the antique belfry, had begun to find his
+dream interesting. For, though he did not know her build, that mirage was
+the shape of a ship. No doubt it was projected from his brooding on ships
+of half an hour before; and that was odd.... But perhaps, after all, it
+was not very odd. He knew that she did not really exist; only the
+appearance of her existed; but things had to exist like that before they
+really existed. Before the _Mary of the Tower_ had existed she had been a
+shape in some man's imagination; before that, some dreamer had dreamed
+the form of a ship with oars; and before that, far away in the dawn and
+infancy of the world, some seer had seen in a vision the raft before man
+had ventured to push out over the water on his two planks. And since this
+shape that rode before Abel Keeling's eyes was a shape in his, Abel
+Keeling's dream, he, Abel Keeling, was the master of it. His own brooding
+brain had contrived her, and she was launched upon the illimitable ocean
+of his own mind....
+
+_"And I will not unmindful be
+  Of this, My covenant, passed
+Twixt Me and you and every flesh
+ Whiles that the world should last,"_
+
+sang Bligh, rapt....
+
+But as a dreamer, even in his dream, will scratch upon the wall by his
+couch some key or word to put him in mind of his vision on the morrow
+when it has left him, so Abel Keeling found himself seeking some sign to
+be a proof to those to whom no vision is vouchsafed. Even Bligh sought
+that--could not be silent in his bliss, but lay on the deck there,
+uttering great passionate Amens and praising his Maker, as he said, upon
+an harp and an instrument of ten strings. So with Abel Keeling. It would
+be the Amen of his life to have praised God, not upon a harp, but upon a
+ship that should carry her own power, that should store wind or its
+equivalent as she stored her victuals, that should be something wrested
+from the chaos of uninvention and ordered and disciplined and
+subordinated to Abel Keeling's will.... And there she was, that
+ship-shaped thing of spirit-grey, with the four pipes that resembled a
+phantom organ now broadside and of equal length. And the ghost-crew
+of that ship were speaking again....
+
+The interrupted silver chain by the quarterdeck balustrade had now become
+continuous, and the balusters made a herring-bone over their own
+motionless reflections. The spilt water from the pipkin had dried, and
+the pipkin was not to be seen. Abel Keeling stood beside the mast, erect
+as God made man to go. With his leathery hand he smote upon the bell. He
+waited for the space of a minute, and then cried:
+
+"Ahoy!... Ship ahoy!... What ship's that?"
+
+
+III
+
+We are not conscious in a dream that we are playing a game the beginning
+and end of which are in ourselves. In this dream of Abel Keeling's a
+voice replied:
+
+"_Hallo, it's found its tongue.... Ahoy there! What are you?_"
+
+Loudly and in a clear voice Abel Keeling called: "Are you a ship?"
+
+With a nervous giggle the answer came:
+
+"_We are a ship, aren't we, Ward? I hardly feel sure.... Yes, of course,
+we're a ship. No question about us. The question is what the dickens
+you are._"
+
+Not all the words these voices used were intelligible to Abel Keeling,
+and he knew not what it was in the tone of these last words that reminded
+him of the honour due to the _Mary of the Tower_. Blister-white and at
+the end of her life as she was, Abel Keeling was still jealous of her
+dignity; the voice had a youngish ring; and it was not fitting that young
+chins should be wagged about his galleon. He spoke curtly.
+
+"You that spoke--are you the master of that ship?"
+
+"_Officer of the watch_," the words floated back; "_the captain's
+below_."
+
+"Then send for him. It is with masters that masters hold speech," Abel
+Keeling replied.
+
+He could see the two shapes, flat and without relief, standing on a high
+narrow structure with rails. One of them gave a low whistle, and seemed
+to be fanning his face; but the other rumbled something into a sort of
+funnel. Presently the two shapes became three. There was a murmuring,
+as of a consultation, and then suddenly a new voice spoke. At its thrill
+and tone a sudden tremor ran through Abel Keeling's frame. He wondered
+what response it was that that voice found in the forgotten recesses of
+his memory....
+
+"_Ahoy!_" seemed to call this new yet faintly remembered voice. "_What's
+all this about? Listen. We're His Majesty's destroyer_ Seapink, _out of
+Devonport last October, and nothing particular the matter with us. Now
+who are you?_"
+
+"The _Mary of the Tower_, out of the Port of Rye on the day of Saint
+Anne, and only two men--"
+
+A gasp interrupted him.
+
+"_Out of_ WHERE?" that voice that so strangely moved Abel Keeling said
+unsteadily, while Bligh broke into groans of renewed rapture.
+
+"Out of the Port of Rye, in the County of Sussex ... nay, give ear, else
+I cannot make you hear me while this man's spirit and flesh wrestle so
+together!... Ahoy! Are you gone?" For the voices had become a low murmur,
+and the ship-shape had faded before Abel Keeling's eyes. Again and again
+he called. He wished to be informed of the disposition and economy of the
+wind-chamber....
+
+"The wind-chamber!" he called, in an agony lest the knowledge
+almost within his grasp should be lost. "I would know about the
+wind-chamber...."
+
+Like an echo, there came back the words, uncomprehendingly uttered, "_The
+wind-chamber_?..."
+
+"... that driveth the vessel--perchance 'tis not wind--a steel bow that
+is bent also conserveth force--the force you store, to move at will
+through calm and storm...."
+
+"Can you make out what it's driving at?"
+
+"Oh, we shall all wake up in a minute...."
+
+"Quiet, I have it; the engines; it wants to know about our engines.
+It'll be wanting to see our papers presently. Rye Port!... Well, no harm
+in humouring it; let's see what it can make of this. Ahoy there!" came
+the voice to Abel Keeling, a little more strongly, as if a shifting wind
+carried it, and speaking faster and faster as it went on. "Not wind, but
+steam; d'you hear? Steam, steam. Steam, in eight Yarrow water-tube
+boilers. S-t-e-a-m, steam. Got it? And we've twin-screw triple expansion
+engines, indicated horse-power four thousand, and we can do 430
+revolutions per minute; savvy? Is there anything your phantomhood would
+like to know about our armament?..."
+
+Abel Keeling was muttering fretfully to himself. It annoyed him that
+words in his own vision should have no meaning for him. How did words
+come to him in a dream that he had no knowledge of when wide awake? The
+_Seapink_--that was the name of this ship; but a pink was long and
+narrow, low-carged and square-built aft....
+
+"_And as for our armament,_" the voice with the tones that so profoundly
+troubled Abel Keeling's memory continued, "_we've two revolving Whitehead
+torpedo-tubes, three six-pounders on the upper deck, and that's a
+twelve-pounder forward there by the conning-tower. I forgot to mention
+that we're nickel steel, with a coal capacity of sixty tons in most
+damnably placed bunkers, and that thirty and a quarter knots is about our
+top. Care to come aboard?_"
+
+But the voice was speaking still more rapidly and feverishly, as if to
+fill a silence with no matter what, and the shape that was uttering it
+was straining forward anxiously over the rail.
+
+"_Ugh! But I'm glad this happened in the daylight,_" another voice was
+muttering.
+
+"I wish I was sure it was happening at all.... Poor old spook!"
+
+"I suppose it would keep its feet if her deck was quite vertical. Think
+she'll go down, or just melt?"
+
+"Kind of go down ... without wash...."
+
+"Listen--here's the other one now--"
+
+For Bligh was singing again:
+
+"For, Lord, Thou know'st our nature such
+  If we great things obtain,
+And in the getting of the same
+  Do feel no grief or pain,
+
+"We little do esteem thereof;
+  But, hardly brought to pass,
+A thousand times we do esteem
+  More than the other was."
+
+_"But oh, look--look--look at the other!... Oh, I say, wasn't he a grand
+old boy! Look!"_
+
+For, transfiguring Abel Reeling's form as a prophet's form is
+transfigured in the instant of his rapture, flooding his brain with the
+white eureka-light of perfect knowledge, that for which he and his dream
+had been at a standstill had come. He knew her, this ship of the future,
+as if God's Finger had bitten her lines into his brain. He knew her as
+those already sinking into the grave know things, miraculously,
+completely, accepting Life's impossibilities with a nodded "Of course."
+From the ardent mouths of her eight furnaces to the last drip from her
+lubricators, from her bed-plates to the breeches of her quick-firers, he
+knew her--read her gauges, thumbed her bearings, gave the ranges from her
+range-finders, and lived the life he lived who was in command of her. And
+he would not forget on the morrow, as he had forgotten on many morrows,
+for at last he had seen the water about his feet, and knew that there
+would be no morrow for him in this world....
+
+And even in that moment, with but a sand or two to run in his glass,
+indomitable, insatiable, dreaming dream on dream, he could not die until
+he knew more. He had two questions to ask, and a master-question; and but
+a moment remained. Sharply his voice rang out.
+
+"Ho, there!... This ancient ship, the _Mary of the Tower_, cannot steam
+thirty and a quarter knots, but yet she can sail the waters. What
+more does your ship? Can she soar above them, as the fowls of the air
+soar?"
+
+"_Lord, he thinks we're an aeroplane!... No, she can't...._"
+
+"And can you dive, even as the fishes of the deep?"
+
+"_No.... Those are submarines ... we aren't a submarine...._"
+
+But Abel Keeling waited for no more. He gave an exulting chuckle.
+
+"Oho, oho--thirty knots, and but on the face of the waters--no more than
+that? Oho!... Now _my_ ship, the ship I see as a mother sees full-grown
+the child she has but conceived--_my_ ship, I say--oho!--_my_ ship
+shall.... Below there--trip that gun!"
+
+The cry came suddenly and alertly, as a muffled sound came from below and
+an ominous tremor shook the galleon.
+
+"_By Jove, her guns are breaking loose below--that's her finish_--"
+
+"Trip that gun, and double-breech the others!" Abel Keeling's voice rang
+out, as if there had been any to obey him. He had braced himself within
+the belfry frame; and then in the middle of the next order his voice
+suddenly failed him. His ship-shape, that for the moment he had
+forgotten, rode once more before his eyes. This was the end, and his
+master-question, apprehension for the answer to which was now torturing
+his face and well-nigh bursting his heart, was still unasked.
+
+"Ho--he that spoke with me--the master," he cried in a voice that ran
+high, "is he there?"
+
+"_Yes, yes!_" came the other voice across the water, sick with suspense.
+"_Oh, be quick!_"
+
+There was a moment in which hoarse cries from many voices, a heavy thud
+and rumble on wood, and a crash of timbers and a gurgle and a splash were
+indescribably mingled; the gun under which Abel Keeling had lain had
+snapped her rotten breechings and plunged down the deck, carrying Bligh's
+unconscious form with it. The deck came up vertical, and for one instant
+longer Abel Keeling clung to the belfry.
+
+"I cannot see your face," he screamed, "but meseems your voice is a voice
+I know. _What is your name_?"
+
+In a torn sob the answer came across the water:
+
+"_Keeling--Abel Keeling.... Oh, my God!_"
+
+And Abel Keeling's cry of triumph, that mounted to a victorious "Huzza!"
+was lost in the downward plunge of the _Mary of the Tower_, that left
+the strait empty save for the sun's fiery blaze and the last smoke-like
+evaporation of the mists.
+
+
+
+
+ROOUM
+
+
+For all I ever knew to the contrary, it was his own name; and something
+about him, name or man or both, always put me in mind, I can't tell you
+how, of negroes. As regards the name, I dare say it was something
+huggermugger in the mere sound--something that I classed, for no
+particular reason, with the dark and ignorant sort of words, such as
+"Obi" and "Hoodoo." I only know that after I learned that his name was
+Rooum, I couldn't for the life of me have thought of him as being called
+anything else.
+
+The first impression that you got of his head was that it was a patchwork
+of black and white--black bushy hair and short white beard, or else the
+other way about. As a matter of fact, both hair and beard were piebald,
+so that if you saw him in the gloom a dim patch of white showed down one
+side of his head, and dark tufts cropped up here and there in his beard.
+His eyebrows alone were entirely black, with a little sprouting of hair
+almost joining them. And perhaps his skin helped to make me think of
+negroes, for it was very dark, of the dark brown that always seems to
+have more than a hint of green behind it. His forehead was low, and
+scored across with deep horizontal furrows.
+
+We never knew when he was going to turn up on a job. We might not have
+seen him for weeks, but his face was always as likely as not to appear
+over the edge of a crane-platform just when that marvellous mechanical
+intuition of his was badly needed. He wasn't certificated. He wasn't even
+trained, as the rest of us understood training; and he scoffed at the
+drawing-office, and laughed outright at logarithms and our laborious
+methods of getting out quantities. But he could set sheers and tackle in
+a way that made the rest of us look silly. I remember once how, through
+the parting of a chain, a sixty-foot girder had come down and lay under
+a ruck of other stuff, as the bottom chip lies under a pile of
+spellikins--a hopeless-looking smash. Myself, I'm certificated twice or
+three times over; but I can only assure you that I wanted to kick myself
+when, after I'd spent a day and a sleepless night over the job, I saw the
+game of tit-tat-toe that Rooum made of it in an hour or two. Certificated
+or not, a man isn't a fool who can do that sort of thing. And he was
+one of these fellows, too, who can "find water"--tell you where water is
+and what amount of getting it is likely to take, by just walking over the
+place. We aren't certificated up to that yet.
+
+He was offered good money to stick to us--to stick to our firm--but he
+always shook his black-and-white piebald head. He'd never be able to keep
+the bargain if he were to make it, he told us quite fairly. I know there
+are these chaps who can't endure to be clocked to their work with a
+patent time-clock in the morning and released of an evening with a
+whistle--and it's one of the things no master can ever understand. So
+Rooum came and went erratically, showing up maybe in Leeds or Liverpool,
+perhaps next on Plymouth breakwater, and once he turned up in an
+out-of-the-way place in Glamorganshire just when I was wondering what had
+become of him.
+
+The way I got to know him (got to know him, I mean, more than just to
+nod) was that he tacked himself on to me one night down Vauxhall way,
+where we were setting up some small plant or other. We had knocked off
+for the day, and I was walking in the direction of the bridge when he
+came up. We walked along together; and we had not gone far before it
+appeared that his reason for joining me was that he wanted to know "what
+a molecule was."
+
+I stared at him a bit.
+
+"What do you want to know that for?" I said. "What does a chap like you,
+who can do it all backwards, want with molecules?"
+
+Oh, he just wanted to know, he said.
+
+So, on the way across the bridge, I gave it him more or less from the
+book--molecular theory and all the rest of it. But, from the childish
+questions he put, it was plain that he hadn't got the hang of it at all.
+"Did the molecular theory allow things to pass through one another?" he
+wanted to know; "_Could_ things pass through one another?" and a lot of
+ridiculous things like that. I gave it up.
+
+"You're a genius in your own way, Rooum," I said finally; "you know these
+things without the books we plodders have to depend on. If I'd luck like
+that, I think I should be content with it."
+
+But he didn't seem satisfied, though he dropped the matter for that time.
+But I had his acquaintance, which was more than most of us had. He
+asked me, rather timidly, if I'd lend him a book or two. I did so, but
+they didn't seem to contain what he wanted to know, and he soon returned
+them, without remark.
+
+Now you'd expect a fellow to be specially sensitive, one way or another,
+who can tell when there's water a hundred feet beneath him; and as you
+know, the big men are squabbling yet about this water-finding business.
+But, somehow, the water-finding puzzled me less than it did that Rooum
+should be extraordinarily sensitive to something far commoner and easier
+to understand--ordinary echoes. He couldn't stand echoes. He'd go a
+mile round rather than pass a place that he knew had an echo; and if he
+came on one by chance, sometimes he'd hurry through as quick as he
+could, and sometimes he'd loiter and listen very intently. I rather joked
+about this at first, till I found it really distressed him; then, of
+course, I pretended not to notice. We're all cranky somewhere, and for
+that matter, I can't touch a spider myself.
+
+For the remarkable thing that overtook Rooum--(that, by the way, is an
+odd way to put it, as you'll see presently; but the words came that
+way into my head, so let them stand)--for the remarkable thing that
+overtook Rooum, I don't think I can begin better than with the first
+time, or very soon after the first time, that I noticed this peculiarity
+about the echoes.
+
+It was early on a particularly dismal November evening, and this time we
+were somewhere out south-east London way, just beyond what they are
+pleased to call the building-line--you know these districts of wretched
+trees and grimy fields and market-gardens that are about the same to real
+country that a slum is to a town. It rained that night; rain was the most
+appropriate weather for the brickfields and sewage-farms and yards of old
+carts and railway-sleepers we were passing. The rain shone on the black
+hand-bag that Rooum always carried; and I sucked at the dottle of a pipe
+that it was too much trouble to fill and light again. We were walking in
+the direction of Lewisham (I think it would be), and were still a little
+way from that eruption of red-brick houses that ... but you've doubtless
+seen them.
+
+You know how, when they're laying out new roads, they lay down the
+narrow strip of kerb first, with neither setts on the one hand nor
+flagstones on the other? We had come upon one of these. (I had noticed
+how, as we had come a few minutes before under a tall hollow-ringing
+railway arch, Rooum had all at once stopped talking--it was the echo, of
+course, that bothered him.) The unmade road to which we had come had
+headless lamp-standards at intervals, and ramparts of grey road-metal
+ready for use; and save for the strip of kerb, it was a broth of mud
+and stiff clay. A red light or two showed where the road-barriers
+were--they were laying the mains; a green railway light showed on an
+embankment; and the Lewisham lamps made a rusty glare through the rain.
+Rooum went first, walking along the narrow strip of kerb.
+
+The lamp-standards were a little difficult to see, and when I heard Rooum
+stop suddenly and draw in his breath sharply, I thought he had walked
+into one of them.
+
+"Hurt yourself?" I said.
+
+He walked on without replying; but half a dozen yards farther on he
+stopped again. He was listening again. He waited for me to come up.
+
+"I say," he said, in an odd sort of voice, "go a yard or two ahead, will
+you?"
+
+"What's the matter?" I asked, as I passed ahead. He didn't answer.
+
+Well, I hadn't been leading for more than a minute before he wanted to
+change again. He was breathing very quick and short.
+
+"Why, what ails you?" I demanded, stopping.
+
+"It's all right.... You're not playing any tricks, are you?..."
+
+I saw him pass his hand over his brow.
+
+"Come, get on," I said shortly; and we didn't speak again till we struck
+the pavement with the lighted lamps. Then I happened to glance at him.
+
+"Here," I said brusquely, taking him by the sleeve, "you're not well.
+We'll call somewhere and get a drink."
+
+"Yes," he said, again wiping his brow. "I say ... did you hear?"
+
+"Hear what?"
+
+"Ah, you didn't ... and, of course, you didn't feel anything...."
+
+"Come, you're shaking."
+
+When presently we came to a brightly lighted public-house or hotel, I saw
+that he was shaking even worse than I had thought. The shirt-sleeved
+barman noticed it too, and watched us curiously. I made Rooum sit down,
+and got him some brandy.
+
+"What was the matter?" I asked, as I held the glass to his lips.
+
+But I could get nothing out of him except that it was "All right--all
+right," with his head twitching over his shoulder almost as if he had
+touch of the dance. He began to come round a little. He wasn't the kind
+of man you'd press for explanations, and presently we set out again.
+He walked with me as far as my lodgings, refused to come in, but for all
+that lingered at the gate as if loath to leave. I watched him turn the
+corner in the rain.
+
+We came home together again the next evening, but by a different way,
+quite half a mile longer. He had waited for me a little pertinaciously.
+It seemed he wanted to talk about molecules again.
+
+Well, when a man of his age--he'd be near fifty--begins to ask questions,
+he's rather worse than a child who wants to know where Heaven is or some
+such thing--for you can't put him off as you can the child. Somewhere or
+other he'd picked up the word "osmosis," and seemed to have some
+glimmering of its meaning. He dropped the molecules, and began to ask me
+about osmosis.
+
+"It means, doesn't it," he demanded, "that liquids will work their way
+into one another--through a bladder or something? Say a thick fluid and a
+thin: you'll find some of the thick in the thin, and the thin in the
+thick?"
+
+"Yes. The thick into the thin is ex-osmosis, and the other end-osmosis.
+That takes place more quickly. But I don't know a deal about it."
+
+"Does it ever take place with solids?" he next asked.
+
+What was he driving at? I thought; but replied: "I believe that what is
+commonly called 'adhesion' is something of the sort, under another name."
+
+"A good deal of this bookwork seems to be finding a dozen names for the
+same thing," he grunted; and continued to ask his questions.
+
+But what it was he really wanted to know I couldn't for the life of me
+make out.
+
+Well, he was due any time now to disappear again, having worked quite six
+weeks in one place; and he disappeared. He disappeared for a good many
+weeks. I think it would be about February before I saw or heard of him
+again.
+
+It was February weather, anyway, and in an echoing enough place that I
+found him--the subway of one of the Metropolitan stations. He'd probably
+forgotten the echoes when he'd taken the train; but, of course, the
+railway folk won't let a man who happens to dislike echoes go wandering
+across the metals where he likes.
+
+He was twenty yards ahead when I saw him. I recognised him by his patched
+head and black hand-bag. I ran along the subway after him.
+
+It was very curious. He'd been walking close to the white-tiled wall,
+and I saw him suddenly stop; but he didn't turn. He didn't even turn
+when I pulled up, close behind him; he put out one hand to the wall, as
+if to steady himself. But, the moment I touched his shoulder, he just
+dropped--just dropped, half on his knees against the white tiling. The
+face he turned round and up to me was transfixed with fright.
+
+There were half a hundred people about--a train was just in--and it isn't
+a difficult matter in London to get a crowd for much less than a man
+crouching terrified against a wall, looking over his shoulder as Rooum
+looked, at another man almost as terrified. I felt somebody's hand on
+my own arm. Evidently somebody thought I'd knocked Rooum down.
+
+The terror went slowly from his face. He stumbled to his feet. I shook
+myself free of the man who held me and stepped up to Rooum.
+
+"What the devil's all this about?" I demanded, roughly enough.
+
+"It's all right ... it's all right,..." he stammered.
+
+"Heavens, man, you shouldn't play tricks like that!"
+
+"No ... no ... but for the love of God don't do it again!..."
+
+"We'll not explain here," I said, still in a good deal of a huff; and
+the small crowd melted away--disappointed, I dare say, that it wasn't
+a fight.
+
+"Now," I said, when we were outside in the crowded street, "you might let
+me know what all this is about, and what it is that for the love of
+God I'm not to do again."
+
+He was half apologetic, but at the same time half blustering, as if I had
+committed some sort of an outrage.
+
+"A senseless thing like that!" he mumbled to himself. "But there: you
+didn't know.... You _don't_ know, do you?... I tell you, d'you hear,
+_you're not to run at all when I'm about_! You're a nice fellow and all
+that, and get your quantities somewhere near right, if you do go a long
+way round to do it--but I'll not answer for myself if you run, d'you
+hear?... Putting your hand on a man's shoulder like that, just when ..."
+
+"Certainly I might have spoken," I agreed, a little stiffly.
+
+"Of course, you ought to have spoken! Just you see you don't do it again.
+It's monstrous!"
+
+I put a curt question.
+
+"Are you sure you're quite right in your head, Rooum?"
+
+"Ah," he cried, "don't you think I just fancy it, my lad! Nothing so
+easy! I thought you guessed that other time, on the new road ... it's as
+plain as a pikestaff... no, no, no! _I_ shall be telling _you_ something
+about molecules one of these days!"
+
+We walked for a time in silence.
+
+Suddenly he asked: "What are you doing now?"
+
+"I myself, do you mean? Oh, the firm. A railway job, past Pinner.
+But we've a big contract coming on in the West End soon they might
+want you for. They call it 'alterations,' but it's one of these big
+shop-rebuildings."
+
+"I'll come along."
+
+"Oh, it isn't for a month or two yet."
+
+"I don't mean that. I mean I'll come along to Pinner with you now,
+to-night, or whenever you go."
+
+"Oh!" I said.
+
+I don't know that I specially wanted him. It's a little wearing, the
+company of a chap like that. You never know what he's going to let you in
+for next. But, as this didn't seem to occur to him, I didn't say
+anything. If he really liked catching the last train down, a three-mile
+walk, and then sharing a double-bedded room at a poor sort of alehouse
+(which was my own programme), he was welcome. We walked a little farther;
+then I told him the time of the train and left him.
+
+He turned up at Euston, a little after twelve. We went down together. It
+was getting on for one when we left the station at the other end, and
+then we began the tramp across the Weald to the inn. A little to my
+surprise (for I had begun to expect unaccountable behaviour from him) we
+reached the inn without Rooum having dodged about changing places with
+me, or having fallen cowering under a gorse-bush, or anything of
+that kind. Our talk, too, was about work, not molecules and osmosis.
+
+The inn was only a roadside beerhouse--I have forgotten its name--and all
+its sleeping accomodation was the one double-bedded room. Over the head
+of my own bed the ceiling was cut away, following the roof-line; and the
+wallpaper was perfectly shocking--faded bouquets that made V's and A's,
+interlacing everywhere. The other bed was made up, and lay across the
+room.
+
+I think I only spoke once while we were making ready for bed, and that
+was when Rooum took from his black hand-bag a brush and a torn nightgown.
+
+"That's what you always carry about, is it?" I remarked; and Rooum
+grunted something: Yes ... never knew where you'd be next ... no harm,
+was it? We tumbled into bed.
+
+But, for all the lateness of the hour, I wasn't sleepy; so from my own
+bag I took a book, set the candle on the end of the mantel, and began
+to read. Mark you, I don't say I was much better informed for the reading
+I did, for I was watching the V's on the wallpaper mostly--that, and
+wondering what was wrong with the man in the other bed who had fallen
+down at a touch in the subway. He was already asleep.
+
+Now I don't know whether I can make the next clear to you. I'm quite
+certain he was sound asleep, so that it wasn't just the fact that he
+spoke. Even that is a little unpleasant, I always think, any sort of
+sleep-talking; but it's a very queer sort of sensation when a man
+actually answers a question that's put to him, knowing nothing whatever
+about it in the morning. Perhaps I ought not to have put that question;
+having put it, I did the next best thing afterwards, as you'll see in a
+moment ... but let me tell you.
+
+He'd been asleep perhaps an hour, and I woolgathering about the
+wallpaper, when suddenly, in a far more clear and loud voice than he ever
+used when awake, he said:
+
+_"What the devil is it prevents me seeing him, then?"_
+
+That startled me, rather, for the second time that evening; and I really
+think I had spoken before I had fully realised what was happening.
+
+"From seeing whom?" I said, sitting up in bed.
+
+"Whom?... You're not attending. The fellow I'm telling you about, who
+runs after me," he answered--answered perfectly plainly.
+
+I could see his head there on the pillow, black and white, and his
+eyes were closed. He made a slight movement with his arm, but that did
+not wake him. Then it came to me, with a sort of start, what was
+happening. I slipped half out of bed. Would he--would he?--answer
+another question?... I risked it, breathlessly:
+
+"Have you any idea who he is?"
+
+Well, that too he answered.
+
+"Who he is? The Runner?... Don't be silly. _Who else should it be?_"
+
+With every nerve in me tingling, I tried again.
+
+"What happens, then, when he catches you?"
+
+This time, I really don't know whether his words were an answer or not;
+they were these:
+
+"To hear him catching you up ... and then padding away ahead again! All
+right, all right ... but I guess it's weakening him a bit, too...."
+
+Without noticing it, I had got out of bed, and had advanced quite to the
+middle of the floor.
+
+"What did you say his name was?" I breathed.
+
+But that was a dead failure. He muttered brokenly for a moment, gave a
+deep troubled sigh, and then began to snore loudly and regularly.
+
+I made my way back to bed; but I assure you that before I did so I filled
+my basin with water, dipped my face into it, and then set the candlestick
+afloat in it, leaving the candle burning. I thought I'd like to have a
+light.... It had burned down by morning. Rooum, I remember, remarked on
+the silly practice of reading in bed.
+
+Well, it was a pretty kind of obsession for a man to have, wasn't it?
+Somebody running after him all the time, and then ... running on ahead?
+And, of course, on a broad pavement there would be plenty of room for
+this running gentleman to run round; but on an eight- or nine-inch kerb,
+such as that of the new road out Lewisham way ... but perhaps he was a
+jumping gentleman too, and could jump over a man's head. You'd think he'd
+have to get past some way, wouldn't you?... I remember vaguely wondering
+whether the name of that Runner was not Conscience; but Conscience isn't
+a matter of molecules and osmosis....
+
+One thing, however, was clear; I'd got to tell Rooum what I'd learned:
+for you can't get hold of a fellow's secrets in ways like that. I lost
+no time about it. I told him, in fact, soon after we'd left the inn the
+next morning--told him how he'd answered in his sleep.
+
+And--what do you think of this?--he seemed to think I ought to have
+guessed it! _Guessed_ a monstrous thing like that!
+
+"You're less clever than I thought, with your books and that, if you
+didn't," he grunted.
+
+"But ... Good God, man!"
+
+"Queer, isn't it? But you don't know the queerest ..."
+
+He pondered for a moment, and then suddenly put his lips to my ear.
+
+"I'll tell you," he whispered. "_It gets harder every time_!... At first,
+he just slipped through: a bit of a catch at my heart, like when you nod
+off to sleep in a chair and jerk up awake again; and away he went. But
+now it's getting grinding, sluggish; and the pain.... You'd notice, that
+night on the road, the little check it gave me; that's past long since;
+and last night, when I'd just braced myself up stiff to meet it, and you
+tapped me on the shoulder ..." He passed the back of his hand over his
+brow.
+
+"I tell you," he continued, "it's an agony each time. I could scream at
+the thought of it. It's oftener, too, now, and he's getting stronger. The
+end-osmosis is getting to be ex-osmosis--is that right? Just let me tell
+you one more thing--"
+
+But I'd had enough. I'd asked questions the night before, but now--well,
+I knew quite as much as, and more than, I wanted.
+
+"Stop, please," I said. "You're either off your head, or worse. Let's
+call it the first. Don't tell me any more, please."
+
+"Frightened, what? Well, I don't blame you. But what would _you_ do?"
+
+"I should see a doctor; I'm only an engineer," I replied.
+
+"Doctors?... Bah!" he said, and spat.
+
+I hope you see how the matter stood with Rooum. What do you make of it?
+Could you have believed it--_do_ you believe it?... He'd made a nearish
+guess when he'd said that much of our knowledge is giving names to things
+we know nothing about; only rule-of-thumb Physics thinks everything's
+explained in the Manual; and you've always got to remember one thing:
+You can call it Force or what you like, but it's a certainty that things,
+solid things of wood and iron and stone, would explode, just go off in a
+puff into space, if it wasn't for something just as inexplicable as that
+that Rooum said he felt in his own person. And if you can swallow that,
+it's a relatively small matter whether Rooum's light-footed Familiar
+slipped through him unperceived, or had to struggle through obstinately.
+You see now why I said that "a queer thing overtook Rooum."
+
+More: I saw it. This thing, that outrages reason--I saw it happen. That
+is to say, I saw its effects, and it was in broad daylight, on an
+ordinary afternoon, in the middle of Oxford Street, of all places. There
+wasn't a shadow of doubt about it. People were pressing and jostling
+about him, and suddenly I saw him turn his head and listen, as I'd seen
+him before. I tell you, an icy creeping ran all over my skin. I fancied I
+felt it approaching too, nearer and nearer.... The next moment he had
+made a sort of gathering of himself, as if against a gust. He stumbled
+and thrust--thrust with his body. He swayed, physically, as a tree sways
+in a wind; he clutched my arm and gave a loud scream. Then, after
+seconds--minutes--I don't know how long--he was free again.
+
+And for the colour of his face when by-and-by I glanced at it ... well, I
+once saw a swarthy Italian fall under a sunstroke, and _his_ face was
+much the same colour that Rooum's negro face had gone; a cloudy, whitish
+green.
+
+"Well--you've seen it--what do you think of it?" he gasped presently,
+turning a ghastly grin on me.
+
+But it was night before the full horror of it had soaked into me.
+
+Soon after that he disappeared again. I wasn't sorry.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Our big contract in the West End came on. It was a time-contract, with
+all manner of penalty clauses if we didn't get through; and I assure
+you that we were busy. I myself was far too busy to think of Rooum.
+
+It's a shop now, the place we were working at, or rather one of these
+huge weldings of fifty shops where you can buy anything; and if you'd
+seen us there... but perhaps you did see us, for people stood up on the
+tops of omnibuses as they passed, to look over the mud-splashed hoarding
+into the great excavation we'd made. It was a sight. Staging rose on
+staging, tier on tier, with interminable ladders all over the steel
+structure. Three or four squat Otis lifts crouched like iron turtles on
+top, and a lattice-crane on a towering three-cornered platform rose a
+hundred and twenty feet into the air. At one end of the vast quarry
+was a demolished house, showing flues and fireplaces and a score of
+thicknesses of old wallpaper; and at night--they might well have stood up
+on the tops of the buses! A dozen great spluttering violet arc-lights
+half-blinded you; down below were the watchmen's fires; overhead, the
+riveters had their fire-baskets; and in odd corners naphtha-lights
+guttered and flared. And the steel rang with the riveters' hammers, and
+the crane-chains rattled and clashed.... There's not much doubt in _my_
+mind, it's the engineers who are the architects nowadays. The chaps who
+think they're the architects are only a sort of paperhangers, who hang
+brick and terra-cotta on our work and clap a pinnacle or two on top--but
+never mind that. There we were, sweating and clanging and navvying, till
+the day shift came to relieve us.
+
+And I ought to say that fifty feet above our great gap, and from end to
+end across it, there ran a travelling crane on a skeleton line, with
+platform, engine, and wooden cab all compact in one.
+
+It happened that they had pitched in as one of the foremen some fellow or
+other, a friend of the firm's, a rank duffer, who pestered me incessantly
+with his questions. I did half his work and all my own, and it hadn't
+improved my temper much. On this night that I'm telling about, he'd been
+playing the fool with his questions as if a time-contract was a sort of
+summer holiday; and he'd filled me up to that point that I really can't
+say just when it was that Rooum put in an appearance again. I think I had
+heard somebody mention his name, but I'd paid no attention.
+
+Well, our Johnnie Fresh came up to me for the twentieth time that night,
+this time wanting to know something about the overhead crane. At that
+I fairly lost my temper.
+
+"What ails the crane?" I cried. "It's doing its work, isn't it? Isn't
+everybody doing their work except you? Why can't you ask Hopkins? Isn't
+Hopkins there?"
+
+"I don't know," he said.
+
+"Then," I snapped, "in that particular I'm as ignorant as you, and I hope
+it's the only one."
+
+But he grabbed my arm.
+
+"Look at it now!" he cried, pointing; and I looked up.
+
+Either Hopkins or somebody was dangerously exceeding the speed-limit. The
+thing was flying along its thirty yards of rail as fast as a tram, and
+the heavy fall-blocks swung like a ponderous kite-tail, thirty feet
+below. As I watched, the engine brought up within a yard of the end of
+the way, the blocks crashed like a ram into the broken house end,
+fetching down plaster and brick, and then the mechanism was reversed. The
+crane set off at a tear back.
+
+"Who in Hell ..." I began; but it wasn't a time to talk. "_Hi!_" I
+yelled, and made a spring for a ladder.
+
+The others had noticed it, too, for there were shouts all over the place.
+By that time I was halfway up the second stage. Again the crane tore
+past, with the massive tackle sweeping behind it, and again I heard the
+crash at the other end. Whoever had the handling of it was managing
+it skilfully, for there was barely a foot to spare when it turned again.
+
+On the fourth platform, at the end of the way, I found Hopkins. He was
+white, and seemed to be counting on his fingers.
+
+"What's the matter here?" I cried.
+
+"It's Rooum," he answered. "I hadn't stepped out of the cab, not a
+minute, when I heard the lever go. He's running somebody down, he says;
+he'll run the whole shoot down in a minute--look!..."
+
+The crane was coming back again. Half out of the cab I could see Rooum's
+mottled hair and beard. His brow was ribbed like a gridiron, and as he
+ripped past one of the arcs his face shone like porcelain with the sweat
+that bathed it.
+
+"Now ... you!... Now, damn you!..." he was shouting.
+
+"Get ready to board him when he reverses!" I shouted to Hopkins.
+
+Just how we scrambled on I don't know. I got one arm over the
+lifting-gear (which, of course, wasn't going), and heard Hopkins on
+the other footplate. Rooum put the brakes down and reversed; again came
+the thud of the fall-blocks; and we were speeding back again over the
+gulf of misty orange light. The stagings were thronged with gaping men.
+
+"Ready? Now!" I cried to Hopkins; and we sprang into the cab.
+
+Hopkins hit Rooum's wrist with a spanner. Then he seized the lever,
+jammed the brake down and tripped Rooum, all, as it seemed, in one
+movement. I fell on top of Rooum. The crane came to a standstill
+half-way down the line. I held Rooum panting.
+
+But either Rooum was stronger than I, or else he took me very much
+unawares. All at once he twisted clear from my grasp and stumbled on his
+knees to the rear door of the cab. He threw up one elbow, and staggered
+to his feet as I made another clutch at him.
+
+"Keep still, you fool!" I bawled. "Hit him over the head, Hopkins!"
+
+Rooum screamed in a high voice.
+
+"Run him down--cut him up with the wheels--down, you!--down, I say!--Oh,
+my God!... _Ha_!"
+
+He sprang clear out from the crane door, well-nigh taking me with him.
+
+I told you it was a skeleton line, two rails and a tie or two. He'd
+actually jumped to the right-hand rail. And he was running along
+it--running along that iron tightrope, out over that well of light and
+watching men. Hopkins had started the travelling-gear, as if with some
+insane idea of catching him; but there was only one possible end to it.
+He'd gone fully a dozen yards, while I watched, horribly fascinated; and
+then I saw the turn of his head....
+
+He didn't meet it this time; he sprang to the other rail, as if to evade
+it....
+
+Even at the take-off he missed. As far as I could see, he made no attempt
+to save himself with his hands. He just went down out of the field of
+my vision. There was an awful silence; then, from far below ...
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They weren't the men on the lower stages who moved first. The men above
+went a little way down, and then they too stopped. Presently two of them
+descended, but by a distant way. They returned, with two bottles of
+brandy, and there was a hasty consultation. Two men drank the brandy off
+there and then--getting on for a pint of brandy apiece; then they went
+down, drunk.
+
+I, Hopkins tells me, had got down on my knees in the crane cab, and was
+jabbering away cheerfully to myself. When I asked him what I said,
+he hesitated, and then said: "Oh, you don't want to know that, sir," and
+I haven't asked him since.
+
+What do _you_ make of it?
+
+
+
+
+BENLIAN
+
+
+I
+
+It would be different if you had known Benlian. It would be different if
+you had had even that glimpse of him that I had the very first time I saw
+him, standing on the little wooden landing at the top of the flight of
+steps outside my studio door. I say "studio"; but really it was just a
+sort of loft looking out over the timber-yard, and I used it as a studio.
+The real studio, the big one, was at the other end of the yard, and that
+was Benlian's.
+
+Scarcely anybody ever came there. I wondered many a time if the
+timber-merchant was dead or had lost his memory and forgotten all about
+his business; for his stacks of floorboards, set criss-crosswise to
+season (you know how they pile them up) were grimy with soot, and nobody
+ever disturbed the rows of scaffold-poles that stood like palisades along
+the walls. The entrance was from the street, through a door in a
+billposter's hoarding; and on the river not far away the steamboats
+hooted, and, in windy weather, the floorboards hummed to keep them
+company.
+
+I suppose some of these real, regular artists wouldn't have called me an
+artist at all; for I only painted miniatures, and it was trade-work at
+that, copied from photographs and so on. Not that I wasn't jolly good at
+it, and punctual too (lots of these high-flown artists have simply no
+idea of punctuality); and the loft was cheap, and suited me very well.
+But, of course, a sculptor wants a big place on the ground floor; it's
+slow work, that with blocks of stone and marble that cost you twenty
+pounds every time you lift them; so Benlian had the studio. His name was
+on a plate on the door, but I'd never seen him till this time I'm telling
+you of.
+
+I was working that evening at one of the prettiest little things I'd ever
+done: a girl's head on ivory, that I'd stippled up just like ... oh,
+you'd never have thought it was done by hand at all. The daylight had
+gone, but I knew that "Prussian" would be about the colour for the eyes
+and the bunch of flowers at her breast, and I wanted to finish.
+
+I was working at my little table, with a shade over my eyes; and I jumped
+a bit when somebody knocked at the door--not having heard anybody come up
+the steps, and not having many visitors anyway. (Letters were always put
+into the box in the yard door.)
+
+When I opened the door, there he stood on the platform; and I gave a bit
+of a start, having come straight from my ivory, you see. He was one of
+these very tall, gaunt chaps, that make us little fellows feel even
+smaller than we are; and I wondered at first where his eyes were, they
+were set so deep in the dark caves on either side of his nose. Like a
+skull, his head was; I could fancy his teeth curving round inside his
+cheeks; and his zygomatics stuck up under his skin like razorbacks (but
+if you're not one of us artists you'll not understand that). A bit of
+smoky, greenish sky showed behind him; and then, as his eyes moved in
+their big pits, one of them caught the light of my lamp and flashed like
+a well of lustre.
+
+He spoke abruptly, in a deep, shaky sort of voice.
+
+"I want you to photograph me in the morning," he said. I supposed he'd
+seen my printing-frames out on the window-sash some time or other.
+
+"Come in," I said. "But I'm afraid, if it's a miniature you want, that
+I'm retained--my firm retains me--you'd have to do it through them. But
+come in, and I'll show you the kind of thing I do--though you ought to
+have come in the daylight ..."
+
+He came in. He was wearing a long, grey dressing-gown that came right
+down to his heels and made him look something like a Noah's-ark figure.
+Seen in the light, his face seemed more ghastly bony still; and as he
+glanced for a moment at my little ivory he made a sound of contempt--I
+know it was contempt. I thought it rather cheek, coming into my place
+and--
+
+He turned his cavernous eyeholes on me.
+
+"I don't want anything of that sort. I want you to photograph me. I'll be
+here at ten in the morning."
+
+So, just to show him that I wasn't to be treated that way, I said, quite
+shortly, "I can't. I've an appointment at ten o'clock."
+
+"What's that?" he said--he'd one of these rich deep voices that always
+sound consumptive.
+
+"Take that thing off your eyes, and look at me," he ordered.
+
+Well, I was awfully indignant.
+
+"If you think I'm going to be told to do things like this--" I began.
+
+"Take that thing off," he just ordered again.
+
+I've got to remember, of course, that you didn't know Benlian. _I_ didn't
+then. And for a chap just to stalk into a fellow's place, and tell him to
+photograph him, and order him about ... but you'll see in a minute. I
+took the shade off my eyes, just to show him that _I_ could browbeat a
+bit too.
+
+I used to have a tall strip of looking-glass leaning against my wall; for
+though I didn't use models much, it's awfully useful to go to Nature for
+odd bits now and then, and I've sketched myself in that glass, oh,
+hundreds of times! We must have been standing in front of it, for all at
+once I saw the eyes at the bottom of his pits looking rigidly over my
+shoulder. Without moving his eyes from the glass, and scarcely moving his
+lips, he muttered:
+
+"Get me a pair of gloves, get me a pair of gloves."
+
+It was a funny thing to ask for; but I got him a pair of my gloves from a
+drawer. His hands were shaking so that he could hardly get them on, and
+there was a little glistening of sweat on his face, that looked like the
+salt that dries on you when you've been bathing in the sea. Then I
+turned, to see what it was that he was looking so earnestly and
+profoundly at in the mirror. I saw nothing except just the pair of us, he
+with my gloves on.
+
+He stepped aside, and slowly drew the gloves off. I think _I_ could have
+bullied _him_ just then. He turned to me.
+
+"Did that look all right to you?" he asked.
+
+"Why, my dear chap, whatever ails you?" I cried.
+
+"I suppose," he went on, "you couldn't photograph me to-night--now?"
+
+I could have done, with magnesium, but I hadn't a scrap in the place. I
+told him so. He was looking round my studio. He saw my camera standing in
+a corner.
+
+"Ah!" he said.
+
+He made a stride towards it. He unscrewed the lens, brought it to the
+lamp, and peered attentively through it, now into the air, now at his
+sleeve and hand, as if looking for a flaw in it. Then he replaced it, and
+pulled up the collar of his dressing-gown as if he was cold.
+
+"Well, another night of it," he muttered; "but," he added, facing
+suddenly round on me, "if your appointment was to meet your God Himself,
+you must photograph me at ten to-morrow morning!"
+
+"All right," I said, giving in (for he seemed horribly ill). "Draw up to
+the stove and have a drink of something and a smoke."
+
+"I neither drink nor smoke," he replied, moving towards the door.
+
+"Sit down and have a chat, then," I urged; for I always like to be decent
+with fellows, and it was a lonely sort of place, that yard.
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"Be ready by ten o'clock in the morning," he said; and he passed down my
+stairs and crossed the yard to his studio without even having said "Good
+night."
+
+Well, he was at my door again at ten o'clock in the morning, and I
+photographed him. I made three exposures; but the plates were some that
+I'd had in the place for some time, and they'd gone off and fogged in the
+developing.
+
+"I'm awfully sorry," I said; "but I'm going out this afternoon, and will
+get some more, and we'll have another shot in the morning."
+
+One after the other, he was holding the negatives up to the light and
+examining them. Presently he put them down quietly, leaning them
+methodically up against the edge of the developing-bath.
+
+"Never mind. It doesn't matter. Thank you," he said; and left me.
+
+After that, I didn't see him for weeks; but at nights I could see the
+light of his roof-window, shining through the wreathing river-mists, and
+sometimes I heard him moving about, and the muffled knock-knocking of his
+hammer on marble.
+
+
+II
+
+Of course I did see him again, or I shouldn't be telling you all this. He
+came to my door, just as he had done before, and at about the same time
+in the evening. He hadn't come to be photographed this time, but for all
+that it was something about a camera--something he wanted to know. He'd
+brought two books with him, big books, printed in German. They were on
+Light, he said, and Physics (or else it was Psychics--I always get those
+two words wrong). They were full of diagrams and equations and figures;
+and, of course, it was all miles above my head.
+
+He talked a lot about "hyper-space," whatever that is; and at first I
+nodded, as if I knew all about it. But he very soon saw that I didn't,
+and he came down to my level again. What he'd come to ask me was this:
+Did I know anything, of my own experience, about things "photographing
+through"? (You know the kind of thing: a name that's been painted out on
+a board, say, comes up in the plate.)
+
+Well, as it happened, I _had_ once photographed a drawing for a fellow,
+and the easel I had stood it on had come up through the picture; and I
+knew by the way Benlian nodded that that was the kind of thing he meant.
+
+"More," he said.
+
+I told him I'd once seen a photograph of a man with a bowler hat on, and
+the shape of his crown had showed through the hat.
+
+"Yes, yes," he said, musing; and then he asked: "Have you ever heard of
+things not photographing at all?"
+
+But I couldn't tell him anything about that; and off he started again,
+about Light and Physics and so on. Then, as soon as I could get a word
+in, I said, "But, of course, the camera isn't Art." (Some of my
+miniatures, you understand, were jolly nice little things.)
+
+"No--no," he murmured absently; and then abruptly he said: "Eh? What's
+that? And what the devil do _you_ know about it?"
+
+"Well," said I, in a dignified sort of way, "considering that for ten
+years I've been--"
+
+"Chut!... Hold your tongue," he said, turning away.
+
+There he was, talking to me again, just as if I'd asked him in to bully
+me. But you've got to be decent to a fellow when he's in your own place;
+and by-and-by I asked him, but in a cold, off-hand sort of way, how his
+own work was going on. He turned to me again.
+
+"Would you like to see it?" he asked.
+
+"_Aha_!" thought I, "he's got to a sticking-point with his work! It's all
+very well," I thought, "for you to sniff at my miniatures, my friend, but
+we all get stale on our work sometimes, and the fresh eye, even of a
+miniature-painter ..."
+
+"I shall be glad if I can be of any help to you," I answered, still a bit
+huffish, but bearing no malice.
+
+"Then come," he said.
+
+We descended and crossed the timber-yard, and he held his door open for
+me to pass in.
+
+It was an enormous great place, his studio, and all full of mist; and the
+gallery that was his bedroom was up a little staircase at the farther
+end. In the middle of the floor was a tall structure of scaffolding, with
+a stage or two to stand on; and I could see the dim ghostly marble figure
+in the gloom. It had been jacked up on a heavy base; and as it would have
+taken three or four men to put it into position, and scarcely a stranger
+had entered the yard since I had been there, I knew that the figure must
+have stood for a long time. Sculpture's weary, slow work.
+
+Benlian was pottering about with a taper at the end of a long rod; and
+suddenly the overhead gas-ring burst into light. I placed myself before
+the statue--to criticise, you know.
+
+Well, it didn't seem to me that he needed to have turned up his nose at
+my ivories, for I didn't think much of his statue--except that it was a
+great, lumping, extraordinary piece of work. It had an outstretched arm
+that, I remember thinking, was absolutely misshapen--disproportioned,
+big enough for a giant, ridiculously out of drawing. And as I looked at
+the thing this way and that, I knew that his eyes in their deep cellars
+never left my face for a moment.
+
+"It's a god," he said by-and-by.
+
+Then I began to tell him about that monstrous arm; but he cut me very
+short.
+
+"I say it's a god," he interrupted, looking at me as if he would have
+eaten me. "Even you, child as you are, have seen the gods men have made
+for themselves before this. Half-gods they've made, all good or all evil
+(and then they've called them the Devil). This is _my_ god--the god of
+good and of evil also."
+
+"Er--I see," I said, rather taken aback (but quite sure he was off his
+head for all that). Then I looked at the arm again; a child could have
+seen how wrong it was....
+
+But suddenly, to my amazement, he took me by the shoulders and turned me
+away.
+
+"That'll do," he said curtly. "I didn't ask you to come in here with a
+view to learning anything from you. I wanted to see how it struck you. I
+shall send for you again--and again--"
+
+Then he began to jabber, half to himself.
+
+"Bah!" he muttered. "'Is that all?' they ask before a stupendous thing.
+Show them the ocean, the heavens, infinity, and they ask, 'Is that all?'
+If they saw their God face to face they'd ask it!... There's only one
+Cause, that works now in good and now in evil, but show It to them and
+they put their heads on one side and begin to appraise and patronise
+It!... I tell you, what's seen at a glance flies away at a glance. Gods
+come slowly over you, but presently, ah! they begin to grip you, and at
+the end there's no fleeing from them! You'll tell me more about my statue
+by-and-by!... What was that you said?" he demanded, facing swiftly round
+on me. "That arm? Ah, yes; but we'll see what you say about that arm six
+months from now! Yes, the arm.... Now be off!" he ordered me. "I'll send
+for you again when I want you!"
+
+He thrust me out.
+
+"An asylum, Mr. Benlian," I thought as I crossed the yard, "is the place
+for you!" You see, I didn't know him then, and that he wasn't to be
+judged as an ordinary man is. Just you wait till you see....
+
+And straight away, I found myself vowing that I'd have nothing more to do
+with him. I found myself resolving that, as if I were making up my mind
+not to smoke or drink--and (I don't know why) with a similar sense that I
+was depriving myself of something. But, somehow, I forgot, and within a
+month he'd been in several times to see me, and once or twice had fetched
+me in to see his statue.
+
+In two months I was in an extraordinary state of mind about him. I was
+familiar with him in a way, but at the same time I didn't know one scrap
+more about him. Because I'm a fool (oh, yes, I know quite well, now, what
+I am) you'll think I'm talking folly if I even begin to tell you what
+sort of a man he was. I don't mean just his knowledge (though I think he
+knew everything--sciences, languages, and all that) for it was far more
+than that. Somehow, when he was there, he had me all restless and uneasy;
+and when he wasn't there I was (there's only the one word for it)
+jealous--as jealous as if he'd been a girl! Even yet I can't make it
+out....
+
+And he knew how unsettled he'd got me; and I'll tell you how I found that
+out.
+
+Straight out one night, when he was sitting up in my place, he asked me:
+"Do you like me, Pudgie?" (I forgot to say that I'd told him they used to
+call me Pudgie at home, because I was little and fat; it was odd, the
+number of things I told him that I wouldn't have told anybody else.)
+
+"Do you like me, Pudgie?" he said.
+
+As for my answer, I don't know how it spurted out. I was much more
+surprised than he was, for I really didn't intend it. It was for all the
+world as if somebody else was talking with my mouth.
+
+"_I loathe and adore you!_" it came; and then I looked round, awfully
+startled to hear myself saying that.
+
+But he didn't look at me. He only nodded.
+
+"Yes. Of good and evil too--" he muttered to himself. And then all of a
+sudden he got up and went out.
+
+I didn't sleep for ever so long after that, thinking how odd it was I
+should have said that.
+
+Well (to get on), after that something I couldn't account for began to
+come over me sometimes as I worked. It began to come over me, without any
+warning, that he was thinking of me down there across the yard. I used to
+_know_ (this must sound awfully silly to you) that he was down yonder,
+thinking of me and doing something to me. And one night I was so sure
+that it wasn't fancy that I jumped straight up from my work, and I'm not
+quite sure what happened then, until I found myself in his studio, just
+as if I'd walked there in my sleep.
+
+And he seemed to be waiting for me, for there was a chair by his own, in
+front of the statue.
+
+"What is it, Benlian?" I burst out.
+
+"Ah!" he said.... "Well, it's about that arm, Pudgie; I want you to tell
+me about the arm. Does it look so strange as it did?"
+
+"No," I said.
+
+"I thought it wouldn't," he observed. "But I haven't touched it,
+Pudgie--"
+
+So I stayed the evening there.
+
+But you must not think he was always doing that thing--whatever it
+was--to me. On the other hand, I sometimes felt the oddest sort of
+release (I don't know how else to put it) ... like when, on one of these
+muggy, earthy-smelling days, when everything's melancholy, the wind
+freshens up suddenly and you breathe again. And that (I'm trying to take
+it in order, you see, so that it will be plain to you) brings me to the
+time I found out that _he_ did that too, and knew when he was doing it.
+
+I'd gone into his place one night to have a look at his statue. It was
+surprising what a lot I was finding out about that statue. It was still
+all out of proportion (that is to say, I knew it must be--remembered I'd
+thought so--though it didn't annoy me now quite so much. I suppose I'd
+lost _my_ fresh eye by that time). Somehow, too, my own miniatures had
+begun to look a bit kiddish; they made me impatient; and that's horrible,
+to be discontented with things that once seemed jolly good to you.
+
+Well, he'd been looking at me in the hungriest sort of way, and I looking
+at the statue, when all at once that feeling of release and lightness
+came over me. The first I knew of it was that I found myself thinking of
+some rather important letters my firm had written to me, wanting to know
+when a job I was doing was going to be finished. I thought myself it was
+time I got it finished; I thought I'd better set about it at once; and I
+sat suddenly up in my chair, as if I'd just come out of a sleep. And,
+looking at the statue, I saw it as it had seemed at first--all misshapen
+and out of drawing.
+
+The very next moment, as I was rising, I sat down again as suddenly as if
+somebody had pulled me back.
+
+Now a chap doesn't like to be changed about like that; so, without
+looking at Benlian, I muttered a bit testily, "Don't, Benlian!"
+
+Then I heard him get up and knock his chair away. He was standing behind
+me.
+
+"Pudgie," he said, in a moved sort of voice, "I'm no good to you. Get out
+of this. Get out--"
+
+"No, no, Benlian!" I pleaded.
+
+"Get out, do you hear, and don't come again! Go and live somewhere
+else--go away from London--don't let me know where you go--"
+
+"Oh, what have I done?" I asked unhappily; and he was muttering again.
+
+"Perhaps it would be better for me too," he muttered; and then he added,
+"Come, bundle out!"
+
+So in home I went, and finished my ivory for the firm; but I can't tell
+you how friendless and unhappy I felt.
+
+Now I used to know in those days a little girl--a nice, warm-hearted
+little thing, just friendly you know, who used to come to me sometimes in
+another place I lived at and mend for me and so on. It was an awful long
+time since I'd seen her; but she found me out one night--came to that
+yard, walked straight in, went straight to my linen-bag, and began to
+look over my things to see what wanted mending, just as she used to. I
+don't mind confessing that I was a bit sweet on her at one time; and it
+made me feel awfully mean, the way she came in, without asking any
+questions, and took up my mending.
+
+So she sat doing my things, and I sat at my work, glad of a bit of
+company; and she chatted as she worked, just jolly and gentle and not at
+all reproaching me.
+
+But as suddenly as a shot, right in the middle of it all, I found myself
+wondering about Benlian again. And I wasn't only wondering; somehow I was
+horribly uneasy about him. It came to me that he might be ill or
+something. And all the fun of her having come to see me was gone. I found
+myself doing all sorts of stupid things to my work, and glancing at my
+watch that was lying on the table before me.
+
+At last I couldn't stand it any longer. I got up.
+
+"Daisy," I said, "I've got to go out now."
+
+She seemed surprised.
+
+"Oh, why didn't you tell me I'd been keeping you!" she said, getting up
+at once.
+
+I muttered that I was awfully sorry....
+
+I packed her off. I closed the door in the hoarding behind her. Then I
+walked straight across the yard to Benlian's.
+
+He was lying on a couch, not doing anything.
+
+"I know I ought to have come sooner, Benlian," I said, "but I had
+somebody with me."
+
+"Yes," he said, looking hard at me; and I got a bit red.
+
+"She's awfully nice," I stammered; "but you never bother with girls, and
+you don't drink or smoke--"
+
+"No," he said.
+
+"Well," I continued, "you ought to have a little relaxation; you're
+knocking yourself up." And, indeed, he looked awfully ill.
+
+But he shook his head.
+
+"A man's only a definite amount of force in him, Pudgie," he said, "and
+if he spends it in one way he goes short in another. Mine goes--there."
+He glanced at the statue. "I rarely sleep now," he added.
+
+"Then you ought to see a doctor," I said, a bit alarmed. (I'd felt sure
+he was ill.)
+
+"No, no, Pudgie. My force is all going there--all but the minimum that
+can't be helped, you know.... You've heard artists talk about 'putting
+their soul into their work,' Pudgie?"
+
+"Don't rub it in about my rotten miniatures, Benlian," I asked him.
+
+"You've heard them say that; but they're charlatans, professional
+artists, all, Pudgie. They haven't got any souls bigger than a sixpence
+to put into it.... You know, Pudgie, that Force and Matter are the same
+thing--that it's decided nowadays that you can't define matter otherwise
+than as 'a point of Force'?"
+
+"Yes," I found myself saying eagerly, as if I'd heard it dozens of times
+before.
+
+"So that if they could put their souls into it, it would be just as easy
+for them to put their _bodies_ into it?..."
+
+I had drawn very close to him, and again--it was not fancy--I felt as if
+somebody, not me, was using my mouth. A flash of comprehension seemed to
+come into my brain.
+
+"_Not that, Benlian_?" I cried breathlessly.
+
+He nodded three or four times, and whispered. I really don't know why we
+both whispered.
+
+"_Really that, Benlian_?" I whispered again.
+
+"Shall I show you?... I tried my hardest not to, you know,..." he still
+whispered.
+
+"Yes, show me!" I replied in a suppressed voice.
+
+"Don't breathe a sound then! I keep them up there...."
+
+He put his finger to his lips as if we had been two conspirators; then he
+tiptoed across the studio and went up to his bedroom in the gallery.
+Presently he tiptoed down again, with some rolled-up papers in his hand.
+They were photographs, and we stooped together over a little table. His
+hand shook with excitement.
+
+"You remember this?" he whispered, showing me a rough print.
+
+It was one of the prints from the fogged plates that I'd taken after that
+first night.
+
+"Come closer to me if you feel frightened, Pudgie," he said. "You said
+they were old plates, Pudgie. No no; the plates were all right; it's _I_
+who am wrong!"
+
+"Of course," I said. It seemed so natural.
+
+"This one," he said, taking up one that was numbered "1," "is a plain
+photograph, in the flesh, before it started; _you_ know! Now look at
+this, and this--"
+
+He spread them before me, all in order.
+
+"2" was a little fogged, as if a novice had taken it; on "3" a sort of
+cloudy veil partly obliterated the face; "4" was still further smudged
+and lost; and "5" was a figure with gloved hands held up, as a man holds
+his hands up when he is covered by a gun. The face of this one was
+completely blotted out.
+
+And it didn't seem in the least horrible to me, for I kept on murmuring,
+"Of course, of course."
+
+Then Benlian rubbed his hands and smiled at me. "I'm making good
+progress, am I not?" he said.
+
+"Splendid!" I breathed.
+
+"Better than you know, too," he chuckled, "for you're not properly under
+yet. But you will be, Pudgie, you will be--"
+
+"Yes, yes!... Will it be long, Benlian?"
+
+"No," he replied, "not if I can keep from eating and sleeping and
+thinking of other things than the statue--and if you don't disturb me by
+having girls about the place, Pudgie."
+
+"I'm awfully sorry," I said contritely.
+
+"All right, all right; ssh!... This, you know, Pudgie, is my own studio;
+I bought it; I bought it purposely to make my statue, my god. I'm passing
+nicely into it; and when I'm quite passed--_quite_ passed, Pudgie--you
+can have the key and come in when you like."
+
+"Oh, thanks awfully," I murmured gratefully.
+
+He nudged me.
+
+"What would they think of it, Pudgie--those of the exhibitions and
+academies, who say 'their souls are in their work'? What would the
+cacklers think of it, Pudgie?"
+
+"Aren't they fools!" I chuckled.
+
+"And I shall have _one_ worshipper, shan't I, Pudgie?"
+
+"Rather!" I replied. "Isn't it splendid!... Oh, need I go back just yet?"
+
+"Yes, you must go now; but I'll send for you again very soon.... You know
+I tried to do without you, Pudge; I tried for thirteen days, and it
+nearly killed me! That's past. I shan't try again. Now off you trot, my
+Pudgie--"
+
+I winked at him knowingly, and came skipping and dancing across the yard.
+
+
+III
+
+It's just silly--that's what it is--to say that something of a man
+doesn't go into his work.
+
+Why, even those wretched little ivories of mine, the thick-headed fellows
+who paid for them knew my touch in them, and once spotted it instantly
+when I tried to slip in another chap's who was hard up. Benlian used to
+say that a man went about spreading himself over everything he came in
+contact with--diffusing some sort of influence (as far as I could make it
+out); and the mistake was, he said, that we went through the world just
+wasting it instead of directing it. And if Benlian didn't understand all
+about those things, I should jolly well like to know who does! A chap
+with a great abounding will and brain like him, it's only natural he
+should be able to pass himself on, to a statue or anything else, when he
+really tried--did without food and talk and sleep in order to save
+himself up for it!
+
+"A man can't both _do_ and _be_," I remember he said to me once. "He's so
+much force, no more, and he can either make himself with it or something
+else. If he tries to do both, he does both imperfectly. I'm going to do
+_one_ perfect thing." Oh, he was a queer chap! Fancy, a fellow making a
+thing like that statue, out of himself, and then wanting somebody to
+adore him!
+
+And I hadn't the faintest conception of how much I did adore him till
+yet again, as he had done before, he seemed to--you know--to take
+himself away from me again, leaving me all alone, and so wretched!... And
+I was angry at the same time, for he'd promised me he wouldn't do it
+again.... (This was one night, I don't remember when.)
+
+I ran to my landing and shouted down into the yard.
+
+"Benlian! Benlian!"
+
+There was a light in his studio, and I heard a muffled shout come back.
+
+"Keep away--keep away--keep away!"
+
+He was struggling--I knew he was struggling as I stood there on my
+landing--struggling to let me go. And I could only run and throw myself
+on my bed and sob, while he tried to set me free, who didn't want to be
+set free ... he was having a terrific struggle, all alone there....
+
+(He told me afterwards that he _had_ to eat something now and then and to
+sleep a little, and that weakened him--strengthened him--strengthened
+his body and weakened the passing, you know.)
+
+But the next day it was all right again. I was Benlian's again. And I
+wondered, when I remembered his struggle, whether a dying man had ever
+fought for life as hard as Benlian was fighting to get away from it and
+pass himself.
+
+The next time after that that he fetched me--called me--whatever you like
+to name it--I burst into his studio like a bullet. He was sunk in a big
+chair, gaunt as a mummy now, and all the life in him seemed to burn in
+the bottom of his deep eye-sockets. At the sight of him I fiddled with
+my knuckles and giggled.
+
+"You _are_ going it, Benlian!" I said.
+
+"Am I not?" he replied, in a voice that was scarcely a breath.
+
+"You _meant_ me to bring the camera and magnesium, didn't you?" (I had
+snatched them up when I felt his call, and had brought them.)
+
+"Yes. Go ahead."
+
+So I placed the camera before him, made all ready, and took the magnesium
+ribbon in a pair of pincers.
+
+"Are you ready?" I said; and lighted the ribbon.
+
+The studio seemed to leap with the blinding glare. The ribbon spat and
+spluttered. I snapped the shutter, and the fumes drifted away and hung
+in clouds in the roof.
+
+"You'll have to walk me about soon, Pudgie, and bang me with bladders, as
+they do the opium-patients," he said sleepily.
+
+"Let me take one of the statue now," I said eagerly.
+
+But he put up his hand.
+
+"No, no. _That's_ too much like testing our god. Faith's the food they
+feed gods on, Pudgie. We'll let the S.P.R. people photograph it when it's
+all over," he said. "Now get it developed."
+
+I developed the plate. The obliteration now seemed complete.
+
+But Benlian seemed dissatisfied.
+
+"There's something wrong somewhere," he said. "It isn't so perfect as
+that yet--I can feel within me it isn't. It's merely that your camera
+isn't strong enough to find me, Pudgie."
+
+"I'll get another in the morning," I cried.
+
+"No," he answered. "I know something better than that. Have a cab here by
+ten o'clock in the morning, and we'll go somewhere."
+
+By half-past ten the next morning we had driven to a large hospital, and
+had gone down a lot of steps and along corridors to a basement room.
+There was a stretcher couch in the middle of the room, and all manner of
+queer appliances, frames of ground glass, tubes of glass blown into
+extraordinary shapes, a dynamo, and a lot of other things all about. A
+couple of doctors were there too, and Benlian was talking to them.
+
+"We'll try my hand first," Benlian said by-and-by.
+
+He advanced to the couch, and put his hand under one of the frames of
+ground glass. One of the doctors did something in a corner. A harsh
+crackling filled the room, and an unearthly, fluorescent light shot and
+flooded across the frame where Benlian's hand was. The two doctors
+looked, and then started back. One of them gave a cry. He was sickly
+white.
+
+"Put me on the couch," said Benlian.
+
+I and the doctor who was not ill lifted him on the canvas stretcher. The
+green-gleaming frame of fluctuating light was passed over the whole of
+his body. Then the doctor ran to a telephone and called a colleague....
+
+We spent the morning there, with dozens of doctors coming and going. Then
+we left. All the way home in the cab Benlian chuckled to himself.
+
+"That scared 'em, Pudgie!" he chuckled. "A man they can't X-ray--that
+scared 'em! We must put that down in the diary--"
+
+"Wasn't it ripping!" I chuckled back.
+
+He kept a sort of diary or record. He gave it to me afterwards, but
+they've borrowed it. It was as big as a ledger, and immensely valuable,
+I'm sure; they oughtn't to borrow valuable things like that and not
+return them. The laughing that Benlian and I have had over that diary!
+It fooled them all--the clever X-ray men, the artists of the academies,
+everybody! Written on the fly-leaf was "_To My Pudgie_." I shall publish
+it when I get it back again.
+
+Benlian had now got frightfully weak; it's awfully hard work, passing
+yourself. And he had to take a little milk now and then or he'd have
+died before he had quite finished. I didn't bother with miniatures any
+longer, and when angry letters came from my employers we just put them
+into the fire, Benlian and I, and we laughed--that is to say, I laughed,
+but Benlian only smiled, being too weak to laugh really. He'd lots of
+money, so that was all right; and I slept in his studio, to be there for
+the passing.
+
+And that wouldn't be very long now, I thought; and I was always looking
+at the statue. Things like that (in case you don't know) have to be done
+gradually, and I supposed he was busy filling up the inside of it and
+hadn't got to the outside yet--for the statue was much the same to look
+at. But, reckoning off his sips of milk and snatches of sleep, he was
+making splendid progress, and the figure must be getting very full now.
+I was awfully excited, it was getting so near....
+
+And then somebody came bothering and nearly spoiling all. It's odd, but I
+really forget exactly what it was. I only know there was a funeral, and
+people were sobbing and looking at me, and somebody said I was callous,
+but somebody else said, "No, look at him," and that it was just the other
+way about. And I think I remember, now, that it wasn't in London, for I
+was in a train; but after the funeral I dodged them, and found myself
+back at Euston again. They followed me, but I shook them off. I locked my
+own studio up, and lay as quiet as a mouse in Benlian's place when they
+came hammering at the door....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And now I must come to what you'll called the finish--though it's awfully
+stupid to call things like that "finishes."
+
+I'd slipped into my own studio one night--I forget what for; and I'd gone
+quietly, for I knew they were following me, those people, and would catch
+me if they could. It was a thick, misty night, and the light came
+streaming up through Benlian's roof window, with the shadows of the
+window-divisions losing themselves like dark rays in the fog. A lot of
+hooting was going on down the river, steamers and barges.... Oh, I know
+what I'd come into my studio for! It was for those negatives. Benlian
+wanted them for the diary, so that it could be seen there wasn't any
+fake about the prints. For he'd said he would make a final spurt that
+evening and get the job finished. It had taken a long time, but I'll bet
+_you_ couldn't have passed _yourself_ any quicker.
+
+When I got back he was sitting in the chair he'd hardly left for weeks,
+and the diary was on the table by his side. I'd taken all the scaffolding
+down from the statue, and he was ready to begin. He had to waste one last
+bit of strength to explain to me, but I drew as close as I could, so that
+he wouldn't lose much.
+
+"Now, Pudgie," I just heard him say, "you've behaved splendidly, and
+you'll be quite still up to the finish, won't you?"
+
+I nodded.
+
+"And you mustn't expect the statue to come down and walk about,
+or anything like that," he continued. "_Those_ aren't the really
+wonderful things. And no doubt people will tell you it hasn't changed;
+but you'll know better! It's much more wonderful that I should be there
+than that they should be able to prove it, isn't it?... And, of course,
+I don't know exactly how it will happen, for I've never done this
+before.... You have the letter for the S.P.R.? They can photograph it if
+they want.... By the way, you don't think the same of my statue as you
+did at first, do you?"
+
+"Oh, it's wonderful!" I breathed.
+
+"And even if, like the God of the others, it doesn't vouchsafe a special
+sign and wonder, it's Benlian, for all that?"
+
+"Oh, do be quick, Benlian! I can't bear another minute!"
+
+Then, for the last time, he turned his great eaten-out eyes on me.
+
+"_I seal you mine, Pudgie_!" he said.
+
+Then his eyes fastened themselves on the statue.
+
+I waited for a quarter of an hour, scarcely breathing. Benlian's breath
+came in little flutters, many seconds apart. He had a little clock on the
+table. Twenty minutes passed, and half an hour. I was a little
+disappointed, really, that the statue wasn't going to move; but Benlian
+knew best, and it was filling quietly up with him instead. Then I thought
+of those zigzag bunches of lightning they draw on the electric-belt
+advertisements, and I was rather glad after all that the statue _wasn't_
+going to move. It would have been a little cheap, that ... vulgar, in a
+sense.... He was breathing a little more sharply now, as if in pain, but
+his eyes never moved. A dog was howling somewhere, and I hoped that the
+hooting of the tugs wouldn't disturb Benlian....
+
+Nearly an hour had passed when, all of a sudden, I pushed my chair
+farther away and cowered back, gnawing my fingers, very frightened.
+Benlian had suddenly moved. He'd set himself forward in his chair, and he
+seemed to be strangling. His mouth was wide open, and he began to make
+long harsh "_Aaaaah-aaaah's_!" I shouldn't have thought passing yourself
+was such agony....
+
+And then I gave a scream--for he seemed to be thrusting himself back in
+his chair again, as if he'd changed his mind and didn't want to pass
+himself at all. But just you ask anybody: When you get yourself just over
+half-way passed, the other's dragged out of you, and you can't help
+yourself. His "_Aaaaahs_!" became so loud and horrid that I shut my eyes
+and stopped my ears.... Minutes that lasted; and then there came a high
+dinning that I couldn't shut out, and all at once the floor shook with a
+heavy thump. When all was still again I opened my eyes.
+
+His chair had overturned, and he lay in a heap beside it.
+
+I called "Benlian!" but he didn't answer....
+
+He'd passed beautifully; quite dead. I looked up at the statue. It was
+just as Benlian had said--it didn't open its eyes, nor speak, nor
+anything like that. Don't you believe chaps who tell you that statues
+that have been passed into do that; they don't.
+
+But instead, in a blaze and flash and shock, I knew now for the first
+time what a glorious thing that statue was! Have you ever seen anything
+for the first time like that? If you have, you never see very much
+afterwards, you know. The rest's all piffle after that. It was like
+coming out of fog and darkness into a split in the open heavens, my
+statue was so transfigured; and I'll bet if you'd been there you'd have
+clapped your hands, as I did, and chucked the tablecloth over the Benlian
+on the floor till they should come to cart that empty shell away, and
+patted the statue's foot and cried: "_Is it all right, Benlian_?"
+
+I did this; and then I rushed excitedly out into the street, to call
+somebody to see how glorious it was....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They've brought me here for a holiday, and I'm to go back to the studio
+in two or three days. But they've said that before, and I think it's
+caddish of fellows not to keep their word--and not to return a valuable
+diary too! But there isn't a peephole in my room, as there is in some of
+them (the Emperor of Brazil told me that); and Benlian knows I haven't
+forsaken him, for they take me a message every day to the studio, and
+Benlian always answers that it's "_all right_, and I'm to stay where I am
+for a bit." So as long as he knows, I don't mind so much. But it is a bit
+rotten hanging on here, especially when the doctors themselves admit how
+reasonable it all is.... Still, if Benlian says it's "_All right_ ..."
+
+
+
+
+IO
+
+
+As the young man put his hand to the uppermost of the four brass
+bell-knobs to the right of the fanlighted door he paused, withdrew the
+hand again, and then pulled at the lowest knob. The sawing of bell-wire
+answered him, and he waited for a moment, uncertain whether the bell had
+rung, before pulling again. Then there came from the basement a single
+cracked stroke; the head of a maid appeared in the whitewashed area
+below; and the head was withdrawn as apparently the maid recognised him.
+Steps were heard along the hall; the door was opened; and the maid stood
+aside to let him enter, the apron with which she had slipped the latch
+still crumpled in her greasy hand.
+
+"Sorry, Daisy," the young man apologised, "but I didn't want to bring her
+down all those stairs. How is she? Has she been out to-day?"
+
+The maid replied that the person spoken of had been out; and the young
+man walked along the wide carpeted passage.
+
+It was cumbered like an antique-shop with alabaster busts on pedestals,
+dusty palms in faience vases, and trophies of spears and shields and
+assegais. At the foot of the stairs was a rustling portiere of strung
+beads, and beyond it the carpet was continued up the broad, easy flight,
+secured at each step by a brass rod. Where the stairs made a turn, the
+fading light of the December afternoon, made still dimmer by a window of
+decalcomanied glass, shone on a cloudy green aquarium with sallow
+goldfish, a number of cacti on a shabby console table, and a large and
+dirty white sheepskin rug. Passing along a short landing, the young man
+began the ascent of the second flight. This also was carpeted, but with a
+carpet that had done duty in some dining- or bed-room before being cut up
+into strips of the width of the narrow space between the wall and the
+handrail. Then, as he still mounted, the young man's feet sounded loud on
+oilcloth; and when he finally paused and knocked at a door it was on a
+small landing of naked boards beneath the cold gleam of the skylight
+above the well of the stairs.
+
+"Come in," a girl's voice called.
+
+The room he entered had a low sagging ceiling on which shone a low glow
+of firelight, making colder still the patch of eastern sky beyond the
+roofs and the cowls and hoods of chimneys framed by the square of the
+single window. The glow on the ceiling was reflected dully in the old
+dark mirror over the mantelpiece. An open door in the farther corner,
+hampered with skirts and blouses, allowed a glimpse of the girl's
+bedroom.
+
+The young man set the paper bag he carried down on the littered round
+table and advanced to the girl who sat in an old wicker chair before
+the fire. The girl did not turn her head as he kissed her cheek, and he
+looked down at something that had muffled the sound of his steps as
+he had approached her.
+
+"Hallo, that's new, isn't it, Bessie? Where did that come from?" he asked
+cheerfully.
+
+The middle of the floor was covered with a common jute matting, but on
+the hearth was a magnificent leopard-skin rug.
+
+"Mrs. Hepburn sent it up. There was a draught from under the door. It's
+much warmer for my feet."
+
+"Very kind of Mrs. Hepburn. Well, how are you feeling to-day, old girl?"
+
+"Better, thanks, Ed."
+
+"That's the style. You'll be yourself again soon. Daisy says you've been
+out to-day?"
+
+"Yes, I went for a walk. But not far; I went to the Museum and then sat
+down. You're early, aren't you?"
+
+He turned away to get a chair, from which he had to move a mass of
+tissue-paper patterns and buckram linings. He brought it to the rug.
+
+"Yes. I stopped last night late to cash up for Vedder, so he's staying
+to-night. Turn and turn about. Well, tell us all about it, Bess."
+
+Their faces were red in the firelight. Hers had the prettiness that the
+first glance almost exhausts, the prettiness, amazing in its quantity,
+that one sees for a moment under the light of the street lamps when shops
+and offices close for the day. She was short-nosed, pulpy-mouthed and
+faunish-eyed, and only the rather remarkable smallness of the head on the
+splendid thick throat saved her from ordinariness. He, too, might have
+been seen in his thousands at the close of any day, hurrying home to
+Catford or Walham Green or Tufnell Park to tea and an evening with a
+girl or in a billiard-room, or else dining cheaply "up West" preparatory
+to smoking cigarettes from yellow packets in the upper circle of a
+music-hall. Four inches of white up-and-down collar encased his neck; and
+as he lifted his trousers at the knee to clear his purple socks, the pair
+of paper covers showed, that had protected his cuffs during the day at
+the office. He removed them, crumpled them up and threw them on the fire;
+and the momentary addition to the light of the upper chamber showed how
+curd-white was that superb neck of hers and how moody and tired her eyes.
+
+From his face only one would have guessed, and guessed wrongly, that his
+preferences were for billiard-rooms and music-halls. His conversation
+showed them to be otherwise. It was of Polytechnic classes that he spoke,
+and of the course of lectures in English literature that had just begun.
+And, as if somebody had asserted that the pursuit of such studies was not
+compatible with a certain measure of physical development also, he
+announced that he was not sure that he should not devote, say, half an
+evening a week, on Wednesdays, to training in the gymnasium.
+
+"_Mens sana in corpore sano_, Bessie," he said; "a sound mind in a sound
+body, you know. That's tremendously important, especially when a fellow
+spends the day in a stuffy office. Yes, I think I shall give it half
+Wednesdays, from eight-thirty to nine-thirty; sends you home in a glow.
+But I was going to tell you about the Literature Class. The second
+lecture's to-night. The first was splendid, all about the languages of
+Europe and Asia--what they call the Indo-Germanic languages, you know.
+Aryans. I can't tell you exactly without my notes, but the Hindoos and
+Persians, I think it was, they crossed the Himalaya Mountains and spread
+westward somehow, as far as Europe. That was the way it all began. It
+was splendid, the way the lecturer put it. English is a Germanic
+language, you know. Then came the Celts. I wish I'd brought my notes. I
+see you've been reading; let's look--"
+
+A book lay on her knees, its back warped by the heat of the fire. He took
+it and opened it.
+
+"Ah, Keats! Glad you like Keats, Bessie. We needn't be great readers, but
+it's important that what we do read should be all right. I don't know
+him, not _really_ know him, that is. But he's quite all right--A1 in
+fact. And he's an example of what I've always maintained, that knowledge
+should be brought within the reach of all. It just shows. He was the son
+of a livery-stable keeper, you know, so what he'd have been if he'd
+really had chances, been to universities and so on, there's no knowing.
+But, of course, it's more from the historical standpoint that I'm
+studying these things. Let's have a look--"
+
+He opened the book where a hairpin between the leaves marked a place.
+The firelight glowed on the page, and he read, monotonously and
+inelastically:
+
+"_And as I sat, over the light blue hills
+There came a noise of revellers; the rills
+Into the wide stream came of purple hue--
+  'Twas Bacchus and his crew!
+The earnest trumpet spake, and silver thrills
+From kissing cymbals made a merry din--
+  'Twas Bacchus and his kin!
+Like to a moving vintage down they came,
+Crowned with green leaves, and faces all on flame
+All madly dancing through the pleasant valley
+  To scare thee, Melancholy!"_
+
+It was the wondrous passage from _Endymion_, of the descent of the wild
+inspired rabble into India. Ed plucked for a moment at his lower lip, and
+then, with a "Hm! What's it all about, Bessie?" continued:
+
+_"Within his car, aloft, young Bacchus stood,
+Trifling his ivy-dart, in dancing mood,
+  With sidelong laughing;
+And little rills of crimson wine imbrued
+His plump white arms and shoulders, enough white
+  For Venus' pearly bite;
+And near him rode Silenus on his ass,
+Pelted with flowers as he on did pass,
+  Tipsily quaffing."_
+
+"Hm! I see. Mythology. That's made up of tales, and myths, you know. Like
+Odin and Thor and those, only those were Scandinavian Mythology. So it
+would be absurd to take it too seriously. But I think, in a way, things
+like that do harm. You see," he explained, "the more beautiful they are
+the more harm they might do. We ought always to show virtue and vice in
+their true colours, and if you look at it from that point of view this is
+just drunkenness. That's rotten; destroys your body and intellect; as I
+heard a chap say once, it's an insult to the beasts to call it beastly. I
+joined the Blue Ribbon when I was fourteen and I haven't been sorry for
+it yet. No. Now there's Vedder; he 'went off on a bend,' as he calls it,
+last night, and even he says this morning it wasn't worth it. But let's
+read on."
+
+Again he read, with unresilient movement:
+
+"_I saw Osirian Egypt kneel adown
+Before the vine wreath crown!
+  I saw parched Abyssinia rouse and sing
+  To the silver cymbals' ring!
+I saw the whelming vintage hotly pierce
+  Old Tartary the fierce!
+Great Brahma from his mystic heaven groans_ ..."
+
+"Hm! He was a Buddhist god, Brahma was; mythology again. As I say, if you
+take it seriously, it's just glorifying intoxication.--But I say; I can
+hardly see. Better light the lamp. We'll have tea first, then read. No,
+you sit still; I'll get it ready; I know where things are--"
+
+He rose, crossed to a little cupboard with a sink in it, filled the
+kettle at the tap, and brought it to the fire. Then he struck a match and
+lighted the lamp.
+
+The cheap glass shade was of a foolish corolla shape, clear glass below,
+shading to pink, and deepening to red at the crimped edge. It gave a
+false warmth to the spaces of the room above the level of the
+mantelpiece, and Ed's figure, as he turned the regulator, looked from the
+waist upwards as if he stood within that portion of a spectrum screen
+that deepens to the band of red. The bright concentric circles that
+spread in rings of red on the ceiling were more dimly reduplicated in the
+old mirror over the mantelpiece; and the wintry eastern light beyond the
+chimney-hoods seemed suddenly almost to die out.
+
+Bessie, her white neck below the level of the lamp-shade, had taken up
+the book again; but she was not reading. She was looking over it at the
+upper part of the grate. Presently she spoke. "I was looking at some of
+those things this afternoon, at the Museum."
+
+He was clearing from the table more buckram linings and patterns of
+paper, numbers of Myra's Journal and The Delineator. Already on his way
+to the cupboard he had put aside a red-bodiced dressmaker's "shape" of
+wood and wire. "What things?" he asked.
+
+"Those you were reading about. Greek, aren't they?"
+
+"Oh, the Greek room!... But those people, Bacchus and those, weren't
+people in the ordinary sense. Gods and goddesses, most of 'em; Bacchus
+was a god. That's what mythology means. I wish sometimes our course took
+in Greek literature, but it's a dead language after all. German's more
+good in modern life. It would be nice to know everything, but one has to
+select, you know. Hallo, I clean forgot; I brought you some grapes,
+Bessie; here they are, in this bag; we'll have 'em after tea, what?"
+
+"But," she said again after a pause, still looking at the grate, "they
+had their priests and priestesses, and followers and people, hadn't they?
+It was their things I was looking at--combs and brooches and hairpins,
+and things to cut their nails with. They're all in a glass case there.
+And they had safety-pins, exactly like ours."
+
+"Oh, they were a civilised people," said Ed cheerfully. "It all gives you
+an idea. I only hope you didn't tire yourself out. You'll soon be all
+right, of course, but you have to be careful yet. We'll have a clean
+tablecloth, shall we?"
+
+She had been seriously ill; her life had been despaired of; and somehow
+the young Polytechnic student seemed anxious to assure her that she was
+now all right again, or soon would be. They were to be married "as soon
+as things brightened up a bit," and he was very much in love with her. He
+watched her head and neck as he continued to lay the table, and then, as
+he crossed once more to the cupboard, he put his hand lightly in passing
+on her hair.
+
+She gave so quick a start that he too started. She must have been very
+deep in her reverie to have been so taken by surprise.
+
+"I say, Bessie, don't jump like that!" he cried with involuntary
+quickness. Indeed, had his hand been red-hot, or ice-cold, or taloned,
+she could not have turned a more startled, even frightened, face to him.
+
+"It was your touching me," she muttered, resuming her gazing into the
+grate.
+
+He stood looking anxiously down on her. It would have been better not to
+discuss her state, and he knew it; but in his anxiety he forgot it.
+
+"That jumpiness is the effect of your illness, you know. I shall be glad
+when it's all over. It's made you so odd."
+
+She was not pleased that he should speak of her "oddness." For that
+matter, she, too, found him "odd"--at any rate, found it difficult to
+realise that he was as he always had been. He had begun to irritate her a
+little. His club-footed reading of the verses had irritated her, and she
+had tried hard to hide from him that his cocksure opinions and the tone
+in which they were pronounced jarred on her. It was not that she was
+"better" than he, "knew" any more than he did, didn't (she supposed) love
+him still the same; these moods, that dated from her illness, had nothing
+to do with those things; she reproached herself sometimes that she was
+subject to such doldrums.
+
+"It's all right, Ed, but please don't touch me just now," she said.
+
+He was in the act of leaning over her chair, but he saw her shrink, and
+refrained.
+
+"Poor old girl!" he said sympathetically. "What's the matter?"
+
+"I don't know. It's awfully stupid of me to be like this, but I can't
+help it. I shall be better soon if you leave me alone."
+
+"Nothing's happened, has it?"
+
+"Only those silly dreams I told you about."
+
+"Bother the dreams!" muttered the Polytechnic student.
+
+During her illness she had had dreams, and had come to herself at
+intervals to find Ed or the doctor, Mrs. Hepburn or her aunt, bending
+over her. These kind, solicitous faces had been no more than a glimpse,
+and then she had gone off into the dreams again. The curious thing had
+been that the dreams had seemed to be her vivid waking life, and the
+other things--the anxious faces, the details of her dingy bedroom, the
+thermometer under her tongue--had been the dream. And, though she had
+come back to actuality, the dreams had never quite vanished. She could
+remember no more of them than that they had seemed to hold a high singing
+and jocundity, issuing from some region of haze and golden light; and
+they seemed to hover, ever on the point of being recaptured, yet ever
+eluding all her mental efforts. She was living now between reality and a
+vision.
+
+She had fewer words than sensations, and it was a little pitiful to hear
+her vainly striving to make clear what she meant.
+
+"It's so queer," she said. "It's like being on the edge of something--a
+sort of tiptoe--I can't describe it. Sometimes I could almost touch it
+with my hand, and then it goes away, but never quite away. It's like
+something just past the corner of my eye, over my shoulder, and I sit
+very still sometimes, trying to take it off its guard. But the moment I
+move my head it moves too--like this--"
+
+Again he gave a quick start at the suddenness of her action. Very
+stealthily her faunish eyes had stolen sideways, and then she had swiftly
+turned her head.
+
+"Here, I say, don't, Bessie!" he cried nervously. "You look awfully
+uncanny when you do that! You're brooding," he continued, "that's what
+you're doing, brooding. You're getting into a low state. You want bucking
+up. I don't think I shall go to the Polytec. to-night; I shall stay and
+cheer you up. You know, I really don't think you're making an effort,
+darling."
+
+His last words seemed to strike her. They seemed to fit in with something
+of which she too was conscious. "Not making an effort ..." she wondered
+how he knew that. She felt in some vague way that it was important that
+she should make an effort.
+
+For, while her dream ever evaded her, and yet never ceased to call her
+with such a voice as he who reads on a magic page of the calling of elves
+hears stilly in his brain, yet somehow behind the seduction was another
+and a sterner voice. There was warning as well as fascination. Beyond
+that edge at which she strained on tiptoe, mingled with the jocund calls
+to Hasten, Hasten, were deeper calls that bade her Beware. They puzzled
+her. Beware of what? Of what danger? And to whom?...
+
+"How do you mean, I'm not making an effort, Ed?" she asked slowly, again
+looking into the fire, where the kettle now made a gnat-like singing.
+
+"Why, an effort to get all right again. To be as you used to be--as, of
+course, you will be soon."
+
+"As I used to be?" The words came with a little check in her breathing.
+
+"Yes, before all this. To be yourself, you know."
+
+"Myself?"
+
+"All jolly, and without these jerks and jumps. I wish you could get away.
+A fortnight by the sea would do you all the good in the world."
+
+She knew not what it was in the words "the sea" that caused her suddenly
+to breathe more deeply. The sea!... It was as if, by the mere uttering of
+them, he had touched some secret spring, brought to fulfilment some
+spell. What had he meant by speaking of the sea?... A fortnight before,
+had somebody spoken to her of the sea it would have been the sea of
+Margate, of Brighton, of Southend, that, supplying the image that a word
+calls up as if by conjuration, she would have seen before her; and what
+other image could she supply, could she possibly supply, now?... Yet she
+did, or almost did, supply one. What new experience had she had, or what
+old, old one had been released in her? With that confused, joyous dinning
+just beyond the range of physical hearing there had suddenly mingled
+a new illusion of sound--a vague, vast pash and rustle, silky and harsh
+both at once, its tireless voice holding meanings of stillness and
+solitude compared with which the silence that is mere absence of sound
+was vacancy. It was part of her dream, invisible, intangible, inaudible,
+yet there. As if he had been an enchanter, it had come into being at the
+word upon his lips. Had he other such words? Had he the Master Word
+that--(ah, she knew what the Master Word would do!)--would make the
+Vision the Reality and the Reality the Vision? Deep within her she felt
+something--her soul, herself, she knew not what--thrill and turn over and
+settle again....
+
+"The sea," she repeated in a low voice.
+
+"Yes, that's what you want to set you up--rather! Do you remember that
+fortnight at Littlehampton, you and me and your Aunt? Jolly that was! I
+like Littlehampton. It isn't flash like Brighton, and Margate's always so
+beastly crowded. And do you remember that afternoon by the windmill? I
+did love you that afternoon, Bessie!"...
+
+He continued to talk, but she was not listening. She was wondering why
+the words "the sea" were somehow part of it all--the pins and brooches
+of the Museum, the book on her knees, the dream. She remembered a game of
+hide-and-seek she had played as a child, in which cries of "Warm, warm,
+warmer!" had announced the approach to the hidden object. Oh, she was
+getting warm--positively hot....
+
+He had ceased to talk, and was watching her. Perhaps it was the thought
+of how he had loved her that afternoon by the windmill that had brought
+him close to her chair again. She was aware of his nearness, and closed
+her eyes for a moment as if she dreaded something. Then she said quickly,
+"Is tea nearly ready, Ed?" and, as he turned to the table, took up the
+book again.
+
+She felt that even to touch that book brought her "warmer." It fell open
+at a page. She did not hear the clatter Ed made at the table, nor yet the
+babble his words had evoked, of the pierrots and banjos and minstrels of
+Margate and Littlehampton. It was to hear a gladder, wilder tumult that
+she sat once more so still, so achingly listening....
+
+_"The earnest trumpet spake, and silver thrills
+From kissing cymbals made a merry din--"_
+
+The words seemed to move on the page. In her eyes another light than the
+firelight seemed to play. Her breast rose, and in her thick white throat
+a little inarticulate sound twanged.
+
+"Eh? Did you speak, Bessie?" Ed asked, stopping in his buttering of
+bread.
+
+"Eh?... No."
+
+In answering, her head had turned for a moment, and she had seen him.
+Suddenly it struck her with force: what a shaving of a man he was!
+Desk-chested, weak-necked, conscious of his little "important" lip
+and chin--yes, he needed a Polytechnic gymnastic course! Then she
+remarked how once, at Margate, she had seen him in the distance, as
+in a hired baggy bathing-dress he had bathed from a machine, in muddy
+water, one of a hundred others, all rather cold, flinging a polo-ball
+about and shouting stridently. "A sound mind in a sound body!"... He
+was rather vain of his neat shoes, too, and doubtless stunted his
+feet; and she had seen the little spot on his neck caused by the
+chafing of his collar-stud.... No, she did not want him to touch her,
+just now at any rate. His touch would be too like a betrayal of another
+touch ... somewhere, sometime, somehow ... in that tantalising dream
+that refused to allow itself either to be fully remembered or quite
+forgotten. What was that dream? What was it?...
+
+She continued to gaze into the fire.
+
+Of a sudden she sprang to her feet with a choked cry of almost animal
+fury. The fool had touched her. Carried away doubtless by the memory of
+that afternoon by the windmill, he had, in passing once more to the
+kettle, crept softly behind her and put a swift burning kiss on the side
+of her neck.
+
+Then he had retreated before her, stumbling against the table and causing
+the cups and saucers to jingle.
+
+The basket-chair tilted up, but righted itself again.
+
+"I told you--I told you--" she choked, her stockish figure shaking with
+rage, "I told you--you--"
+
+He put up his elbow as if to ward off a blow.
+
+"_You_ touch me--_you!--you!_" the words broke from her.
+
+He had put himself farther round the table. He stammered.
+
+"Here--dash it all, Bessie--what is the matter?"
+
+"_You_ touch me!"
+
+"All right," he said sullenly. "I won't touch you again--no fear. I
+didn't know you were such a firebrand. All right, drop it now. I won't
+again. Good Lord!"
+
+Slowly the white fist she had drawn back sank to her side again.
+
+"All right now," he continued to grumble resentfully. "You needn't take
+on so. It's said--I won't touch you again." Then, as if he remembered
+that after all she was ill and must be humoured, he began, while her
+bosom still rose and fell rapidly, to talk with an assumption that
+nothing much had happened. "Come, sit down again, Bessie. The tea's in
+the pot and I'll have it ready in a couple of jiffs. What a ridiculous
+little girl you are, to take on like that!... And I say, listen! That's a
+muffin-bell, and there's a grand fire for toast! You sit down while I run
+out and get 'em. Give me your key, so I can let myself in again--"
+
+He took her key from her bag, caught up his hat, and hastened out.
+
+But she did not sit down again. She was no calmer for his quick
+disappearance. In that moment when he had recoiled from her she had had
+the expression of some handsome and angered snake, its hood puffed, ready
+to strike. She stood dazed; one would have supposed that that ill-advised
+kiss of his had indeed been the Master Word she sought, the Word she felt
+approaching, the Word to which the objects of the Museum, the book, that
+rustle of a sea she had never seen, had been but the ever "warming"
+stages. Some merest trifle stood between her and those elfin cries,
+between her and that thin golden mist in which faintly seen shapes seemed
+to move--shapes almost of tossed arms, waving, brandishing objects
+strangely all but familiar. That roaring of the sea was not the rushing
+of her own blood in her ears, that rosy flush not the artificial glow of
+the cheap red lampshade. The shapes were almost as plain as if she saw
+them in some clear but black mirror, the sounds almost as audible as if
+she heard them through some not very thick muffling....
+
+"Quick--the book," she muttered.
+
+But even as she stretched out her hand for it, again came that solemn
+sound of warning. As if something sought to stay it, she had deliberately
+to thrust her hand forward. Again the high dinning calls of "Hasten!
+Hasten!" were mingled with that deeper "Beware!" She knew in her soul
+that, once over that terrible edge, the Dream would become the Reality
+and the Reality the Dream. She knew nothing of the fluidity of the thing
+called Personality--not a thing at all, but a state, a balance, a
+relation, a resultant of forces so delicately in equilibrium that a
+touch, and--pff!--the horror of Formlessness rushed over all.
+
+As she hesitated a new light appeared in the chamber. Within the frame of
+the small square window, beyond the ragged line of the chimney-cowls,
+an edge of orange brightness showed. She leaned forward. It was the full
+moon, rusty and bloated and flattened by the earth-mist.
+
+The next moment her hand had clutched at the book.
+
+_"Whence came ye, merry Damsels! Whence came ye
+So many, and so many, and such glee?
+Why have ye left your bowers desolate,
+      Your lutes, and gentler fate?
+'We follow Bacchus, Bacchus on the wing A-conquering!
+Bacchus, young Bacchus! Good or ill betide
+We dance before him thorough kingdoms wide!
+Come hither, Lady fair, and joined be
+      To our wild minstrelsy!'"_
+
+There was an instant in which darkness seemed to blot out all else; then
+it rolled aside, and in a blaze of brightness was gone. It was gone, and
+she stood face to face with her Dream, that for two thousand years had
+slumbered in the blood of her and her line. She stood, with mouth agape
+and eyes that hailed, her thick throat full of suppressed clamour. The
+other was the Dream now, and these!... they came down, mad and noisy
+and bright--Maenades, Thyades, satyrs, fauns--naked, in hides of beasts,
+ungirded, dishevelled, wreathed and garlanded, dancing, singing,
+shouting. The thudding of their hooves shook the ground, and the clash of
+their timbrels and the rustling of their thyrsi filled the air. They
+brandished frontal bones, the dismembered quarters of kids and goats;
+they struck the bronze cantharus, they tossed the silver obba up aloft.
+Down a cleft of rocks and woods they came, trooping to a wide seashore
+with the red of the sunset behind them. She saw the evening light on the
+sleek and dappled hides, the gilded ivory and rich brown of their legs
+and shoulders, the white of inner arms held up on high, their wide red
+mouths, the quivering of the twin flesh-gouts on the necks of the leaping
+fauns. And, shutting out the glimpse of sky at the head of the deep
+ravine, the god himself descended, with his car full of drunken girls who
+slept with the serpents coiled about them.
+
+Shouting and moaning and frenzied, leaping upon one another with
+libidinous laughter and beating one another with the half-stripped
+thyrsi, they poured down to the yellow sands and the anemonied pools of
+the shore. They raced to the water, that gleamed pale as nacre in the
+deepening twilight in the eye of the evening star. They ran along its
+edge over their images in the wet sands, calling their lost companion.
+
+"Hasten, hasten!" they cried; and one of them, a young man with a torso
+noble as the dawn and shoulder-lines strong as those of the eternal
+hills, ran here and there calling her name.
+
+"Louder, louder!" she called back in an ecstasy.
+
+Something dropped and tinkled against the fender. It was one of her
+hairpins. One side of her hair was in a loose tumble; she threw up the
+small head on the superb thick neck.
+
+"Louder!--I cannot hear! Once more--"
+
+The throwing up of her head that had brought down the rest of her hair
+had given her a glimpse of herself in the glass over the mantelpiece. For
+the last time that formidable "Beware!" sounded like thunder in her ears;
+the next moment she had snapped with her fingers the ribbon that was
+cutting into her throbbing throat. He with the torso and those shoulders
+was seeking her ... how should he know her in that dreary garret, in
+those joyless habiliments? He would as soon known his Own in that
+crimson-bodiced, wire-framed dummy by the window yonder!...
+
+Her fingers clutched at the tawdry mercerised silk of her blouse. There
+was a rip, and her arms and throat were free. She panted as she tugged
+at something that gave with a short "click-click," as of steel
+fastenings; something fell against the fender.... These also.... She tore
+at them, and kicked them as they lay about her feet as leaves lie about
+the trunk of a tree in autumn....
+
+"Ah!"
+
+And as she stood there, as if within the screen of a spectrum that
+deepened to the band of red, her eyes fell on the leopard-skin at her
+feet. She caught it up, and in doing so saw purple grapes--purple
+grapes that issued from the mouth of a paper bag on the table. With the
+dappled pelt about her she sprang forward. The juice spurted through them
+into the mass of her loosened hair. Down her body there was a spilth of
+seeds and pulp. She cried hoarsely aloud.
+
+"Once more--oh, answer me! Tell me my name!"
+
+Ed's steps were heard on the oilclothed portion of the staircase.
+
+"My name--oh, my name!" she cried in an agony of suspense.... "Oh, they
+will not wait for me! They have lighted the torches--they run up and down
+the shore with torches--oh, cannot you see me?..."
+
+Suddenly she dashed to the chair on which the litter of linings and
+tissue-paper lay. She caught up a double handful and crammed them on the
+fire. They caught and flared. There was a call upon the stairs, and the
+sound of somebody mounting in haste.
+
+"Once--once only--my name!"
+
+The soul of the Bacchante rioted, struggled to escape from her eyes. Then
+as the door was flung open, she heard, and gave a terrifying shout of
+recognition.
+
+"I hear--I almost hear--but once more.... IO! _Io, Io, Io!_"
+
+Ed, in the doorway, stood for one moment agape; the next, ignorant of the
+full purport of his own words--ignorant that though man may come
+westwards he may yet bring his worship with him--ignorant that to make
+the Dream the Reality and the Reality the Dream is Heaven's dreadfullest
+favour--and ignorant that, that Edge once crossed, there is no return to
+the sanity and sweetness and light that are only seen clearly in the
+moment when they are lost for ever--he had dashed down the stairs crying
+in a voice hoarse and high with terror:
+
+"She's mad! She's mad!"
+
+
+
+
+THE ACCIDENT
+
+
+I
+
+The street had not changed so much but that, little by little, its
+influence had come over Romarin again; and as the clock a street or two
+away had struck seven he had stood, his hands folded on his stick, first
+curious, then expectant, and finally, as the sound had died away, oddly
+satisfied in his memory. The clock had a peculiar chime, a rather
+elaborate one, ending inconclusively on the dominant and followed after
+an unusually long interval by the stroke of the hour itself. Not until
+its last vibration had become too subtle for his ear had Romarin resumed
+the occupation that the pealing of the hour had interrupted.
+
+It was an occupation that especially tended to abstraction of mind--the
+noting in detail of the little things of the street that he had forgotten
+with such completeness that they awakened only tardy responses in his
+memory now that his eyes rested on them again. The shape of a
+doorknocker, the grouping of an old chimney-stack, the crack, still
+there, in a flagstone--somewhere deep in the past these things had
+associations; but they lay very deep, and the disturbing of them gave
+Romarin a curious, desolate feeling, as of returning to things he had
+long out-grown.
+
+But, as he continued to stare at the objects, the sluggish memories
+roused more and more; and for each bit of the old that reasserted itself
+scores of yards of the new seemed to disappear. New shop-frontages went;
+a wall, brought up flush where formerly a recess had been, became the
+recess once more; the intermittent electric sign at the street's end,
+that wrote in green and crimson the name of a whiskey across a lamp-lit
+facade, ceased to worry his eyes; and the unfamiliar new front of the
+little restaurant he was passing and repassing took on its old and
+well-known aspect again.
+
+Seven o'clock. He had thought, in dismissing his hansom, that it had been
+later. His appointment was not until a quarter past. But he decided
+against entering the restaurant and waiting inside; seeing who his guest
+was, it would be better to wait at the door. By the light of the
+restaurant window he corrected his watch, and then sauntered a few yards
+along the street, to where men were moving flats of scenery from a back
+door of the new theatre into a sort of tumbril. The theatre was twenty
+years old, but to Romarin it was "the new theatre." There had been no
+theatre there in his day.
+
+In his day!... His day had been twice twenty years before. Forty years
+before, that street, that quarter, had been bound up in his life. He had
+not, forty years ago, been the famous painter, honoured, decorated, taken
+by the arm by monarchs; he had been a student, wild and raw as any, with
+that tranquil and urbane philosophy that had made his success still in
+abeyance within him. As his eyes had rested on the doorknocker next to
+the restaurant a smile had crossed his face. How had _that_ door-knocker
+come to be left by the old crowd that had wrenched off so many others? By
+what accident had _that_ survived, to bring back all the old life now so
+oddly? He stood, again smiling, his hands folded on his stick. A Crown
+Prince had given him that stick, and had had it engraved, "To my Friend,
+Romarin."
+
+"You oughtn't to be here, you know," he said to the door-knocker. "If I
+didn't get you, Marsden ought to have done so...."
+
+It was Marsden whom Romarin had come to meet--Marsden, of whom he had
+thought with such odd persistency lately. Marsden was the only man in the
+world between whom and himself lay as much as the shadow of an enmity;
+and even that faint shadow was now passing. One does not guard, for forty
+years, animosities that take their rise in quick outbreaks of the young
+blood; and, now that Romarin came to think of it, he hadn't really hated
+Marsden for more than a few months. It had been within those very doors
+(Romarin was passing the restaurant again) that there had been that quick
+blow, about a girl, and the tables had been pushed hastily back, and he
+and Marsden had fought, while the other fellows had kept the waiters
+away.... And Romarin was now sixty-four, and Marsden must be a year
+older, and the girl--who knew?--probably dead long ago ... Yes, time
+heals these things, thank God; and Romarin had felt a genuine flush of
+pleasure when Marsden had accepted his invitation to dinner.
+
+But--Romarin looked at his watch again--it was rather like Marsden to be
+late. Marsden had always been like that--had come and gone pretty much as
+he had pleased, regardless of inconvenience to others. But, doubtless, he
+had had to walk. If all reports were true, Marsden had not made very much
+of his life in the way of worldly success, and Romarin, sorry to hear it,
+had wished he could give him a leg-up. Even a good man cannot do much
+when the current of his life sets against him in a tide of persistent
+ill-luck, and Romarin, honoured and successful, yet knew that he had been
+one of the lucky ones....
+
+But it was just like Marsden to be late, for all that.
+
+At first Romarin did not recognise him when he turned the corner of the
+street and walked towards him. He hadn't made up his mind beforehand
+exactly how he had expected Marsden to look, but he was conscious that he
+didn't look it. It was not the short stubble of grey beard, so short that
+it seemed to hesitate between beard and unshavenness; it was not the
+figure nor carriage--clothes alter that, and the clothes of the man who
+was advancing to meet Romarin were, to put it bluntly, shabby; nor was
+it... but Romarin did not know what it was in the advancing figure that
+for the moment found no response in his memory. He was already within
+half a dozen yards of the men who were moving the scenery from the
+theatre into the tumbril, and one of the workmen put up his hand as the
+edge of a fresh "wing" appeared....
+
+But at the sound of his voice the same thing happened that had happened
+when the clock had struck seven. Romarin found himself suddenly
+expectant, attentive, and then again curiously satisfied in his memory.
+Marsden's voice at least had not changed; it was as in the old days--a
+little envious, sarcastic, accepting lower interpretations somewhat
+willingly, somewhat grudging of better ones. It completed the taking back
+of Romarin that the chiming of the clock, the doorknocker, the grouping
+of the chimney-stack and the crack in the flagstone had begun.
+
+"Well, my distinguished Academician, my--"
+
+Marsden's voice sounded across the group of scene-shifters...
+
+"_'Alf_ a mo, _if_ you please, guv'nor," said another voice...
+
+For a moment the painted "wing" shut them off from one another.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In that moment Romarin's accident befell him. If its essential nature is
+related in arbitrary terms, it is that there are no other terms to relate
+it in. It is a decoded cipher, which can be restored to its cryptic form
+as Romarin subsequently restored it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As the painter took Marsden's arm and entered the restaurant, he noticed
+that while the outside of the place still retained traces of the old, its
+inside was entirely new. Its cheap glittering wall-mirrors, that gave a
+false impression of the actual size of the place, its Loves and
+Shepherdesses painted in the style of the carts of the vendors of
+ice-cream, its hat-racks and its four-bladed propeller that set the air
+slowly in motion at the farther end of the room, might all have been
+matched in a dozen similar establishments within hail of a cab-whistle.
+Its gelatine-written menu-cards announced that one might dine there _a
+la carte_ or _table d'hote_ for two shillings. Neither the cooking nor
+the service had influenced Romarin in his choice of a place to dine at.
+
+He made a gesture to the waiter who advanced to help him on with his coat
+that Marsden was to be assisted first; but Marsden, with a grunted "All
+right," had already helped himself. A glimpse of the interior of the coat
+told Romarin why Marsden kept waiters at arm's-length. A little twinge of
+compunction took him that his own overcoat should be fur-collared and
+lined with silk.
+
+They sat down at a corner table not far from the slowly moving
+four-bladed propeller.
+
+"Now we can talk," Romarin said. "I'm glad, glad to see you again,
+Marsden."
+
+It was a peculiarly vicious face that he saw, corrugated about the brows,
+and with stiff iron-grey hair untrimmed about the ears. It shocked
+Romarin a little; he had hardly looked to see certain things so
+accentuated by the passage of time. Romarin's own brow was high and bald
+and benign, and his beard was like a broad shield of silver.
+
+"You're glad, are you?" said Marsden, as they sat down facing one
+another. "Well, I'm glad--to be seen with you. It'll revive my credit a
+bit. There's a fellow across there has recognised you already by your
+photographs in the papers.... I assume I may...?"
+
+He made a little upward movement of his hand. It was a gin and
+bitters Marsden assumed he might have. Romarin ordered it; he himself
+did not take one. Marsden tossed down the _aperitif_ at one gulp; then
+he reached for his roll, pulled it to pieces, and--Romarin remembered
+how in the old days Marsden had always eaten bread like that--began to
+throw bullets of bread into his mouth. Formerly this habit had irritated
+Romarin intensely; now ... well, well, Life uses some of us better than
+others. Small blame to these if they throw up the struggle. Marsden, poor
+devil ... but the arrival of the soup interrupted Romarin's meditation.
+He consulted the violet-written card, ordered the succeeding courses, and
+the two men ate for some minutes in silence.
+
+"Well," said Romarin presently, pushing away his plate and wiping his
+white moustache, "are you still a Romanticist, Marsden?"
+
+Marsden, who had tucked his napkin between two of the buttons of his
+frayed waistcoat, looked suspiciously across the glass with the dregs of
+the gin and bitters that he had half raised to his lips.
+
+"Eh?" he said. "I say, Romarin, don't let's go grave-digging among
+memories merely for the sake of making conversation. Yours may be
+pleasant, but I'm not in the habit of wasting much time over mine.
+Might as well be making new ones ... I'll drink whiskey and soda."
+
+It was brought, a large one; and Marsden, nodding, took a deep gulp.
+
+"Health," he said.
+
+"Thanks," said Romarin--instantly noting that the monosyllable, which
+matched the other's in curtness, was not at all the reply he had
+intended. "Thank you--yours," he amended; and a short pause followed, in
+which fish was brought.
+
+This was not what Romarin had hoped for. He had desired to be reconciled
+with Marsden, not merely to be allowed to pay for his dinner. Yet if
+Marsden did not wish to talk it was difficult not to defer to his wish.
+It was true that he had asked if Marsden was still a Romanticist largely
+for the sake of something to say; but Marsden's prompt pointing out of
+this was not encouraging. Now that he came to think of it, he had never
+known precisely what Marsden had meant by the word "Romance" he had so
+frequently taken into his mouth; he only knew that this creed of
+Romanticism, whatever it was, had been worn rather challengingly, a chip
+on the shoulder, to be knocked off at some peril or other. And it had
+seemed to Romarin a little futile in the violence with which it had been
+maintained ... But that was neither here nor there. The point was, that
+the conversation had begun not very happily, and must be mended at once
+if at all. To mend it, Romarin leaned across the table.
+
+"Be as friendly as I am, Marsden," he said. "I think--pardon me--that if
+our positions were reversed, and I saw in you the sincere desire to help
+that I have, I'd take it in the right way." Again Marsden looked
+suspiciously at him. "To help? How to help?" he demanded "That's what I
+should like you to tell me. But I suppose (for example) you still work?"
+
+"Oh, my work!" Marsden made a little gesture of contempt. "Try again,
+Romarin."
+
+"You don't do any?... Come, I'm no bad friend to my friends, and you'll
+find me--especially so."
+
+But Marsden put up his hand.
+
+"Not quite so quickly," he said. "Let's see what you mean by help first.
+Do you really mean that you want me to borrow money from you? That's help
+as I understand it nowadays."
+
+"Then you've changed," said Romarin--wondering, however, in his secret
+heart whether Marsden had changed very much in that respect after all.
+
+Marsden gave a short honk of a laugh.
+
+"You didn't suppose I hadn't changed, did you?" Then he leaned suddenly
+forward. "This is rather a mistake, Romarin--rather a mistake," he said.
+
+"What is?"
+
+"This--our meeting again. Quite a mistake."
+
+Romarin sighed. "I had hoped not," he said.
+
+Marsden leaned forward again, with another gesture Romarin remembered
+very well--dinner knife in hand, edge and palm upwards, punctuating
+and expounding with the point.
+
+"I tell you, it's a mistake," he said, knife and hand balanced. "You
+can't reopen things like this. You don't really _want_ to reopen them;
+you only want to reopen certain of them; you want to pick and choose
+among things, to approve and disapprove. There must have been somewhere
+or other something in me you didn't altogether dislike--I can't for the
+life of me think what it was, by the way; and you want to lay stress on
+that and to sink the rest. Well, you can't. I won't let you. I'll not
+submit my life to you like that. If you want to go into things, all
+right; but it must be all or none. And I'd like another drink."
+
+He put the knife down with a little clap as Romarin beckoned to the
+waiter.
+
+There was distress on Romarin's face. He was not conscious of having
+adopted a superior attitude. But again he told himself that he must make
+allowances. Men who don't come off in Life's struggle are apt to be
+touchy, and he was; after all, the same old Marsden, the man with whom he
+desired to be at peace.
+
+"Are you quite fair to me?" he asked presently, in a low voice.
+
+Again the knife was taken up and its point advanced.
+
+"Yes, I am," said Marsden in a slightly raised voice; and he indicated
+with the knife the mirror at the end of the table. "You know you've done
+well, and I, to all appearances, haven't; you can't look at that glass
+and not know it. But I've followed the line of my development too, no
+less logically than you. My life's been mine, and I'm not going to
+apologise for it to a single breathing creature. More, I'm proud of it.
+At least, there's been singleness of intention about it. So I think I'm
+strictly fair in pointing that out when you talk about helping me."
+
+"Perhaps so, perhaps so," Romarin agreed a little sadly. "It's your tone
+more than anything else that makes things a little difficult. Believe me,
+I've no end in my mind except pure friendliness."
+
+"No-o-o," said Marsden--a long "no" that seemed to deliberate, to
+examine, and finally to admit. "No. I believe that. And you usually get
+what you set out for. Oh yes. I've watched your rise--I've made a point
+of watching it. It's been a bit at a time, but you've got there. You're
+that sort. It's on your forehead--your destiny."
+
+Romarin smiled.
+
+"Hallo, that's new, isn't it?" he said. "It wasn't your habit to talk
+much about destiny, if I remember rightly. Let me see; wasn't this more
+your style--'will, passion, laughs-at-impossibilities and says,' et
+cetera--and so forth? Wasn't that it? With always the suspicion not far
+away that you did things more from theoretical conviction than real
+impulse after all?"
+
+A dispassionate observer would have judged that the words went somewhere
+near home. Marsden was scraping together with the edge of his knife the
+crumbs of his broken roll. He scraped them into a little square, and then
+trimmed the corners. Not until the little pile was shaped to his liking
+did he look surlily up.
+
+"Let it rest, Romarin," he said curtly. "Drop it," he added. "Let it
+alone. If I begin to talk like that, too, we shall only cut one another
+up. Clink glasses--there--and let it alone."
+
+Mechanically Romarin clinked; but his bald brow was perplexed.
+
+"'Cut one another up?'" he repeated.
+
+"Yes. Let it alone."
+
+"'Cut one another up?'" he repeated once more. "You puzzle me entirely."
+
+"Well, perhaps I'm altogether wrong. I only wanted to warn you that I've
+dared a good many things in my time. Now drop it."
+
+Romarin had fine brown eyes, under Oriental arched brows. Again they
+noted the singularly vicious look of the man opposite. They were full
+of mistrust and curiosity, and he stroked his silver beard.
+
+"Drop it?" he said slowly ... "No, let's go on. I want to hear more of
+this."
+
+"I'd much rather have another drink in peace and quietness.... Waiter!"
+
+Either leaned back in his chair, surveying the other. "You're a perverse
+devil still," was Romarin's thought. Marsden's, apparently, was of
+nothing but the whiskey and soda the waiter had gone to fetch.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Romarin was inclined to look askance at a man who could follow up a gin
+and bitters with three or four whiskeys and soda without turning a hair.
+It argued the seasoned cask. Marsden had bidden the waiter leave the
+bottle and the syphon on the table, and was already mixing himself
+another stiff peg.
+
+"Well," he said, "since you will have it so--to the old days."
+
+"To the old days," said Romarin, watching him gulp it down.
+
+"Queer, looking back across all that time at 'em, isn't it? How do you
+feel about it?"
+
+"In a mixed kind of way, I think; the usual thing: pleasure and regret
+mingled."
+
+"Oh, you have regrets, have you?"
+
+"For certain things, yes. Not, let me say, my turn-up with you, Marsden,"
+he laughed. "That's why I chose the old place--" he gave a glance
+round at its glittering newness. "Do you happen to remember what all that
+was about? I've only the vaguest idea."
+
+Marsden gave him a long look. "That all?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, I remember in a sort of way. That 'Romantic' soap-bubble of yours
+was really at the bottom of it, I suspect. Tell me," he smiled, "did you
+really suppose Life could be lived on those mad lines you used to lay
+down?"
+
+"My life," said Marsden calmly, "has been."
+
+"Not literally."
+
+"Literally."
+
+"You mean to say that you haven't outgrown _that_?"
+
+"I hope not."
+
+Romarin had thrown up his handsome head. "Well, well!" he murmured
+incredulously.
+
+"Why 'well, well'?" Marsden demanded.... "But, of course, you never did
+and never will know what I meant."
+
+"By Romance? ... No, I can't say that I did; but as I conceived it, it
+was something that began in appetite and ended in diabetes."
+
+"Not philosophic, eh?" Marsden inquired, picking up a chicken bone.
+
+"Highly unphilosophic," said Romarin, shaking his head.
+
+"Hm!" grunted Marsden, stripping the bone... "Well, I grant it pays in a
+different way."
+
+"It does pay, then?" Romarin asked.
+
+"Oh yes, it pays."
+
+The restaurant had filled up. It was one frequented by young artists,
+musicians, journalists and the clingers to the rather frayed fringes of
+the Arts. From time to time heads were turned to look at Romarin's portly
+and handsome figure, which the Press, the Regent Street photographic
+establishments, and the Academy Supplements had made well known. The
+plump young Frenchwoman within the glazed cash office near the door,
+at whom Marsden had several times glanced in a way at which Romarin had
+frowned, was aware of the honour done the restaurant; and several times
+the blond-bearded proprietor had advanced and inquired with concern
+whether the dinner and the service was to the liking of M'sieu.
+
+And the eyes that were turned to Romarin plainly wondered who the
+scallawag dining with him might be.
+
+Since Romarin had chosen that their conversation should be of the old
+days, and without picking and choosing, Marsden was quite willing that
+it should be so. Again he was casting the bullets of bread into his
+mouth, and again Romarin was conscious of irritation. Marsden, too,
+noticed it; but in awaiting the _roti_ he still continued to roll and
+bolt the pellets, washing them down with gulps of whiskey and soda.
+
+"Oh yes, it paid," he resumed. "Not in that way, of course--" he
+indicated the head, quickly turned away again, of an aureoled youngster
+with a large bunch of black satin tie, "--not in admiration of that
+sort, but in other ways--"
+
+"Tell me about it."
+
+"Certainly, if you want it. But you're my host. Won't you let me hear
+your side of it all first?"
+
+"But I thought you said you knew that--had followed my career?"
+
+"So I have. It's not your list of honours and degrees; let me see, what
+are you? R.A., D.C.L., Doctor of Literature, whatever that means, and
+Professor of this, that, and the other, and not at the end of it yet. I
+know all that. I don't say you haven't earned it; I admire your painting;
+but it's not that. I want to know what it _feels_ like to be up there
+where you are."
+
+It was a childish question, and Romarin felt foolish in trying to answer
+it. Such things were the things the adoring aureoled youngster a table or
+two away would have liked to ask. Romarin recognised in Marsden the old
+craving for sensation; it was part of the theoretical creed Marsden had
+made for himself, of doing things, not for their own sakes, but in order
+that he might have done them. Of course, it had appeared to a fellow like
+that, that Romarin himself had always had a calculated end in view; he
+had not; Marsden merely measured Romarin's peck out of his own bushel. It
+had been Marsden who, in self-consciously seeking his own life, had lost
+it, and Romarin was more than a little inclined to suspect that the
+vehemence with which he protested that he had not lost it was precisely
+the measure of the loss.
+
+But he essayed it--essayed to give Marsden a _resume_ of his career. He
+told him of the stroke of sheer luck that had been the foundation of it
+all, the falling ill of another painter who had turned over certain
+commissions to him. He told him of his poor but happy marriage, and of
+the windfall, not large, but timely, that had come to his wife. He told
+him of fortunate acquaintanceships happily cultivated, of his first
+important commission, of the fresco that had procured for him his
+Associateship, of his sale to the Chantrey, and of his quietly
+remunerative Visitorships and his work on Boards and Committees.
+
+And as he talked, Marsden drew his empty glass to him, moistened his
+finger with a little spilt liquid, and began to run the finger round the
+rim of the glass. They had done that formerly, a whole roomful of them,
+producing, when each had found the note of his instrument, a high, thin,
+intolerable singing. To this singing Romarin strove to tell his tale.
+
+But that thin and bat-like note silenced him. He ended lamely, with some
+empty generalisation on success.
+
+"Ah, but success in what?" Marsden demanded, interrupting his playing on
+the glass for a moment.
+
+"In your aim, whatever it may be."
+
+"Ah!" said Marsden, resuming his performance.
+
+Romarin had sought in his recital to minimise differences in
+circumstances; but Marsden seemed bent on aggravating them. He had the
+miserable advantage of the man who has nothing to lose. And bit by bit,
+Romarin had begun to realise that he was going considerably more than
+halfway to meet this old enemy of his, and that amity seemed as far on as
+ever. In his heart he began to feel the foreknowledge that their meeting
+could have no conclusion. He hated the man, the look of his face and the
+sound of his voice, as much as ever.
+
+The proprietor approached with profoundest apology in his attitude.
+M'sieu would pardon him, but the noise of the glass ... it was
+annoying ... another M'sieu had made complaint....
+
+"Eh?..." cried Marsden. "Oh, that! Certainly! It can be put to a much
+better purpose."
+
+He refilled the glass.
+
+The liquor had begun to tell on him. A quarter of the quantity would have
+made a clean-living man incapably drunk, but it had only made Marsden's
+eyes bright. He gave a sarcastic laugh.
+
+"And is that all?" he asked.
+
+Romarin replied shortly that that was all.
+
+"You've missed out the R.A., and the D.C.L."
+
+"Then let me add that I'm a Doctor of Civil Law and a full Member of the
+Royal Academy," said Romarin, almost at the end of his patience. "And
+now, since you don't think much of it, may I hear your own account?"
+
+"Oh, by all means. I don't know, however, that--" he broke off to throw a
+glance at a woman who had just entered the restaurant--a divesting glance
+that caused Romarin to redden to his crown and drop his eyes. "I was
+going to say that you may think as little of my history as I do of yours.
+Supple woman that; when the rather scraggy blonde does take it into her
+head to be a devil she's the worst kind there is...."
+
+Without apology Romarin looked at his watch.
+
+"All right," said Marsden, smiling, "for what _I've_ got out of life,
+then. But I warn you, it's entirely discreditable."
+
+Romarin did not doubt it.
+
+"But it's mine, and I boast of it. I've done--barring receiving honours
+and degrees--everything--everything! If there's anything I haven't done,
+tell me and lend me a sovereign, and I'll go and do it."
+
+"You haven't told the story."
+
+"That's so. Here goes then ... Well, you know, unless you've forgotten,
+how I began...."
+
+Fruit and nutshells and nutcrackers lay on the table between them, and at
+the end of it, shielded from draughts by the menu cards, the coffee
+apparatus simmered over its elusive blue flame. Romarin was taking the
+rind from a pear with a table-knife, and Marsden had declined port in
+favour of a small golden liqueur of brandy. Every seat in the restaurant
+was now occupied, and the proprietor himself had brought his finest
+cigarettes and cigars. The waiter poured out the coffee, and departed
+with the apparatus in one hand and his napkin in the other.
+
+Marsden was already well into his tale...
+
+The frightful unction with which he told it appalled Romarin. It was as
+he had said--there was nothing he had not done and did not exult in with
+a sickening exultation. It had, indeed, ended in diabetes. In the pitiful
+hunting down of sensation to the last inch he had been fiendishly
+ingenious and utterly unimaginative. His unholy curiosity had spared
+nothing, his unnatural appetite had known no truth. It was grinning sin.
+The details of it simply cannot be told....
+
+And his vanity in it all was prodigious. Romarin was pale as he listened.
+What! In order that _this_ malignant growth in Society's breast should
+be able to say "I know," had sanctities been profaned, sweet conventions
+assailed, purity blackened, soundness infected, and all that was bright
+and of the day been sunk in the quagmire that this creature of the night
+had called--yes, stilled called--by the gentle name of Romance? Yes,
+so it had been. Not only had men and women suffered dishonour, but
+manhood and womanhood and the clean institutions by which alone the
+creature was suffered to exist had been brought to shame. And what was he
+to look at when it was all done?...
+
+"Romance--Beauty--the Beauty of things as they are!" he croaked.
+
+If faces in the restaurant were now turned to Romarin, it was the horror
+on Romarin's own face that drew them. He drew out his handkerchief and
+mopped his brow.
+
+"But," he stammered presently, "you are speaking of
+generalities--horrible theories--things diabolically conceivable
+to be done--"
+
+"What?" cried Marsden, checked for a moment in his horrible triumph. "No,
+by God! I've done 'em, done 'em! Don't you understand? If you don't,
+question me!..."
+
+"No, no!" cried Romarin.
+
+"But I say yes! You came for this, and you shall have it! I tried to stop
+you, but you wanted it, and by God you shall have it! You think your
+life's been full and mine empty? Ha ha!... Romance! I had the conviction
+of it, and I've had the courage too! I haven't told you a tenth of it!
+What would you like? Chamber-windows when Love was hot? The killing of a
+man who stood in my way? (I've fought a duel, and killed.) The squeezing
+of the juice out of life like _that_?" He pointed to Romarin's plate;
+Romarin had been eating grapes. "Did you find me saying I'd do a thing
+and then drawing back from it when we--" he made a quick gesture of both
+hands towards the middle of the restaurant floor.
+
+"When we fought--?"
+
+"Yes, when we fought, here!... Oh no, oh no! I've lived, I tell you,
+every moment! Not a title, not a degree, but I've lived such a life as
+you never dreamed of--!"
+
+"Thank God--"
+
+But suddenly Marsden's voice, which had risen, dropped again. He began to
+shake with interior chuckles. They were the old, old chuckles, and they
+filled Romarin with a hatred hardly to be borne. The sound of the
+animal's voice had begun it, and his every word, look, movement,
+gesture, since they had entered the restaurant, had added to it. And he
+was now chuckling, chuckling, shaking with chuckles, as if some
+monstrous tit-bit still remained to be told. Already Romarin had tossed
+aside his napkin, beckoned to the waiter, and said, "M'sieu dines
+with me...."
+
+"Ho ho ho ho!" came the drunken sounds. "It's a long time since M'sieu
+dined here with his old friend Romarin! Do you remember the last time? Do
+you remember it? _Pif, pan_! Two smacks across the table, Romarin--oh,
+you got it in very well!--and then, _brrrrr_! quick! Back with the
+tables--all the fellows round--Farquharson for me and Smith for you, and
+then to it, Romarin!... And you really don't remember what it was all
+about?..."
+
+Romarin had remembered. His face was not the face of the philosophic
+master of Life now.
+
+"You said she shouldn't--little Pattie Hines you know--you said she
+shouldn't--"
+
+Romarin sprang half from his chair, and brought his fist down on the
+table.
+
+"And by Heaven, she didn't! At least that's one thing you haven't done!"
+
+Marsden too had risen unsteadily.
+
+"Oho, oho? You think that?"
+
+A wild thought flashed across Romarin's brain.
+
+"You mean--?"
+
+"I mean?... Oho, oho! Yes, I mean! She did, Romarin...."
+
+The mirrors, mistily seen through the smoke of half a hundred cigars and
+cigarettes, the Loves and Shepherdesses of the garish walls, the diners
+starting up in their places, all suddenly seemed to swing round in a
+great half-circle before Romarin's eyes. The next moment, feeling as if
+he stood on something on which he found it difficult to keep his balance,
+he had caught up the table-knife with which he had peeled the pear and
+had struck at the side of Marsden's neck. The rounded blade snapped, but
+he struck again with the broken edge, and left the knife where it
+entered. The table appeared uptilted almost vertical; over it Marsden's
+head disappeared; it was followed by a shower of glass, cigars,
+artificial flowers and the tablecloth at which he clutched; and the
+dirty American cloth of the table top was left bare.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But the edge behind which Marsden's face had disappeared remained
+vertical. A group of scene-shifters were moving a flat of scenery from a
+theatre into a tumbril-like cart...
+
+And Romarin knew that, past, present, and future, he had seen it all in
+an instant, and that Marsden stood behind that painted wing.
+
+And he knew, too, that he had only to wait until that flat passed and to
+take Marsden's arm and enter the restaurant, _and it would be so_. A
+drowning man is said to see all in one unmeasurable instant of time; a
+year-long dream is but, they say, an instantaneous arrangement in the
+moment of waking of the molecules we associate with ideas; and the past
+of history and the future of prophecy are folded up in the mystic moment
+we call the present....
+
+_It would come true_....
+
+For one moment Romarin stood; the next, he had turned and run for his
+life.
+
+At the corner of the street he collided with a loafer, and only the wall
+saved them from going down. Feverishly Romarin plunged his hand into his
+pocket and brought out a handful of silver. He crammed it into the
+loafer's hand.
+
+"Here--quick--take it!" he gasped. "There's a man there, by that
+restaurant door--he's waiting for Mr. Romarin--tell him--tell him--tell
+him Mr. Romarin's had an accident--"
+
+And he dashed away, leaving the man looking at the silver in his palm.
+
+
+
+
+THE CIGARETTE CASE
+
+
+"A cigarette, Loder?" I said, offering my case. For the moment Loder was
+not smoking; for long enough he had not been talking.
+
+"Thanks," he replied, taking not only the cigarette, but the case also.
+The others went on talking; Loder became silent again; but I noticed
+that he kept my cigarette case in his hand, and looked at it from time to
+time with an interest that neither its design nor its costliness seemed
+to explain. Presently I caught his eye.
+
+"A pretty case," he remarked, putting it down on the table. "I once had
+one exactly like it."
+
+I answered that they were in every shop window.
+
+"Oh yes," he said, putting aside any question of rarity.... "I lost
+mine."
+
+"Oh?..."
+
+He laughed. "Oh, that's all right--I got it back again--don't be afraid
+I'm going to claim yours. But the way I lost it--found it--the whole
+thing--was rather curious. I've never been able to explain it. I wonder
+if you could?"
+
+I answered that I certainly couldn't till I'd heard it, whereupon Loder,
+taking up the silver case again and holding it in his hand as he talked,
+began:
+
+"This happened in Provence, when I was about as old as Marsham there--and
+every bit as romantic. I was there with Carroll--you remember poor old
+Carroll and what a blade of a boy he was--as romantic as four Marshams
+rolled into one. (Excuse me, Marsham, won't you? It's a romantic tale,
+you see, or at least the setting is.) ... We were in Provence, Carroll
+and I; twenty-four or thereabouts; romantic, as I say; and--and this
+happened.
+
+"And it happened on the top of a whole lot of other things, you must
+understand, the things that do happen when you're twenty-four. If it
+hadn't been Provence, it would have been somewhere else, I suppose,
+nearly, if not quite as good; but this was Provence, that smells (as you
+might say) of twenty-four as it smells of argelasse and wild lavender and
+broom....
+
+"We'd had the dickens of a walk of it, just with knapsacks--had started
+somewhere in the Ardeche and tramped south through the vines and almonds
+and olives--Montelimar, Orange, Avignon, and a fortnight at that blanched
+skeleton of a town, Les Baux. We'd nothing to do, and had gone just where
+we liked, or rather just where Carroll had liked; and Carroll had had the
+_De Bello Gallico_ in his pocket, and had had a notion, I fancy, of
+taking in the whole ground of the Roman conquest--I remember he lugged me
+off to some place or other, Pourrieres I believe its name was, because--I
+forget how many thousands--were killed in a river-bed there, and they
+stove in the water-casks so that if the men wanted water they'd have to
+go forward and fight for it. And then we'd gone on to Arles, where
+Carroll had fallen in love with everything that had a bow of black
+velvet in her hair, and after that Tarascon, Nimes, and so on, the usual
+round--I won't bother you with that. In a word, we'd had two months of
+it, eating almonds and apricots from the trees, watching the women at the
+communal washing-fountains under the dark plane-trees, singing _Magali_
+and the _Que Cantes_, and Carroll yarning away all the time about Caesar
+and Vercingetorix and Dante, and trying to learn Provencal so that he
+could read the stuff in the _Journal des Felibriges_ that he'd never have
+looked at if it had been in English....
+
+"Well, we got to Darbisson. We'd run across some young chap or
+other--Rangon his name was--who was a vine-planter in those parts, and
+Rangon had asked us to spend a couple of days with him, with him and his
+mother, if we happened to be in the neighbourhood. So as we might as
+well happen to be there as anywhere else, we sent him a postcard and
+went. This would be in June or early in July. All day we walked across
+a plain of vines, past hurdles of wattled _cannes_ and great wind-screens
+of velvety cypresses, sixty feet high, all white with dust on the north
+side of 'em, for the mistral was having its three-days' revel, and it
+whistled and roared through the _cannes_ till scores of yards of 'em
+at a time were bowed nearly to the earth. A roaring day it was, I
+remember.... But the wind fell a little late in the afternoon, and we
+were poring over what it had left of our Ordnance Survey--like fools,
+we'd got the unmounted paper maps instead of the linen ones--when Rangon
+himself found us, coming out to meet us in a very badly turned-out trap.
+He drove us back himself, through Darbisson, to the house, a mile and a
+half beyond it, where he lived with his mother.
+
+"He spoke no English, Rangon didn't, though, of course, both French and
+Provencal; and as he drove us, there was Carroll, using him as a
+Franco-Provencal dictionary, peppering him with questions about the names
+of things in the patois--I beg its pardon, the language--though there's
+a good deal of my eye and Betty Martin about that, and I fancy this
+Felibrige business will be in a good many pieces when Frederic Mistral
+is under that Court-of-Love pavilion arrangement he's had put up for
+himself in the graveyard at Maillanne. If the language has got to go,
+well, it's got to go, I suppose; and while I personally don't want to
+give it a kick, I rather sympathise with the Government. Those jaunts of
+a Sunday out to Les Baux, for instance, with paper lanterns and Bengal
+fire and a fellow spouting _O blanche Venus d'Arles_--they're well
+enough, and compare favourably with our Bank Holidays and Sunday League
+picnics, but ... but that's nothing to do with my tale after all.... So
+he drove on, and by the time we got to Rangon's house Carroll had learned
+the greater part of _Magali_....
+
+"As you, no doubt, know, it's a restricted sort of life in some respects
+that a young _vigneron_ lives in those parts, and it was as we reached
+the house that Rangon remembered something--or he might have been trying
+to tell us as we came along for all I know, and not been able to get a
+word in edgeways for Carroll and his Provencal. It seemed that his mother
+was away from home for some days--apologies of the most profound, of
+course; our host was the soul of courtesy, though he did try to get at
+us a bit later.... We expressed our polite regrets, naturally; but I
+didn't quite see at first what difference it made. I only began to see
+when Rangon, with more apologies, told us that we should have to go back
+to Darbisson for dinner. It appeared that when Madame Rangon went away
+for a few days she dispersed the whole of the female side of her
+establishment also, and she'd left her son with nobody to look after
+him except an old man we'd seen in the yard mending one of these
+double-cylindered sulphur-sprinklers they clap across the horse's back
+and drive between the rows of vines.... Rangon explained all this as we
+stood in the hall drinking an _aperitif_--a hall crowded with oak
+furniture and photographs and a cradle-like bread-crib and doors opening
+to right and left to the other rooms of the ground floor. He had also, it
+seemed, to ask us to be so infinitely obliging as to excuse him for one
+hour after dinner--our postcard had come unexpectedly, he said, and
+already he had made an appointment with his agent about the _vendange_
+for the coming autumn.... We, begged him, of course, not to allow us to
+interfere with his business in the slightest degree. He thanked us a
+thousand times.
+
+"'But though we dine in the village, we will take our own wine with us,'
+he said, 'a wine _surfin_--one of my wines--you shall see--'
+
+"Then he showed us round his place--I forget how many hundreds of acres
+of vines, and into the great building with the presses and pumps and
+casks and the huge barrel they call the thunderbolt--and about seven
+o'clock we walked back to Darbisson to dinner, carrying our wine with us.
+I think the restaurant we dined in was the only one in the place, and our
+gaillard of a host--he was a straight-backed, well-set-up chap, with
+rather fine eyes--did us on the whole pretty well. His wine certainly was
+good stuff, and set our tongues going....
+
+"A moment ago I said a fellow like Rangon leads a restricted sort of life
+in those parts. I saw this more clearly as dinner went on. We dined by an
+open window, from which we could see the stream with the planks across it
+where the women washed clothes during the day and assembled in the
+evening for gossip. There were a dozen or so of them there as we dined,
+laughing and chatting in low tones--they all seemed pretty--it was
+quickly falling dusk--all the girls are pretty then, and are quite
+conscious of it--_you_ know, Marsham. Behind them, at the end of the
+street, one of these great cypress wind-screens showed black against the
+sky, a ragged edge something like the line the needle draws on a rainfall
+chart; and you could only tell whether they were men or women under the
+plantains by their voices rippling and chattering and suddenly a deeper
+note.... Once I heard a muffled scuffle and a sound like a kiss.... It
+was then that Rangon's little trouble came out....
+
+"It seemed that he didn't know any girls--wasn't allowed to know any
+girls. The girls of the village were pretty enough, but you see how it
+was--he'd a position to keep up--appearances to maintain--couldn't be
+familiar during the year with the girls who gathered his grapes for him
+in the autumn.... And as soon as Carroll gave him a chance, _he_ began to
+ask _us_ questions, about England, English girls, the liberty they had,
+and so on.
+
+"Of course, we couldn't tell him much he hadn't heard already, but that
+made no difference; he could stand any amount of that, our strapping
+young _vigneron_; and he asked us questions by the dozen, that we both
+tried to answer at once. And his delight and envy!... What! In England
+did the young men see the young women of their own class without
+restraint--the sisters of their friends _meme_--even at the house? Was it
+permitted that they drank tea with them in the afternoon, or went without
+invitation to pass the _soiree_?... He had all the later Prevosts in his
+room, he told us (I don't doubt he had the earlier ones also); Prevost
+and the Disestablishment between them must be playing the mischief
+with the convent system of education for young girls; and our young man
+was--what d'you call it?--'Co-ed'--co-educationalist--by Jove, yes!... He
+seemed to marvel that we should have left a country so blessed as England
+to visit his dusty, wild-lavender-smelling, girl-less Provence.... You
+don't know half your luck, Marsham....
+
+"Well, we talked after this fashion--we'd left the dining-room of the
+restaurant and had planted ourselves on a bench outside with Rangon
+between us--when Rangon suddenly looked at his watch and said it was time
+he was off to see this agent of his. Would we take a walk, he asked us,
+and meet him again there? he said.... But as his agent lived in the
+direction of his own home, we said we'd meet him at the house in an hour
+or so. Off he went, envying every Englishman who stepped, I don't
+doubt.... I told you how old--how young--we were.... Heigho!...
+
+"Well, off goes Rangon, and Carroll and I got up, stretched ourselves,
+and took a walk. We walked a mile or so, until it began to get pretty
+dark, and then turned; and it was as we came into the blackness of one of
+these cypress hedges that the thing I'm telling you of happened. The
+hedge took a sharp turn at that point; as we came round the angle we saw
+a couple of women's figures hardly more than twenty yards ahead--don't
+know how they got there so suddenly, I'm sure; and that same moment I
+found my foot on something small and white and glimmering on the grass.
+
+"I picked it up. It was a handkerchief--a woman's--embroidered--
+
+"The two figures ahead of us were walking in our direction; there was
+every probability that the handkerchief belonged to one of them; so we
+stepped out....
+
+"At my 'Pardon, madame,' and lifted hat one of the figures turned her
+head; then, to my surprise, she spoke in English--cultivated English.
+I held out the handkerchief. It belonged to the elder lady of the two,
+the one who had spoken, a very gentle-voiced old lady, older by very many
+years than her companion. She took the handkerchief and thanked me....
+
+"Somebody--Sterne, isn't it?--says that Englishmen don't travel to see
+Englishmen. I don't know whether he'd stand to that in the case of
+Englishwomen; Carroll and I didn't.... We were walking rather slowly
+along, four abreast across the road; we asked permission to introduce
+ourselves, did so, and received some name in return which, strangely
+enough, I've entirely forgotten--I only remember that the ladies were
+aunt and niece, and lived at Darbisson. They shook their heads when I
+mentioned M. Rangon's name and said we were visiting him. They didn't
+know him....
+
+"I'd never been in Darbisson before, and I haven't been since, so I don't
+know the map of the village very well. But the place isn't very big,
+and the house at which we stopped in twenty minutes or so is probably
+there yet. It had a large double door--a double door in two senses,
+for it was a big _porte-cochere_ with a smaller door inside it, and an
+iron grille shutting in the whole. The gentle-voiced old lady had already
+taken a key from her reticule and was thanking us again for the little
+service of the handkerchief; then, with the little gesture one makes when
+one has found oneself on the point of omitting a courtesy, she gave a
+little musical laugh.
+
+"'But,' she said with a little movement of invitation, 'one sees so
+few compatriots here--if you have the time to come in and smoke a
+cigarette ... also the cigarette,' she added, with another rippling
+laugh, 'for we have few callers, and live alone--'
+
+"Hastily as I was about to accept, Carroll was before me, professing a
+nostalgia for the sound of the English tongue that made his recent
+protestations about Provencal a shameless hypocrisy. Persuasive young
+rascal, Carroll Was--poor chap ... So the elder lady opened the grille
+and the wooden door beyond it, and we entered.
+
+"By the light of the candle which the younger lady took from a bracket
+just within the door we saw that we were in a handsome hall or vestibule;
+and my wonder that Rangon had made no mention of what was apparently a
+considerable establishment was increased by the fact that its tenants
+must be known to be English and could be seen to be entirely charming. I
+couldn't understand it, and I'm afraid hypotheses rushed into my head
+that cast doubts on the Rangons--you know--whether _they_ were all right.
+We knew nothing about our young planter, you see....
+
+"I looked about me. There were tubs here and there against the walls,
+gaily painted, with glossy-leaved aloes and palms in them--one of the
+aloes, I remember, was flowering; a little fountain in the middle made a
+tinkling noise; we put our caps on a carved and gilt console table; and
+before us rose a broad staircase with shallow steps of spotless stone and
+a beautiful wrought-iron handrail. At the top of the staircase were more
+palms and aloes, and double doors painted in a clear grey.
+
+"We followed our hostesses up the staircase. I can hear yet the sharp
+clean click our boots made on that hard shiny stone--see the lights of
+the candle gleaming on the handrail ... The young girl--she was not much
+more than a girl--pushed at the doors, and we went in.
+
+"The room we entered was all of a piece with the rest for rather
+old-fashioned fineness. It was large, lofty, beautifully kept. Carroll
+went round for Miss ... whatever her name was ... lighting candles in
+sconces; and as the flames crept up they glimmered on a beautifully
+polished floor, which was bare except for an Eastern rug here and there.
+The elder lady had sat down in a gilt chair, Louis Fourteenth I should
+say, with a striped rep of the colour of a petunia; and I really don't
+know--don't smile, Smith--what induced me to lead her to it by the
+finger-tips, bending over her hand for a moment as she sat down. There
+was an old tambour-frame behind her chair, I remember, and a vast oval
+mirror with clustered candle-brackets filled the greater part of the
+farther wall, the brightest and clearest glass I've ever seen...."
+
+He paused, looking at my cigarette case, which he had taken into his hand
+again. He smiled at some recollection or other, and it was a minute or
+so before he continued.
+
+"I must admit that I found it a little annoying, after what we'd
+been talking about at dinner an hour before, that Rangon wasn't with
+us. I still couldn't understand how he could have neighbours so
+charming without knowing about them, but I didn't care to insist on
+this to the old lady, who for all I knew might have her own reasons
+for keeping to herself. And, after all, it was our place to return
+Rangon's hospitality in London if he ever came there, not, so to speak,
+on his own doorstep.... So presently I forgot all about Rangon, and I'm
+pretty sure that Carroll, who was talking to his companion of some
+Felibrige junketing or other and having the air of Gounod's _Mireille_
+hummed softly over to him, didn't waste a thought on him either. Soon
+Carroll--you remember what a pretty crooning, humming voice he had--soon
+Carroll was murmuring what they call 'seconds,' but so low that the sound
+hardly came across the room; and I came in with a soft bass note from
+time to time. No instrument, you know; just an unaccompanied murmur no
+louder than an Aeolian harp; and it sounded infinitely sweet and
+plaintive and--what shall I say?--weak--attenuated--faint--'pale' you
+might almost say--in that formal, rather old-fashioned _salon_, with that
+great clear oval mirror throwing back the still flames of the candles in
+the sconces on the walls. Outside the wind had now fallen completely; all
+was very quiet; and suddenly in a voice not much louder than a sigh,
+Carroll's companion was singing _Oft in the Stilly Night_--you know
+it...."
+
+He broke off again to murmur the beginning of the air. Then, with a
+little laugh for which we saw no reason, he went on again:
+
+"Well, I'm not going to try to convince you of such a special and
+delicate thing as the charm of that hour--it wasn't more than an
+hour--it would be all about an hour we stayed. Things like that just
+have to be said and left; you destroy them the moment you begin to
+insist on them; we've every one of us had experiences like that, and
+don't say much about them. I was as much in love with my old lady as
+Carroll evidently was with his young one--I can't tell you why--being
+in love has just to be taken for granted too, I suppose... Marsham
+understands.... We smoked our cigarettes, and sang again, once more
+filling that clear-painted, quiet apartment with a murmuring no louder
+than if a light breeze found that the bells of a bed of flowers were
+really bells and played on 'em. The old lady moved her fingers gently
+on the round table by the side of her chair,.. oh, infinitely pretty it
+was.... Then Carroll wandered off into the _Que Cantes_--awfully
+pretty--'It is not for myself I sing, but for my friend who is near
+me'--and I can't tell you how like four old friends we were, those two
+so oddly met ladies and Carroll and myself.... And so to _Oft in the
+Stilly Night_ again....
+
+"But for all the sweetness and the glamour of it, we couldn't stay on
+indefinitely, and I wondered what time it was, but didn't ask--anything
+to do with clocks and watches would have seemed a cold and mechanical
+sort of thing just then.... And when presently we both got up neither
+Carroll nor I asked to be allowed to call again in the morning to
+thank them for a charming hour.... And they seemed to feel the same as
+we did about it. There was no 'hoping that we should meet again in
+London'--neither an au revoir nor a good-bye--just a tacit understanding
+that that hour should remain isolated, accepted like a good gift without
+looking the gift-horse in the mouth, single, unattached to any hours
+before or after--I don't know whether you see what I mean.... Give me a
+match somebody....
+
+"And so we left, with no more than looks exchanged and finger-tips
+resting between the back of our hands and our lips for a moment. We
+found our way out by ourselves, down that shallow-stepped staircase with
+the handsome handrail, and let ourselves out of the double door and
+grille, closing it softly. We made for the village without speaking a
+word.... Heigho!..."
+
+Loder had picked up the cigarette case again, but for all the way his
+eyes rested on it I doubt whether he really saw it. I'm pretty sure he
+didn't; I knew when he did by the glance he shot at me, as much as to say
+"I see you're wondering where the cigarette case comes in."... He
+resumed with another little laugh.
+
+"Well," he continued, "we got back to Rangon's house. I really don't
+blame Rangon for the way he took it when we told him, you know--he
+thought we were pulling his leg, of course, and he wasn't having any; not
+he! There were no English ladies in Darbisson, he said.... We told him as
+nearly as we could just where the house was--we weren't very precise, I'm
+afraid, for the village had been in darkness as we had come through it,
+and I had to admit that the cypress hedge I tried to describe where we'd
+met our friends was a good deal like other cypress hedges--and, as I say,
+Rangon wasn't taking any. I myself was rather annoyed that he should
+think we were returning his hospitality by trying to get at him, and it
+wasn't very easy either to explain in my French and Carroll's Provencal
+that we were going to let the thing stand as it was and weren't going to
+call on our charming friends again.... The end of it was that Rangon
+just laughed and yawned....
+
+"'I knew it was good, my wine,' he said, 'but--' a shrug said the rest.
+'Not so good as all that,' he meant....
+
+"Then he gave us our candles, showed us to our rooms, shook hands, and
+marched off to his own room and the Prevosts.
+
+"I dreamed of my old lady half the night.
+
+"After coffee the next morning I put my hand into my pocket for my
+cigarette case and didn't find it. I went through all my pockets, and
+then I asked Carroll if he'd got it.
+
+"'No,' he replied.... 'Think you left it behind at that place last
+night?'
+
+"'Yes; did you?' Rangon popped in with a twinkle.
+
+"I went through all my pockets again. No cigarette case....
+
+"Of course, it was possible that I'd left it behind, and I was annoyed
+again. I didn't want to go back, you see.... But, on the other hand, I
+didn't want to lose the case--it was a present--and Rangon's smile
+nettled me a good deal, too. It was both a challenge to our truthfulness
+and a testimonial to that very good wine of his....
+
+"'Might have done,' I grunted.... 'Well, in that case we'll go and get
+it.'
+
+"'If one tried the restaurant first--?' Rangon suggested, smiling again.
+
+"'By all means,' said I stuffily, though I remembered having the case
+after we'd left the restaurant.
+
+"We were round at the restaurant by half-past nine. The case wasn't
+there. I'd known jolly well beforehand it wasn't, and I saw Rangon's
+mouth twitching with amusement.
+
+"'So we now seek the abode of these English ladies, _hein_?' he said.
+
+"'Yes,' said I; and we left the restaurant and strode through the village
+by the way we'd taken the evening before....
+
+"That vigneron's smile became more and more irritating to me.... 'It is
+then the next village?' he said presently, as we left the last house and
+came out into the open plain.
+
+"We went back....
+
+"I was irritated because we were two to one, you see, and Carroll backed
+me up. 'A double door, with a grille in front of it,' he repeated for
+the fiftieth time.... Rangon merely replied that it wasn't our good faith
+he doubted. He didn't actually use the word 'drunk.'...
+
+"'_Mais tiens_,' he said suddenly, trying to conceal his mirth. '_Si
+c'est possible... si c'est possible_... a double door with a grille? But
+perhaps that I know it, the domicile of these so elusive ladies.... Come
+this way.'
+
+"He took us back along a plantain-groved street, and suddenly turned up
+an alley that was little more than two gutters and a crack of sky
+overhead between two broken-tiled roofs. It was a dilapidated, deserted
+_ruelle_, and I was positively angry when Rangon pointed to a blistered
+old _porte-cochere_ with a half-unhinged railing in front of it.
+
+"'Is it that, your house?' he asked.
+
+"'No,' says I, and 'No,' says Carroll ... and off we started again....
+
+"But another half-hour brought us back to the same place, and Carroll
+scratched his head.
+
+"'Who lives there, anyway?' he said, glowering at the _porte-cochere_,
+chin forward, hands in pockets.
+
+"'Nobody,' says Rangon, as much as to say 'look at it!' 'M'sieu then
+meditates taking it?'...
+
+"Then I struck in, quite out of temper by this time.
+
+"'How much would the rent be?' I asked, as if I really thought of taking
+the place just to get back at him.
+
+"He mentioned something ridiculously small in the way of francs.
+
+"'One might at least see the place,' says I. 'Can the key be got?'
+
+"He bowed. The key was at the baker's, not a hundred yards away, he
+said....
+
+"We got the key. It was the key of the inner wooden door--that grid of
+rusty iron didn't need one--it came clean off its single hinge when
+Carroll touched it. Carroll opened, and we stood for a moment motioning
+to one another to step in. Then Rangon went in first, and I heard him
+murmur 'Pardon, Mesdames.'...
+
+"Now this is the odd part. We passed into a sort of vestibule or hall,
+with a burst lead pipe in the middle of a dry tank in the centre of it.
+There was a broad staircase rising in front of us to the first floor, and
+double doors just seen in the half-light at the head of the stairs. Old
+tubs stood against the walls, but the palms and aloes in them were
+dead--only a cabbage-stalk or two--and the rusty hoops lay on the ground
+about them. One tub had come to pieces entirely and was no more than a
+heap of staves on a pile of spilt earth. And everywhere, everywhere was
+dust--the floor was an inch deep in dust and old plaster that muffled our
+footsteps, cobwebs hung like old dusters on the walls, a regular goblin's
+tatter of cobwebs draped the little bracket inside the door, and the
+wrought-iron of the hand-rail was closed up with webs in which not even a
+spider moved. The whole thing was preposterous....
+
+"'It is possible that for even a less rental--'
+
+"Rangon murmured, dragging his forefinger across the hand-rail and
+leaving an inch-deep furrow....
+
+"'Come upstairs,' said I suddenly....
+
+"Up we went. All was in the same state there. A clutter of stuff came
+down as I pushed at the double doors of the _salon_, and I had to strike
+a stinking French sulphur match to see into the room at all. Underfoot
+was like walking on thicknesses of flannel, and except where we put
+our feet the place was as printless as a snowfield--dust, dust, unbroken
+grey dust. My match burned down....
+
+"'Wait a minute--I've a _bougie_,' said Carroll, and struck the wax
+match....
+
+"There were the old sconces, with never a candle-end in them. There was
+the large oval mirror, but hardly reflecting Carroll's match for the
+dust on it. And the broken chairs were there, all gutless, and the
+rickety old round table....
+
+"But suddenly I darted forward. Something new and bright on the table
+twinkled with the light of Carroll's match. The match went out, and by
+the time Carroll had lighted another I had stopped. I wanted Rangon to
+see what was on the table....
+
+"'You'll see by my footprints how far from that table _I've_ been,' I
+said. 'Will you pick it up?'
+
+"And Rangon, stepping forward, picked up from the middle of the table--my
+cigarette case."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Loder had finished. Nobody spoke. For quite a minute nobody spoke, and
+then Loder himself broke the silence, turning to me.
+
+"Make anything of it?" he said.
+
+I lifted my eyebrows. "Only your _vigneron's_ explanation--" I began, but
+stopped again, seeing that wouldn't do.
+
+"_Any_body make anything of it?" said Loder, turning from one to another.
+
+I gathered from Smith's face that he thought one thing might be made of
+it--namely, that Loder had invented the whole tale. But even Smith
+didn't speak.
+
+"Were any English ladies ever found to have lived in the place--murdered,
+you know--bodies found and all that?" young Marsham asked diffidently,
+yearning for an obvious completeness.
+
+"Not that we could ever learn," Loder replied. "We made inquiries
+too.... So you all give it up? Well, so do I...."
+
+And he rose. As he walked to the door, myself following him to get his
+hat and stick, I heard him humming softly the lines--they are from
+_Oft in the Stilly Night_--
+
+"_I seem like one who treads alone
+    Some banquet-hall deserted,
+Whose guests are fled, whose garlands dead,
+    And all but he--departed!_"
+
+
+
+
+THE ROCKER
+
+
+I
+
+There was little need for the swart gipsies to explain, as they stood
+knee-deep in the snow round the bailiff of the Abbey Farm, what it
+was that had sent them. The unbroken whiteness of the uplands told that,
+and, even as they spoke, there came up the hill the dark figures of the
+farm men with shovels, on their way to dig out the sheep. In the summer,
+the bailiff would have been the first to call the gipsies vagabonds
+and roost-robbers; now ... they had women with them too.
+
+"The hares and foxes were down four days ago, and the liquid-manure pumps
+like a snow man," the bailiff said.... "Yes, you can lie in the laithes
+and welcome--if you can find 'em. Maybe you'll help us find our sheep
+too--"
+
+The gipsies had done so. Coming back again, they had had some ado to
+discover the spot where their three caravans made a hummock of white
+against a broken wall.
+
+The women--they had four women with them--began that afternoon to weave
+the mats and baskets they hawked from door to door; and in the forenoon
+of the following day one of them, the black-haired, soft-voiced quean
+whom the bailiff had heard called Annabel, set her babe in the sling on
+her back, tucked a bundle of long cane-loops under her oxter, and trudged
+down between eight-foot walls of snow to the Abbey Farm. She stood in the
+latticed porch, dark and handsome against the whiteness, and then,
+advancing, put her head into the great hall-kitchen.
+
+"Has the lady any chairs for the gipsy woman to mend?" she asked in a
+soft and insinuating voice....
+
+They brought her the old chairs; she seated herself on a box in the
+porch; and there she wove the strips of cane in and out, securing each
+one with a little wooden peg and a tap of her hammer. The child remained
+in the sling at her back, taking the breast from time to time over her
+shoulder; and the silver wedding ring could be seen as she whipped the
+cane, back and forth.
+
+As she worked, she cast curious glances into the old hall-kitchen. The
+snow outside cast a pallid, upward light on the heavy ceiling-beams; this
+was reflected in the polished stone floor; and the children, who at first
+had shyly stopped their play, seeing the strange woman in the porch--the
+nearest thing they had seen to gipsies before had been the old itinerant
+glazier with his frame of glass on his back--resumed it, but still eyed
+her from time to time. In the ancient walnut chair by the hearth sat the
+old, old lady who had told them to bring the chairs. Her hair, almost
+as white as the snow itself, was piled up on her head _a la Marquise_;
+she was knitting; but now and then she allowed the needle in the little
+wooden sheath at her waist to lie idle, closed her eyes, and rocked
+softly in the old walnut chair.
+
+"Ask the woman who is mending the chairs whether she is warm enough
+there," the old lady said to one of the children; and the child went
+to the porch with the message.
+
+"Thank you, little missie--thank you, lady dear--Annabel is quite warm,"
+said the soft voice; and the child returned to the play.
+
+It was a childish game of funerals at which the children played. The hand
+of Death, hovering over the dolls, had singled out Flora, the
+articulations of whose sawdust body were seams and whose boots were
+painted on her calves of fibrous plaster. For the greater solemnity, the
+children had made themselves sweeping trains of the garments of their
+elders, and those with cropped curls had draped their heads with shawls,
+the fringes of which they had combed out with their fingers to simulate
+hair--long hair, such as Sabrina, the eldest, had hanging so low down
+her back that she could almost sit on it. A cylindrical-bodied horse,
+convertible (when his flat head came out of its socket) into a
+locomotive, headed the sad _cortege_; then came the defunct Flora; then
+came Jack, the raffish sailor doll, with other dolls; and the children
+followed with hushed whisperings.
+
+The youngest of the children passed the high-backed walnut chair in which
+the old lady sat. She stopped.
+
+"Aunt Rachel--" she whispered, slowly and gravely opening very wide and
+closing very tight her eyes.
+
+"Yes, dear?"
+
+"Flora's dead!"
+
+The old lady, when she smiled, did so less with her lips than with her
+faded cheeks. So sweet was her face that you could not help wondering,
+when you looked on it, how many men had also looked upon it and loved it.
+Somehow, you never wondered how many of them had been loved in return.
+
+"I'm so sorry, dear," Aunt Rachel, who in reality was a great-aunt, said.
+"What did she die of this time?"
+
+"She died of ... Brown Titus ... 'n now she's going to be buried in a
+grave as little as her bed."
+
+"In a what, dear?"
+
+"As little ... dread ... as little as my bed ... you say it, Sabrina."
+
+"She means, Aunt Rachel,
+
+"_Teach me to live that I may dread
+The Grave as little as my bed,_"
+
+Sabrina, the eldest, interpreted.
+
+"Ah!... But won't you play at cheerful things, dears?"
+
+"Yes, we will, presently, Aunt Rachel; gee up, horse!... Shall we go and
+ask the chair-woman if she's warm enough?"
+
+"Do, dears."
+
+Again the message was taken, and this time it seemed as if Annabel, the
+gipsy, was not warm enough, for she gathered up her loops of cane and
+brought the chair she was mending a little way into the hall-kitchen
+itself. She sat down on the square box they used to cover the sewing
+machine.
+
+"Thank you, lady dear," she murmured, lifting her handsome almond eyes to
+Aunt Rachel. Aunt Rachel did not see the long, furtive, curious glance.
+Her own eyes were closed, as if she was tired; her cheeks were smiling;
+one of them had dropped a little to one shoulder, as it might have
+dropped had she held in her arms a babe; and she was rocking, softly,
+slowly, the rocker of the chair making a little regular noise on the
+polished floor.
+
+The gipsy woman beckoned to one of the children.
+
+"Tell the lady, when she wakes, that I will tack a strip of felt to the
+rocker, and then it will make no noise at all," said the low and
+wheedling voice; and the child retired again.
+
+The interment of Flora proceeded....
+
+An hour later Flora had taken up the burden of Life again. It was as
+Angela, the youngest, was chastising her for some offence, that Sabrina,
+the eldest, looked with wondering eyes on the babe in the gipsy's sling.
+She approached on tiptoe.
+
+"May I look at it, please?" she asked timidly.
+
+The gipsy set one shoulder forward, and Sabrina put the shawl gently
+aside, peering at the dusky brown morsel within.
+
+"Sometime, perhaps--if I'm very careful--"
+
+Sabrina ventured diffidently, "--if I'm _very_ careful--may I hold it?"
+
+Before replying, the gipsy once more turned her almond eyes towards Aunt
+Rachel's chair. Aunt Rachel had been awakened for the conclusion of
+Flora's funeral, but her eyes were closed again now, and once more her
+cheek was dropped in that tender suggestive little gesture, and she
+rocked. But you could see that she was not properly asleep.... It was,
+somehow, less to Sabrina, still peering at the babe in the sling, than to
+Aunt Rachel, apparently asleep, that the gipsy seemed to reply.
+
+"You'll know some day, little missis, that a wean knows its own pair of
+arms," her seductive voice came.
+
+And Aunt Rachel heard. She opened her eyes with a start. The little
+regular noise of the rocker ceased. She turned her head quickly;
+tremulously she began to knit again; and, as her eyes rested on the
+sidelong eyes of the gipsy woman, there was an expression in them that
+almost resembled fright.
+
+
+II
+
+They began to deck the great hall-kitchen for Christmas, but the snow
+still lay thick over hill and valley, and the gipsies' caravans remained
+by the broken wall where the drifts had overtaken them. Though all the
+chairs were mended, Annabel still came daily to the farm, sat on the box
+they used to cover the sewing machine, and wove mats. As she wove them,
+Aunt Rachel knitted, and from time to time fragments of talk passed
+between the two women. It was always the white-haired lady who spoke
+first, and Annabel made all sorts of salutes and obeisances with her eyes
+before replying.
+
+"I have not seen your husband," Aunt Rachel said to Annabel one day. (The
+children at the other end of the apartment had converted a chest into an
+altar, and were solemnising the nuptials of the resurrected Flora and
+Jack, the raffish sailor-doll.)
+
+Annabel made roving play with her eyes. "He is up at the caravans, lady
+dear," she replied. "Is there anything Annabel can bid him do?"
+
+"Nothing, thank you," said Aunt Rachel.
+
+For a minute the gipsy watched Aunt Rachel, and then she got up from the
+sewing machine box and crossed the floor. She leaned so close towards her
+that she had to put up a hand to steady the babe at her back.
+
+"Lady dear," she murmured with irresistible softness, "your husband died,
+didn't he?"
+
+On Aunt Rachel's finger was a ring, but it was not a wedding ring. It was
+a hoop of pearls.
+
+"I have never had a husband," she said.
+
+The gipsy glanced at the ring. "Then that is--?"
+
+"That is a betrothal ring," Aunt Rachel replied.
+
+"Ah!..." said Annabel.
+
+Then, after a minute, she drew still closer. Her eyes were fixed on Aunt
+Rachel's, and the insinuating voice was very low.
+
+"Ah!... And did _it_ die too, lady dear?"
+
+Again came that quick, half-affrighted look into Aunt Rachel's face. Her
+eyes avoided those of the gipsy, sought them, and avoided them again.
+
+"Did what die?" she asked slowly and guardedly....
+
+The child at the gipsy's back did not need suck; nevertheless, Annabel's
+fingers worked at her bosom, and she moved the sling. As the child
+settled, Annabel gave Aunt Rachel a long look.
+
+"Why do you rock?" she asked slowly.
+
+Aunt Rachel was trembling. She did not reply. In a voice soft as sliding
+water the gipsy continued:
+
+"Lady dear, we are a strange folk to you, and even among us there are
+those who shuffle the pack of cards and read the palm when silver has
+been put upon it, knowing nothing... But some of us _see_--some of us
+_see_."
+
+It was more than a minute before Aunt Rachel spoke.
+
+"You are a woman, and you have your babe at your breast now.... Every
+woman sees the thing you speak of."
+
+But the gipsy shook her head. "You speak of seeing with the heart. I
+speak of eyes--these eyes."
+
+Again came a long pause. Aunt Rachel had given a little start, but had
+become quiet again. When at last she spoke it was in a voice scarcely
+audible.
+
+"That cannot be. I know what you mean, but it cannot be.... He died
+on the eve of his wedding. For my bridal clothes they made me black
+garments instead. It is long ago, and now I wear neither black nor white,
+but--" her hands made a gesture. Aunt Rachel always dressed as if to suit
+a sorrow that Time had deprived of bitterness, in such a tender and
+fleecy grey as one sees in the mists that lie like lawn over hedgerow
+and copse early of a midsummer's morning. "Therefore," she resumed, "your
+heart may see, but your eyes cannot see that which never was."
+
+But there came a sudden note of masterfulness into the gipsy's voice.
+
+"With my eyes--_these_ eyes," she repeated, pointing to them.
+
+Aunt Rachel kept her own eyes obstinately on her knitting needles. "None
+except I have seen it. It is not to be seen," she said.
+
+The gipsy sat suddenly erect.
+
+"It is not so. Keep still in your chair," she ordered, "and I will tell
+you when--"
+
+It was a curious thing that followed. As if all the will went out of
+her, Aunt Rachel sat very still; and presently her hands fluttered and
+dropped. The gipsy sat with her own hands folded over the mat on her
+knees. Several minutes passed; then, slowly, once more that sweetest of
+smiles stole over Aunt Rachel's cheeks. Once more her head dropped. Her
+hands moved. Noiselessly on the rockers that the gipsy had padded with
+felt the chair began to rock. Annabel lifted one hand.
+
+"_Dovo se li_" she said. "It is there."
+
+Aunt Rachel did not appear to hear her. With that ineffable smile still
+on her face, she rocked....
+
+Then, after some minutes, there crossed her face such a look as visits
+the face of one who, waking from sleep, strains his faculties to
+recapture some blissful and vanishing vision....
+
+"_Jal_--it is gone," said the gipsy woman.
+
+Aunt Rachel opened her eyes again. She repeated dully after Annabel:
+
+"It is gone."
+
+"Ghosts," the gipsy whispered presently, "are of the dead. Therefore it
+must have lived."
+
+But again Aunt Rachel shook her head. "It never lived."
+
+"You were young, and beautiful?..."
+
+Still the shake of the head. "He died on the eve of his wedding. They
+took my white garments away and gave me black ones. How then could
+it have lived?"
+
+"Without the kiss, no.... But sometimes a woman will lie through her
+life, and at the graveside still will lie.... Tell me the truth."
+
+But they were the same words that Aunt Rachel repeated: "He died on the
+eve of his wedding; they took away my wedding garments...." From her lips
+a lie could hardly issue. The gipsy's face became grave....
+
+She broke another long silence.
+
+"I believe," she said at last. "It is a new kind--but no more wonderful
+than the other. The other I have seen, now I have seen this also. Tell
+me, does it come to any other chair?"
+
+"It was his chair; he died in it," said Aunt Rachel.
+
+"And you--shall you die in it?"
+
+"As God wills."
+
+"Has ... _other life_ ... visited it long?"
+
+"Many years; but it is always small; it never grows."
+
+"To their mothers babes never grow. They remain ever babes.... None other
+has ever seen it?"
+
+"Except yourself, none. I sit here; presently it creeps into my arms; it
+is small and warm; I rock, and then... it goes."
+
+"Would it come to another chair?"
+
+"I cannot tell. I think not. It was his chair."
+
+Annabel mused. At the other end of the room Flora was now bestowed on
+Jack, the disreputable sailor. The gipsy's eyes rested on the bridal
+party....
+
+"Yet another might see it--"
+
+"None has."
+
+"No; but yet.... The door does not always shut behind us suddenly.
+Perhaps one who has toddled but a step or two over the threshold might,
+by looking back, catch a glimpse.... What is the name of the smallest
+one?"
+
+"Angela."
+
+"That means 'angel'... Look, the doll who died yesterday is now being
+married.... It may be that Life has not yet sealed the little one's eyes.
+Will you let Annabel ask her if she sees what it is you hold in your
+arms?"
+
+Again the voice was soft and wheedling....
+
+"No, Annabel," said Aunt Rachel faintly.
+
+"Will you rock again?"
+
+Aunt Rachel made no reply.
+
+"Rock..." urged the cajoling voice.
+
+But Aunt Rachel only turned the betrothal ring on her finger. Over at the
+altar Jack was leering at his new-made bride, past decency; and little
+Angela held the wooden horse's head, which had parted from its body.
+
+"Rock, and comfort yourself--" tempted the voice.
+
+Then slowly Aunt Rachel rose from her chair.
+
+"No, Annabel," she said gently. "You should not have spoken. When the
+snow melts you will go, and come no more; why then did you speak? It was
+mine. It was not meant to be seen by another. I no longer want it. Please
+go."
+
+The swarthy woman turned her almond eyes on her once more.
+
+"You cannot live without it," she said as she also rose....
+
+And as Jack and his bride left the church on the reheaded horse, Aunt
+Rachel walked with hanging head from the apartment.
+
+
+III
+
+Thenceforward, as day followed day, Aunt Rachel rocked no more; and with
+the packing and partial melting of the snow the gipsies up at the
+caravans judged it time to be off about their business. It was on the
+morning of Christmas Eve that they came down in a body to the Abbey
+Farm to express their thanks to those who had befriended them; but the
+bailiff was not there. He and the farm men had ceased work, and were
+down at the church, practising the carols. Only Aunt Rachel sat, still
+and knitting, in the black walnut chair; and the children played on the
+floor.
+
+A night in the toy-box had apparently bred discontent between Jack
+and Flora--or perhaps they sought to keep their countenances before
+the world; at any rate, they sat on opposite sides of the room, Jack
+keeping boon company with the lead soldiers, his spouse reposing, her
+lead-balanced eyes closed, in the broken clockwork motor-car. With the
+air of performing some vaguely momentous ritual, the children were
+kissing one another beneath the bunch of mistletoe that hung from the
+centre beam. In the intervals of kissing they told one another in
+whispers that Aunt Rachel was not very well, and Angela woke Flora to
+tell her that Aunt Rachel had Brown Titus also.
+
+"Stay you here; I will give the lady dear our thanks," said Annabel to
+the group of gipsies gathered about the porch; and she entered the
+great hall-kitchen. She approached the chair in which Aunt Rachel sat.
+
+There was obeisance in the bend of her body, but command in her long
+almond eyes, as she spoke.
+
+"Lady dear, you must rock or you cannot live."
+
+Aunt Rachel did not look up from her work.
+
+"Rocking, I should not live long," she replied.
+
+"We are leaving you."
+
+"All leave me."
+
+"Annabel fears she has taken away your comfort."
+
+"Only for a little while. The door closes behind us, but it opens again."
+
+"But for that little time, rock--"
+
+Aunt Rachel shook her head.
+
+"No. It is finished. Another has seen.... Say good-bye to your
+companions; they are very welcome to what they have had; and God speed
+you."
+
+"They thank you, lady dear.... Will you not forget that Annabel saw, and
+rock?"
+
+"No more."
+
+Annabel stooped and kissed the hand that bore the betrothal hoop of
+pearls. The other hand Aunt Rachel placed for a moment upon the smoky
+head of the babe in the sling. It trembled as it rested there, but the
+tremor passed, and Annabel, turning once at the porch, gave her a last
+look. Then she departed with her companions.
+
+That afternoon, Jack and Flora had shaken down to wedlock as married
+folk should, and sat together before the board spread with the dolls'
+tea-things. The pallid light in the great hall-kitchen faded; the candles
+were lighted; and then the children, first borrowing the stockings of
+their elders to hang at the bed's foot, were packed off early--for it was
+the custom to bring them down again at midnight for the carols. Aunt
+Rachel had their good-night kisses, not as she had them every night, but
+with the special ceremony of the mistletoe.
+
+Other folk, grown folk, sat with Aunt Rachel that evening; but the old
+walnut chair did not move upon its rockers. There was merry talk, but
+Aunt Rachel took no part in it. The board was spread with ale and cheese
+and spiced loaf for the carol-singers; and the time drew near for their
+coming.
+
+When at midnight, faintly on the air from the church below, there came
+the chiming of Christmas morning, all bestirred themselves.
+
+"They'll be here in a few minutes," they said; "somebody go and bring the
+children down;" and within a very little while subdued noises were heard
+outside, and the lifting of the latch of the yard gate. The children were
+in their nightgowns, hardly fully awake; a low voice outside was heard
+giving orders; and then there arose on the night the carol.
+
+"Hush!" they said to the wondering children; "listen!..."
+
+It was the Cherry Tree Carol that rose outside, of how sweet Mary, the
+Queen of Galilee, besought Joseph to pluck the cherries for her Babe, and
+Joseph refused; and the voices of the singers, that had begun
+hesitatingly, grew strong and loud and free.
+
+"... and Joseph wouldn't pluck the cherries," somebody was whispering to
+the tiny Angela....
+
+"_Mary said to Cherry Tree,
+  'Bow down to my knee,
+That I may pluck cherries
+  For my Babe and me._'"
+
+the carollers sang; and "Now listen, darling," the one who held Angela
+murmured....
+
+"_The uppermost spray then
+  Bowed down to her knee;
+'Thus you may see, Joseph,
+  These cherries are for me.'
+
+"'O, eat your cherries, Mary,
+  Give them your Babe now;
+O, eat your cherries, Mary,
+  That grew upon the bough._'"
+
+The little Angela, within the arms that held her, murmured, "It's the
+gipsies, isn't it, mother?"
+
+"No, darling. The gipsies have gone. It's the carol-singers, singing
+because Jesus was born."
+
+"But, mother ... it _is_ the gipsies, isn't it?... 'Cos look..."
+
+"Look where?"
+
+"At Aunt Rachel, mother ... The gipsy woman wouldn't go without her
+little baby, would she?"
+
+"No, she wouldn't do that."
+
+"Then has she _lent_ it to Aunt Rachel, like I lend my new toys
+sometimes?"
+
+The mother glanced across at Aunt Rachel, and then gathered the
+night-gowned figure more closely.
+
+"The darling's only half awake," she murmured.... "Poor Aunt Rachel's
+sleepy too...."
+
+Aunt Rachel, her head dropped, her hands lightly folded as if about some
+shape that none saw but herself, her face again ineffable with that
+sweet and peaceful smile, was once more rocking softly in her chair.
+
+
+
+
+HIC JACET
+
+A TALE OF ARTISTIC CONSCIENCE
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+As I lighted my guests down the stairs of my Chelsea lodgings, turned up
+the hall gas that they might see the steps at the front door, and shook
+hands with them, I bade them good night the more heartily that I was glad
+to see their backs. Lest this should seem but an inhospitable confession,
+let me state, first, that they had invited themselves, dropping in in
+ones and twos until seven or eight of them had assembled in my garret,
+and, secondly, that I was rather extraordinarily curious to know why, at
+close on midnight, the one I knew least well of all had seen fit to
+remain after the others had taken their departure. To these two
+considerations I must add a third, namely, that I had become tardily
+conscious that, if Andriaovsky had not lingered of himself, I should
+certainly have asked him to do so.
+
+It was to nothing more than a glance, swift and momentary, directed by
+Andriaovsky to myself while the others had talked, that I traced this
+desire to see more of the little Polish painter; but a glance derives its
+import from the circumstance under which it is given. That rapid turning
+of his eyes in my direction an hour before had held a hundred questions,
+implications, criticisms, incredulities, condemnations. It had been one
+of those uncovenanted gestures that hold the promise of the treasures of
+an eternal friendship. I wondered as I turned down the gas again and
+remounted the stairs what personal message and reproach in it had lumped
+me in with the others; and by the time I had reached my own door again a
+phrase had fitted itself in my mind to that quick, ironical turning of
+Andriaovsky's eyes: _"Et tu, Brute!..."_
+
+He was standing where I had left him, his small shabby figure in the
+attitude of a diminutive colossus on my hearthrug. About him were the
+recently vacated chairs, solemnly and ridiculously suggestive of still
+continuing the high and choice conversation that had lately finished. The
+same fancy had evidently taken Andriaovsky, for he was turning from chair
+to chair, his head a little on one side, mischievously and aggravatingly
+smiling. As one of them, the deep wicker chair that Jamison had occupied,
+suddenly gave a little creak of itself, as wicker will when released from
+a strain, his smile broadened to a grin. I had been on the point of
+sitting down in that chair, but I changed my mind and took another.
+
+"That's right," said Andriaovsky, in that wonderful English which he had
+picked up in less than three years, "don't sit in the wisdom-seat; you
+might profane it."
+
+I knew what he meant. I felt for my pipe and slowly filled it, not
+replying. Then, slowly wagging his head from side to side, with his eyes
+humorously and banteringly on mine, he uttered the very words I had
+mentally associated with that glance of his.
+
+_"Et tu, Brute!"_ he said, wagging away, so that with each wag the lenses
+of his spectacles caught the light of the lamp on the table.
+
+I too smiled as I felt for a match.
+
+"It _was_ rather much, wasn't it?" I said.
+
+But he suddenly stopped his wagging, and held up a not very clean
+forefinger. His whole face was altogether too confoundedly intelligent.
+
+"Oh no, you don't!" he said peremptorily. "No getting out of it like
+that the moment they've turned their backs! No running--what is it?--no
+running with the hare and hunting with the hounds! _You_ helped, you
+know!"
+
+I confess I fidgeted a little.
+
+"But hang it all, what could I do? They were in my place," I broke out.
+
+He chuckled, enjoying my discomfiture. Then his eyes fell on those absurd
+and solemn chairs again.
+
+"Look at 'em--the Art Shades in conference!" he chuckled. "That
+rush-seated one, it was talking half an hour ago about 'Scherzos in
+Silver and Grey!' ... Nice, fresh green stuff!"
+
+To shut him up I told him that he would find cigarettes and tobacco on
+the table.
+
+"'Scherzos in Silver and Grey'!" he chuckled again as he took a
+cigarette....
+
+All this, perhaps, needs some explanation. It had been the usual thing,
+usual in those days, twenty years ago--smarming about Art and the Arts
+and so forth. They--"we," as apparently Andriaovsky had lingered behind
+for the purpose of reminding me--had perhaps talked a little more
+soaringly than the ordinary, that was all. There had been Jamison in the
+wicker chair, full to the lips and running over with the Colour
+Suggestions of the late Edward Calvert; Gibbs, in a pulpy state of
+adoration of the less legitimate side of the painting of Watts; and
+Magnani, who had advanced that an Essential Oneness underlies all the
+Arts, and had triumphantly proved his thesis by analogy with the Law of
+the Co-relation of Forces. A book called Music and Morals had appeared
+about that time, and on it they--we--had risen to regions of kite-high
+lunacy about Colour Symphonies, orgies of formless colour thrown on a
+magic-lantern screen--vieux jeu enough at this time of day. A young
+newspaper man, too, had made mental notes of our adjectives, for use in
+his weekly (I nearly spelt it "weakly") half-column of Art Criticism;
+and--and here was Andriaovsky, grinning at the chairs, and mimicking
+it all with diabolical glee.
+
+"'Scherzos in Silver and Grey'--'Word Pastels'--' Lyrics in Stone!'"
+he chuckled. "And what was it the fat fellow said?' A Siren Song in
+Marble!' Phew!... Well, I'll get along. I shall just be in time to get
+a pint of bitter to wash it all down if I'm quick... Bah!" he broke out
+suddenly. "Good men build up Form and Forms--keep the Arts each after
+its kind--raise up the dikes so that we shan't all be swept away by night
+and nothingness--and these rats come nosing and burrowing and undermining
+it all!... _Et tu, Brute!_"
+
+"Well, when you've finished rubbing it in--" I grunted.
+
+"As if _you_ didn't know better!... Is that your way of getting back on
+'em, now that you've chucked drawing and gone in for writing books?
+Phew I... Well, I'll go and get my pint of beer--"
+
+But he didn't go for his pint of beer. Instead, he began to prowl about
+my room, pryingly, nosingly, touching things here and there. I watched
+him as he passed from one thing to another. He was very little, and very,
+very shabby. His trousers were frayed, and the sole of one of his boots
+flapped distressingly. His old bowler hat--he had not thought it
+necessary to wait until he got outside before thrusting it on the back of
+his head--was so limp in substance that I verily believed that had he run
+incautiously downstairs he would have found when he got to the bottom
+that its crown had sunk in of its own weight. In spite of his remark
+about the pint of beer, I doubt if he had the price of one in his pocket.
+
+"What's this, Brutus--a concertina?" he suddenly asked, stopping before
+the collapsible case in which I kept my rather old dress suit.
+
+I told him what it was, and he hoisted up his shoulders.
+
+"And these things?" he asked, moving to something else.
+
+They were a pair of boot-trees of which I had permitted myself the
+economy. I remember they cost me four shillings in the old Brompton
+Road.
+
+"And that's your bath, I suppose.... Dumb-bells too.... And--_oh, good
+Lord!_..."
+
+He had picked up, and dropped again as if it had been hot, somebody or
+other's card with the date of a "day" written across the corner of it....
+
+As I helped him on with his overcoat he made no secret of the condition
+of its armholes and lining. I don't for one moment suppose that the
+garment was his. I took a candle to light him down as soon as it should
+please him to depart.
+
+"Well, so long, and joy to you on the high road to success," he said with
+another grin for which I could have bundled him down the stairs....
+
+In later days I never looked to Andriaovsky for tact; but I stared at him
+for his lack of it that night. And as I stared I noticed for the first
+time the broad and low pylon of his forehead, his handsome mouth and
+chin, and the fire and wit and scorn that smouldered behind his cheap
+spectacles. I looked again; and his smallness, his malice, his pathetic
+little braggings about his poverty, seemed all to disappear. He had
+strolled back to my hearthrug, wishing, I have no doubt now, to be able
+to exclaim suddenly that it was too late for the pint of beer for which
+he hadn't the money, and to curse his luck; and the pigmy quality of his
+colossusship had somehow gone.
+
+As I watched him, a neighbouring clock struck the half-hour, and he
+did even as I had surmised--cursed the closing time of the English
+public-houses....
+
+I lighted him down. For one moment, under the hall gas, he almost dropped
+his jesting manner.
+
+"You _do_ know better, Harrison, you know," he said. "But, of course,
+you're going to be a famous author in almost no time. Oh, _ca se
+voit_! No garrets for _you_! It was a treat,' the way you handled those
+fellows--really ... Well don't forget us others when you're up there--I
+may want you to write my 'Life' some day...."
+
+I heard the slapping of the loose sole as he shuffled down the path. At
+the gate he turned for a moment.
+
+"Good night, Brutus," he called.
+
+When I had mounted to my garret again my eyes fell once more on that
+ridiculous assemblage of empty chairs, all solemnly talking to one
+another. I burst out into a laugh. Then I undressed, put my jacket on the
+hanger, took the morrow's boots from the trees and treed those I had
+removed, changed the pair of trousers under my mattress, and went, still
+laughing at the chairs, to bed.
+
+This was Michael Andriaovsky, the Polish painter, who died four weeks
+ago.
+
+
+I
+
+I knew the reason of Maschka's visit the moment she was announced. Even
+in the stressful moments of the funeral she had found time to whisper to
+me that she hoped to call upon me at an early date. I dismissed the
+amanuensis to whom I was dictating the last story of the fourth series of
+_Martin Renard_, gave a few hasty instructions to my secretary, and told
+the servant to show Miss Andriaovsky into the drawing-room, to ask her
+to be so good as to excuse me for five minutes, to order tea at once, and
+then to bring my visitor up to the library.
+
+A few minutes later she was shown into the room.
+
+She was dressed in the same plainly cut costume of dead black she
+had worn at the funeral, and had pushed up her heavy veil over the
+close-fitting cap of black fur that accentuated her Sclavonic appearance.
+I noticed again with distress the pallor of her face and the bistred
+rings that weeks of nursing had put under her dark eyes. I noticed also
+her resemblance, in feature and stature, to her brother. I placed a chair
+for her; the tea-tray followed her in; and without more than a murmured
+greeting she peeled off her gloves and prepared to preside at the tray.
+
+She had filled the cups, and I had handed her toast, before she spoke.
+Then:
+
+"I suppose you know what I've come about," she said.
+
+I nodded.
+
+"Long, long ago you promised it. Nobody else can do it. The only question
+is 'when.'"
+
+"That's the only question," I agreed.
+
+"We, naturally," she continued, after a glance in which her eyes mutely
+thanked me for my implied promise, "are anxious that it should be as soon
+as possible; but, of course--I shall quite understand--"
+
+She gave a momentary glance round my library. I helped her out.
+
+"You mean that I'm a very important person nowadays, and that you're
+afraid to trespass on my time. Never mind that. I shall find time
+for this. But tell me before we go any further exactly how you stand and
+precisely what it is you expect."
+
+Briefly she did so. It did not in the least surprise me to learn that her
+brother had died penniless.
+
+"And if you hadn't undertaken the 'Life,'" she said, "he might just as
+well not have worked in poverty all these years. You can, at least, see
+to his fame."
+
+I nodded again gravely, and ruminated for a moment. Then I spoke.
+
+"I can write it, fully and in detail, up to five years ago," I said. "You
+know what happened then. I tried my best to help him, but he never would
+let me. Tell me, Maschka, why he wouldn't sell me that portrait."
+
+I knew instantly, from her quick confusion, that her brother had spoken
+to her about the portrait he had refused to sell me, and had probably
+told her the reason for his refusal. I watched her as she evaded the
+question as well as she could.
+
+"You know how--queer--he was about who he sold his things to. And as for
+those five years in which you saw less of him, Schofield will tell you
+all you want to know."
+
+I relinquished the point. "Who's Schofield?" I asked instead.
+
+"He was a very good friend of Michael's--of both of us. You can talk
+quite freely to him. I want to say at the beginning that I should like
+him to be associated with you in this."
+
+I don't know how I divined on the spot her relation to Schofield, whoever
+he was. She told me that he too was a painter.
+
+"Michael thought very highly of his things," she said.
+
+"I don't know them," I replied.
+
+"You probably wouldn't," she returned....
+
+But I caught the quick drop of her eyes from their brief excursion round
+my library, and I felt something within me stiffen a little. It did not
+need Maschka Andriaovsky to remind me that I had not attained my position
+without--let us say--splitting certain differences; the looseness of
+the expression can be corrected hereafter. Life consists very largely of
+compromises. You doubtless know my name, whichever country or hemisphere
+you happen to live in, as that of the creator of Martin Renard, the
+famous and popular detective; and I was not at that moment disposed to
+apologise, either to Maschka or Schofield or anybody else, for having
+written the stories at the bidding of a gaping public. The moment the
+public showed that it wanted something better I was prepared to give it.
+In the meantime, I sat in my very comfortable library, securely shielded
+from distress by my balance at my banker's.
+
+"Well," I said after a moment, "let's see how we stand. And first
+as to what you're likely to get out of this. It goes without saying,
+of course, that by writing the 'Life' I can get you any amount of
+'fame'--advertisement, newspaper talk, and all the things that, it struck
+me, Michael always treated with especial scorn. My name alone, I say,
+will do that. But for anything else I'm by no means so sure. You see," I
+explained, "it doesn't follow that because I can sell hundreds of
+thousands of... you know what... that I can sell anything I've a mind to
+sign." I said it, confident that she had not lived all those years with
+her brother without having learned the axiomatic nature of it. To my
+discomfiture, she began to talk like a callow student.
+
+"I should have thought that it followed that if you could sell
+something--" she hesitated only for a moment, then courageously gave the
+other stuff its proper adjective, "--something rotten, you could have
+sold something good when you had the chance."
+
+"Then if you thought that you were wrong," I replied briefly and
+concisely.
+
+"_Michael_ couldn't, of course," she said, putting Michael out of the
+question with a little wave of her hand, "because Michael was--I mean,
+Michael wasn't a business man. You are."
+
+"I'm speaking as one," I replied. "I don't waste time in giving people
+what they don't want. That is business. I don't undertake your brother's
+'Life' as a matter of business, but as an inestimable privilege. I
+repeat, it doesn't follow that the public will buy it."
+
+"But--but--" she stammered, "the public will buy a _Pill_ if they see
+your name on the testimonial!"
+
+"A Pill--yes," I said sadly.... Genius and a Pill were, alas, different
+things. "But," I added more cheerfully, "you can never tell what the
+public will do. They _might_ buy it--there's no telling except by
+trying--"
+
+"Well, Schofield thinks they will," she informed me with decision.
+
+"I dare say he does, if he's an artist. They mostly do," I replied.
+
+"He doesn't think Michael will ever be popular," she emphasised the
+adjective slightly, "but he does think he has a considerable following if
+they could only be discovered."
+
+I sighed. All artists think that. They will accept any compromise except
+the one that is offered to them.... I tried to explain to Maschka that in
+this world we have to stand to the chances of all or nothing.
+
+"You've got to be one thing or the other--I don't know that it matters
+very much which," I said. "There's Michael's way, and there's... mine.
+That's all. However, we'll try it. All you can say to me, and more, I'll
+say to a publisher for you. But he'll probably wink at me."
+
+For a moment she was silent. Then she said: "Schofield rather fancies one
+publisher."
+
+"Oh? Who's he?" I asked.
+
+She mentioned a name. If I knew anything at all of business she might as
+well have offered _The Life of Michael Andriaovsky_ to The Religious
+Tract Society at once....
+
+"Hm!... And has Mr. Schofield any other suggestions?" I inquired.
+
+He had. Several. I saw that Schofield's position would have to be defined
+before we went any further.
+
+"Hm!" I said again. "Well, I shall have to rely on Schofield for those
+five years in which I saw little of Michael; but unless Schofield knows
+more of publishing than I do, and can enforce a better contract and a
+larger sum on account than I can, I really think, Maschka, that you'll do
+better to leave things to me. For one thing, it's only fair to me. My
+name hasn't much of an artistic value nowadays, but it has a very
+considerable commercial one, and my worth to publishers isn't as a writer
+of the Lives of Geniuses."
+
+I could see she didn't like it; but that couldn't be helped. It had to be
+so. Then, as we sat for a time in silence over the fire, I noticed again
+how like her brother she was. She was not, it was true, much like him as
+he had been on that last visit of mine to him ... and I sighed as I
+remembered that visit. The dreadful scene had come back to me....
+
+On account, I suppose, of the divergence of our paths, I had not even
+heard of his illness until almost the finish. Immediately I had hastened
+to the Hampstead "Home," only to find him already in the agony. He had
+not been too far gone to recognise me, however, for he had muttered
+something brokenly about "knowing better," that a spasm had interrupted.
+Besides myself, only Maschka had been there; and I had been thankful for
+the summons that had called her for a moment out of the room. I had still
+retained his already cold hand; his brow had worked with that dreadful
+struggle; and his eyes had been closed.
+
+But suddenly he had opened them, and the next moment had sat up on his
+pillow. He had striven to draw his hand from mine.
+
+"Who are you?" he had suddenly demanded, not knowing me.
+
+I had come close to him. "You know me, Andriaovsky--Harrison?" I had
+asked sorrowfully.
+
+I had been on the point of repeating my name but suddenly, after holding
+my eyes for a moment with a look the profundity and familiarity of which
+I cannot express, he had broken into the most ghastly haunting laugh I
+have ever heard.
+
+"_Harrison?_" the words had broken throatily from him.... "_Oh yes; I
+know you!... You shall very soon know that I know you if... if..._"
+
+The cough and rattle had come as Maschka had rushed into the room. In ten
+seconds Andriaovsky had fallen back, dead.
+
+
+II
+
+That same evening I began to make notes for Andriaovsky's "Life." On the
+following day, the last of the fourth series of the _Martin Renards_
+occupied me until I was thankful to get to bed. But thereafter I could
+call rather more of my time my own, and I began in good earnest to devote
+myself to the "Life."
+
+Maschka had spoken no more than the truth when she had said that of all
+men living none but I could write that "Life." His remaining behind in my
+Chelsea garret that evening after the others had left had been the
+beginning of a friendship that, barring that lapse of five years at the
+end, had been for twenty years one of completest intimacy. Whatever money
+there might or might not be in the book, I had seen _my_ opportunity in
+it--the opportunity to make it the vehicle for all the aspirations,
+faiths, enthusiasms, and exaltations we had shared; and I myself did not
+realise until I began to note them down one tithe of the subtle links and
+associations that had welded our souls together.
+
+Even the outward and visible signs of these had been wonderful. Setting
+out from one or other of the score of garrets and cheap lodgings we had
+in our time inhabited, we had wandered together, day after day, night
+after night, far down East, where, as we had threaded our way among the
+barrels of soused herrings and the stalls and barrows of unleavened
+bread, he had taught me scraps of Hebrew and Polish and Yiddish; up into
+the bright West, where he could never walk a quarter of a mile without
+meeting one of his extraordinary acquaintances--furred music-hall
+managers, hawkers of bootlaces, commercial magnates of his own Faith,
+touts, crossing-sweepers, painted women; into Soho, where he had names
+for the very horses on the cab-ranks and the dogs who slumbered under the
+counters of the sellers of French literature; out to the naphtha-lights
+and cries of the Saturday night street markets of Islington and the North
+End Road; into City churches on wintry afternoons, into the studios of
+famous artists full of handsomely dressed women, into the studios of
+artists not famous, at the ends of dark and break-neck corridors; to tea
+at the suburban homes of barmaids and chorus girls, to dinner in the
+stables of a cavalry-barracks, to supper in cabmen's shelters. He was
+possessed in some mysterious way of the passwords to doors in hoardings
+behind which excavations were in progress; he knew by name the butchers
+of the Deptford yards, the men in the blood-caked clothes, so inured to
+blood that they may not with safety to their lives swear at one another;
+he took me into an opium-cellar within a stone's-throw of Oxford Street,
+and into a roof-chamber to call upon certain friends of his ... well,
+they _said_ they were fire extinguishers, so I'd better not say they
+were bombs. Up, down; here, there; good report, but more frequently
+evil ... we had known this side of our London as well as two men may. And
+our other adventures and peregrinations, not of the body, but of the
+spirit ... but these must be spoken of in their proper place.
+
+I had arranged with Maschka that Schofield should bring me the whole of
+the work Andriaovsky had left behind him; and he arrived late one
+afternoon in a fourwheeler, with four great packages done up in brown
+paper. I found him to be a big, shaggy-browed, red-haired, raw-boned
+Lancashire man of five-and-thirty, given to confidential demonstrations
+at the length of a button-shank, quite unconscious of the gulf between
+his words and his right to employ them, and bent on asserting an equality
+that I did not dispute by a rather aggressive use of my surname.
+Andriaovsky had appointed him his executor, and he had ever the air of
+suspecting that the appointment was going to be challenged.
+
+"A'm glad to be associated with ye in this melancholy duty, Harrison," he
+said. "Now we won't waste words. Miss Andriaovsky has told me precisely
+how matters stand. I had, as ye know, the honour to be poor Michael's
+close friend for a period of five years, and my knowledge of him is
+entirely at your disposal."
+
+I answered that I should be seriously handicapped without it.
+
+"Just so. It is Miss Andriaovsky's desire that we should pull together.
+Now, in the firrst place, what is your idea about the forrm the book
+should take?"
+
+"In the first place, if you don't mind," I replied, "perhaps we'd better
+run over together the things you've brought. The daylight will be gone
+soon."
+
+"Just as ye like, Harrison," he said, "just as ye like. It's all the same
+to me...."
+
+I cleared a space about my writing-table at the window, and we turned to
+the artistic remains of Michael Andriaovsky.
+
+I was astonished, first, at the enormous quantity of the stuff, and next
+at its utter and complete revelation of the man. In a flash I realised
+how superb that portion at least of the book was going to be. And
+Schofield explained that the work he had brought represented but a
+fraction of the whole that was at our disposal.
+
+"Ye'll know with what foolish generosity poor Michael always gave his
+things away," he said. "Hallard has a grand set; so has Connolly; and
+from time to time he behaved varry handsomely to myself. Artists of varry
+considerable talents both Hallard and Connolly are; Michael thought
+varry highly of their abilities. They express the deepest interest in the
+shape your worrk will take; and that reminds me. I myself have drafted a
+rough scenario of the forrm it appeared to me the 'Life' might with
+advantage be cast in. A purely private opinion, ye'll understand,
+Harrison, which ye'll be entirely at liberty to disregard...."
+
+"Well, let's finish with the work first," I said.
+
+With boards, loose sheets, scraps of paper, notes, studies, canvases
+stretched and stripped from their stretchers, we paved half the library
+floor, Schofield keeping up all the time a running fire of "Grand,
+grand! A masterpiece! A gem, that, Harrison!" They were all that he said,
+and presently I ceased to hear his voice. The splendour of the work
+issued undimmed even from the severe test of Schofield's praise; and I
+thought again with pride how I, I, was the only man living who could
+adequately write that "Life."....
+
+"Aren't they grand? Aren't they great?" Schofield chanted monotonously.
+
+"They are," I replied, coming to a consciousness of his presence again.
+"But what's that?"
+
+Secretively he had kept one package until the last. He now removed its
+wrappings and set it against a chair.
+
+_"There!"_ he cried. "I'll thank ye, Harrison, for your opinion of
+_that!"_
+
+It was the portrait Andriaovsky had refused to sell me--a portrait of
+himself.
+
+The portrait was the climax of the display. The Lancastrian still talked;
+but I, profoundly moved, mechanically gathered up the drawings from the
+floor and returned them to their proper packages and folios. I was dining
+at home, alone, that evening, and for form's sake I asked this faithful
+dog of Andriaovsky's to share my meal; but he excused himself--he was
+dining with Hallard and Connolly. When the drawings were all put away,
+all save that portrait, he gave an inquisitive glance round my library.
+It was the same glance as Maschka had given when she had feared to
+intrude on my time; but Schofield did these things with a much more heavy
+hand. He departed, but not before telling me that even my mansion
+contained such treasures as it had never held before.
+
+That evening, after glancing at Schofield's "scenario," I carefully
+folded it up again for return to him, lest when the book should appear
+he should miss the pleasure of saying that I had had his guidance but
+had disregarded it; then I sat down at my writing-table and took out
+the loose notes I had made. I made other jottings, each on a blank sheet
+for subsequent amplification; and the sheets overspread the large
+leather-topped table and thrust one another up the standard of the
+incandescent with the pearly silk shade. The firelight shone low and
+richly in the dusky spaces of the large apartment; and the thick carpet
+and the double doors made the place so quiet that I could hear my watch
+ticking in my pocket.
+
+I worked for an hour; and then, for the purpose of making yet other
+notes, I rose, crossed the room, and took down the three or four
+illustrated books to which, in the earlier part of his career,
+Andriaovsky had put his name. I carried them to the table, and twinkled
+as I opened the first of them. It was a book of poems, and in making the
+designs for them Andriaovsky had certainly _not_ found for himself.
+Almost any one of the "Art Shades," as he had called them, could have
+done the thing equally well, and I twinkled again. I did not propose to
+have much mercy on _that_. Already Schofield's words had given birth to a
+suspicion in my mind--that Andriaovsky, in permitting these fellows,
+Hallard, Connolly, and the rest, to suppose that he "thought highly" of
+them and their work, had been giving play to that malicious humour of
+his; and they naturally did not see the joke. That joke, too, was between
+himself, dead, and me, preparing to write his "Life." As if he had been
+there to hear me, I chuckled, and spoke in a low voice.
+
+"You were pulling their legs, Michael, you know. A little rough on them
+you were. But there's a book here of yours that I'm going to tell the
+truth about. You and I won't pretend to one another. It's a rotten book,
+and both you and I know it...."
+
+I don't know what it was that caused me suddenly to see just then
+something that I had been looking at long enough without seeing--that
+portrait of himself that I had set leaning against the back of a chair at
+the end of my writing-table. It stood there, just within the soft
+penumbra of shadow cast by the silk-shaded light. The canvas had been
+enlarged, the seam of it clumsily sewn by Andriaovsky's own hand; but in
+that half-light the rough ridge of paint did not show, and I confess that
+the position and effect of the thing startled me for a moment. Had I
+cared to play a trick with my fancy I could have imagined the head
+wagging from side to side, with such rage and fire was it painted. He had
+had the temerity to dash a reflection across one of the glasses of his
+spectacles, concealing the eye behind it. The next moment I had given a
+short laugh.
+
+"So you're there, are you?... Well, I know you agree very heartily about
+that book of poems. Heigho! If I remember rightly, you made more money
+out of that book than out of the others put together. But I'm going
+to tell the truth about it. _I_ know better, you know...."
+
+Chancing, before I turned in that night, to reopen one of his folios, I
+came across a drawing, there by accident, I don't doubt, that confirmed
+me in my suspicion that Andriaovsky had had his quiet joke with
+Schofield, Hallard, Connolly and Co. It was a sketch of Schofield's,
+imitative, deplorable, a dreadful show-up of incapacity. Well enough
+"drawn," in a sense, it was ... and I remembered how Andriaovsky had ever
+urged that "drawing," of itself, did not exist. I winked at the portrait.
+I saw his point. He himself had no peer, and, rather than invite
+comparison with stars of the second magnitude, he chose his intimates
+from among the peddlers of the wares that had the least possible
+connection with his Art. He, too, had understood that the Compromise
+must be entirely accepted or totally refused; and while, in the
+divergence of our paths, he had done the one thing and I the other, we
+had each done it thoroughly, with vigour, and with persistence, and each
+could esteem the other, if not as a co-worker, at least as an honourable
+and out-and-out opposite.
+
+
+III
+
+Within a fortnight I was so deep in my task that, in the realest sense,
+the greater part of my life was in the past. The significance of those
+extraordinary peregrinations of ours had been in the opportunity they had
+afforded for a communion of brain and spirit of unusual rarity; and all
+this determined to my work with the accumulated force of its long
+penning-up. I have spoken of Andriaovsky's contempt for such as had the
+conception of their work that it was something they "did" as distinct
+from something they "were"; and unless I succeed in making it plain that,
+not as a mere figure of speech and loose hyperbole, but starkly and
+literally, Andriaovsky _was_ everything he did, my tale will be
+pointless.
+
+There was not one of the basic facts of life--of Faith, Honour,
+Truth-speaking, Falsehood, Betrayal, Sin--that he did not turn, not to
+moral interpretations, as others do, but to the holy purposes of his
+noble and passionate Art. For any man, Sin is only mortal when it is Sin
+against that which he knows to be immortally true; and the things
+Andriaovsky knew to be immortally true were the things that he had gone
+down into the depths in order to bring forth and place upon his paper or
+canvas. These things are not for the perusal of many. Unless you love the
+things that he loved with a fervour comparable in kind, if not in degree,
+with his own, you may not come near them. "Truth, 'the highest thing a
+man may keep,'" he said, "cannot be brought down; a man only attains it
+by proving his right to it"; and I think I need not further state his
+views on the democratisation of Art. Of any result from the elaborate
+processes of Art-education he held out no hope whatever. "It is in a man,
+or it isn't," he ever declared; "if it is, he must bring it out for
+himself; if it isn't, let him turn to something useful and have done with
+it." I need not press the point that in these things he was almost a
+solitary.
+
+He made of these general despotic principles the fiercest personal
+applications. I have heard his passionate outbreak of "Thief! Liar!
+Fool!" over a drawing when it has seemed to him that a man has not
+vouched with the safety of his immortal soul for the shapes and lines he
+has committed to it. I have seen him get into such a rage with the eyes
+of the artist upon him. I have heard the ice and vinegar of his words
+when a good man, for money, has consented to modify and emasculate
+his work; and there lingers in my memory his side of a telephone
+conversation in which he told a publisher who had suggested that he
+should do the same thing precisely what he thought of him. And on the
+other hand, he once walked from Aldgate to Putney Hill, with a loose heel
+on one of his boots, to see a man of whom he had seen but a single
+drawing. See him he did, too, in spite of the man's footman, his liveried
+parlourmaid, and the daunting effect of the electric brougham at the
+door.
+
+"He's a good man," he said to me afterwards, ruefully looking at the
+place where his boot-heel had been. "You've got to take your good where
+you find it. I don't care whether he's a rich amateur or skin-and-grief
+in a garret as long as he's got the stuff in him. Nobody else could have
+fetched me up from the East End this afternoon.... So long; see you in a
+week or so--"
+
+This was the only time I ever knew him break that sacred time in which he
+celebrated each year the Passover and the Feast of Tabernacles. I doubt
+whether this observance of the ritual of his Faith was of more essential
+importance to him than that other philosophical religion towards which he
+sometimes leaned. I have said what his real religion was.
+
+But to the "Life."
+
+With these things, and others, as a beginning, I began to add page to
+page, phase to phase; and, in a time the shortness of which astonished
+myself, I had pretty well covered the whole of the first ten years of our
+friendship. Maschka called rather less, and Schofield rather more
+frequently, than I could have wished; and my surmise that he, at least,
+was in love with her, quickly became a certainty. This was to be seen
+when they called together.
+
+It was when they came together that something else also became apparent.
+This was their slightly derisive attitude towards the means by which I
+had attained my success. It was not the less noticeable that it took the
+form of compliments on the outward and visible results. Singly I could
+manage them; together they were inclined to get a little out of hand.
+
+I would have taxed them fairly and squarely with this, singly or
+together, but for one thing--the beautiful ease with which the "Life" was
+proceeding. Never had I felt so completely _en rapport_ with my subject.
+So beautifully was the thing running that I had had the idle fancy of
+some actual urge from Andriaovsky himself; and each night, before sitting
+down to work, I set his portrait at my desk's end, as if it had been some
+kind of an observance. The most beautiful result of all was, that I felt
+what I had not felt for five years--that I too was not "doing" my work,
+but actually living and being it. At times I took up the sheets I had
+written as ignorant of their contents as if they had proceeded from
+another pen--so freshly they came to me. And once, I vow, I found, in my
+own handwriting, a Polish name, that I might (it is true) have
+subconsciously heard at some time or other, but that stirred no chord in
+my memory even when I saw it written. Maschka checked and confirmed it
+afterwards; and I did not tell her by what odd circumstance it had issued
+from my pen.
+
+The day did come, however, when I found I must have it out with Schofield
+about this superciliousness I have mentioned. The _Falchion_ had just
+begun to print the third series of my _Martin Renard_; and this had been
+made the occasion of another of Schofield's ponderous compliments. I
+acknowledged it with none too much graciousness; and then he said:
+
+"I've na doubt, Harrison, that by this time the famous sleuth-hound of
+crime has become quite a creature of flesh and blood to ye."
+
+It was the tone as much as the words that riled me; and I replied that
+his doubts or the lack of them were a privacy with which I did not wish
+to meddle. From being merely a bore the fellow was rapidly becoming
+insolent.
+
+"But I opine he'll get wearisome now and then, and in that case poor
+Michael's 'Life' will come as a grand relaxation," he next observed.
+
+If I meant to have it out, here was my opportunity.
+
+"I should have thought you'd have traced a closer connection than that
+between the two things," I remarked.
+
+He shot a quick glance at me from beneath his shaggy russet brows.
+
+"How so? I see varry little connection," he said suspiciously.
+
+"There's this connection--that while you speak with some freedom of what
+I do, you are quite willing to take advantage of it when it serves
+your turn."
+
+"'Advantage,' Harrison?" he said slowly.
+
+"Of the advertisement _Martin Renard_ gives you. I must point out that
+you condone a thing when you accept the benefit of it. Either you
+shouldn't have come to me at all, or you should deny yourself the
+gratification of these slurs."
+
+"Slurrrrs?" he repeated loweringly.
+
+"Both of you--you and Miss Andriaovsky, or Maschka as I call her, _tout
+court_. Don't suppose I don't know as well as you do the exact worth of
+my 'sleuth-hound,' as you call him. You didn't come to me solely because
+I knew Andriaovsky well; you came because I've got the ear of the
+public also; and I tell you plainly that, however much you dislike it,
+Michael's fame as far as I'm of any use to him, depends on the
+popularity of _Martin Renard."_
+
+He shook his big head. "This is what I feared," he said.
+
+"More," I continued, "you can depend upon it that Michael, wherever he
+is, knows all about that."
+
+"Ay, ay," he said sagely, "I misdoubt your own artistic soul's only to be
+saved by the writing of poor Michael's 'Life,' Harrison."
+
+"Leave that to me and Michael; we'll settle that. In the meantime, if you
+don't like it, write and publish the 'Life' yourself."
+
+He bent his brows on me.
+
+"It's precisely what I wanted to do from the varry first," he said. "If
+you'd cared to accept my symposium in the spirit in which it was offered,
+I cannot see that the 'Life' would have suffered. But now, when you're
+next in need of my services, ye'll mebbe send for me."
+
+He took up his hat. I assured him, and let him take it in what sense he
+liked, that I would do so; and he left me.
+
+Not for one single moment did I intend that they should bounce me like
+that. With or without their sanction and countenance, I intended to write
+and publish that "Life." Schofield--in my own house too--had had the
+advantage that a poor and ill-dressed man has over one who is not poor
+and ill-dressed; but my duty first of all was neither to him nor to
+Maschka, but to my friend.
+
+The worst of it was, however, that I had begun dimly to suspect that
+the Lancastrian had hit at least one nail on the head. "Your artistic
+soul's only to be saved by writing poor Michael's 'Life,'" he had
+informed me... and it was truer than I found it pleasant to believe.
+Perhaps, after all, my first duty was not to Andriaovsky, but to myself.
+I could have kicked myself that the fool had been perspicacious enough to
+see it, but that did not alter the fact. I saw that in the sense in which
+Andriaovsky understood Sin, I had sinned....
+
+My only defence lay in the magnitude of my sin. I had sinned
+thoroughly, out-and-out, and with a will. It had been the only
+respectable way--Andriaovsky's own way when he had cut the company
+of an Academician to hobnob with a vagabond. I had at least instituted
+no comparison, lowered no ideal, was innocent of the accursed attitude
+of facing-both-ways that degrades all lovely and moving things. I was, by
+a paradox, too black a sinner not to hope for redemption....
+
+I fell into a long musing on these things....
+
+Had any of the admirers of _Martin Renard_ entered the library of his
+author that night he would have seen an interesting thing. He would
+have seen the creator of that idol of clerks and messenger-lads and
+fourth-form boys frankly putting the case before a portrait propped up on
+a chair. He would have heard that popular author haranguing, pleading,
+curiously on his defence, turning the thing this way and that.
+
+"If _you'd_ gone over, Michael," that author argued, "you'd have done
+precisely the same thing. If I'd stuck it out, we were, after all, of a
+kind; We've got to be one thing or the other--isn't that so, Andriaovsky?
+Since I made up my mind, I've faced only one way--only one way. I've kept
+your ideal and theirs entirely separate and distinct. Not one single
+beautiful phrase will you find in the _Martin Renards;_ I've cut 'em
+out, every one. I may have ceased to worship, but I've profaned no
+temple.... And think what I _might_ have done--what they all do! They
+deal out the slush, but with an apologetic glance at the Art Shades;
+_you_ know the style!--'Oh, Harrison; he does that detective rubbish, but
+that's not Harrison; if Harrison liked to drop that he could be a fine
+artist!'--I _haven't_ done that. I _haven't_ run with the hare and hunted
+with the hounds. I _am_ just Harrison, who does that detective
+rubbish!... These other chaps, Schofield and Connolly, _they're_ the real
+sinners, Michael--the fellows who can't make up their minds to be one
+thing or the other ('artists of considerable abilities'--ha! ha!).... Of
+course you know Maschka's going to marry that chap? What'll _they_ do, do
+you think? He'll scrape up a few pounds out of the stew where I find
+thousands, marry her, and they'll set up a salon and talk the stuff the
+chairs talked that night, you remember!... But you wait until I finish
+your 'Life.'..."
+
+I laid it all before him, almost as if I sought to propitiate him. I
+might have been courting his patronage for his own "Life." Then, with a
+start, I came to, to find myself talking nonsense to the portrait that
+years before Andriaovsky had refused to sell me.
+
+
+IV
+
+The first check I experienced in the hitherto so easy flow of the "Life"
+came at the chapter that dealt with Andriaovsky's attitude towards
+"professionalism" in Art. He was inflexible on this point; there ought
+not to be professional artists. When it was pointed out that his position
+involved a premium upon the rich amateur, he merely replied that riches
+had nothing to do with the question, and that the starver in the garret
+was not excused for his poverty's sake from the observance of the
+implacable conditions. He spoke literally of the "need" to create,
+usually in the French term, _besogne_; and he was inclined to regard the
+imposition of this need on a man rather as a curse laid upon him than as
+a privilege and a pleasure. But I must not enlarge upon this further than
+to observe that this portion of his "Life" which I was approaching
+coincided in point of time with that period of my own life at which I had
+been confronted with the alternative of starving for Art's sake or
+becoming rich by supplying a clamorous trade demand.
+
+It came, this check I have spoken of, one night, as I was in the very
+middle of a sentence; and though I have cudgelled my brains in seeking
+how best I can describe it, I am reduced to the simple statement that it
+was as arresting, as sharp, actual and impossible to resist, as if my
+hand had been seized and pinned down in its passage across the paper. I
+can even see again the fragment of the sentence I had written: "... _and
+the mere contemplation of a betrayal so essential--_" Then came that
+abrupt and remarkable stop. It was such an experience as I had formerly
+known only in nightmare.
+
+I sat there looking blankly and stupidly at my own hand. And not only was
+my hand arrested, but my brain also had completely ceased to work. For
+the life of me I could not recall the conclusion of the sentence I had
+planned a moment before.
+
+I looked at my hand, and looked again; and as I looked I remembered
+something I had been reading only a few days before--a profoundly
+unsettling description of an experiment in auto-suggestion. The
+experiment had consisted of the placing of a hand upon a table, and the
+laying upon it the conjuration that, the Will notwithstanding, it should
+not move. And as I watched my own hand, pale on the paper in the pearly
+light, I knew that, by some consent to the nullification of the Will that
+did not proceed from, the Self I was accustomed to regard as my own, that
+injunction was already placed upon it. My conscious and deliberate Will
+was powerless. I could only sit there and wait until whatever inhibition
+had arrested my writing hand should permit it to move forward again.
+
+It must have been several minutes before such a tingling of the nerves as
+announces that the blood is once more returning to a cramped member
+warned me that I was about to be released. Warily I awaited my moment;
+then I plucked my hand to myself again with a suddenness that caused a
+little blot of ink to spurt from my fountain-pen on to the surface of the
+paper. I drew a deep breath. I was free again. And with the freedom came
+a resolve--that whatever portion of myself had been responsible for this
+prank should not repeat it if I could possibly prevent it.
+
+But scarcely had I come, as I may say (and not without a little gush of
+alarm now that it was over), to myself, when I was struck by a thought.
+It was a queer wild sort of thought. It fetched me out of my chair and
+set me striding across the library to a lower shelf in the farthest
+corner. This shelf was the shelf on which I kept my letter-files. I
+stooped and ran my fingers along the backs of the dusty row. I drew out
+the file for 1900, and brought it back to my writing-table. My contracts,
+I ought to say, reposed in a deed-box at my agent's office; but my files
+contained, in the form of my agent's letters, a sufficient record of my
+business transactions.
+
+I opened the file concertina-wise, and turned to the section lettered
+"R." I drew out the correspondence that related to the sale of the first
+series of the _Martin Renards_. As I did so I glanced at the movable
+calendar on my table. The date was January 20th.
+
+The file contained no letters for January of any significance whatever.
+
+The thought that had half formed in my brain immediately became nonsense.
+I replaced the letters in their compartment, and took the file back to
+its shelf again. For some minutes I paced the library irresolutely; then
+I decided I would work no more that night. When I gathered together my
+papers I was careful to place that with the half-finished sentence on the
+top, so that with the first resting of my eyes upon it on the morrow my
+memory might haply be refreshed.
+
+I tried again to finish that sentence on the morrow. With certain
+modifications that I need not particularise here, my experience was the
+same as on the previous night.
+
+It was the same when I made the attempt on the day after that.
+
+At ten o'clock of the night of the fourth day I completed the sentence
+without difficulty. I just sat down in my chair and wrote it.
+
+With equal ease I finished the chapter on professional artists.
+
+It was not likely that Schofield would have refrained from telling
+Maschka of our little difference on our last meeting; and within a week
+of the date I have just mentioned I learned that she knew all about it.
+And, as the circumstances of my learning this were in a high degree
+unusual, I will relate them with such clearness as I am able.
+
+I ought first to say, however, that the selection of the drawings that
+were to illustrate the book having been made (the drawings for which my
+own text was to serve as commentary would be the better expression), the
+superintendence of their production had been left to Schofield. He,
+Maschka, and I passed the proofs in consultation. The blocks were almost
+ready; and the reason for their call that evening was to consider the
+possibility of having all ready for production in the early spring--a
+possibility which was contingent on the state of advancement of my own
+share of the book.
+
+That evening I had experienced my second check. (I omit those that had
+immediately succeeded the first one, as resembling that one so closely in
+the manner of their coming.) It had not come by any means so completely
+and definitively as the former one, but it had sufficed to make my
+progress, both mentally and mechanically, so sluggish and struggling
+a performance that for the time being I had given up the attempt, and was
+once more regarding with a sort of perturbed stupor my hand that held the
+pen. Andriaovsky's portrait stood in its usual place, on the chair at the
+end of my writing-table; but I had eyes for nothing but that refractory
+hand of mine.
+
+Now it is true that during the past weeks I had studied Andriaovsky's
+portrait thoroughly enough to be able to call up the vivid mental image
+of it at will; but that did not entirely account for the changed aspect
+with which it now presented itself to that uncomprehended sense within
+us that makes of these shadows such startling realities. Flashing and
+life-like as was the presentation on the canvas (mind you, I was not
+looking at it, but all the time at my own hand), it was dead paint by
+comparison with that _mental image_ which I saw (if I may so use a term
+of which custom has restricted the meaning to one kind of seeing) as
+plainly as I ever saw Andriaovsky in his life. I know now that it was
+by virtue of that essential essence that bound us heart and brain and
+soul together that I so saw him, eyes glittering, head sardonically
+wagging, fine mouth shaping phrases of insight and irony. And the strange
+thing was, that I could not have located this so living image by
+confining it to any portion of the space within the four walls of my
+library. It was before me, behind me, within my head, about me, _was me_,
+invading and possessing the "me" that sat at the table. At one moment
+the eyes mockingly invited me to go on with my work; the next, a frown
+had seated itself on that massive pylon of his forehead; and then
+suddenly his countenance changed entirely.... A wave of horror broke
+over me. He was suddenly as I had seen him that last time in the
+Hampstead "Home"--sitting up on his pillow, looking into my eyes with
+that terrible look of profundity and familiarity, and asking me who I
+was.... _"Harrison--ha ha!... You shall very soon know that I know you,
+if ..."_
+
+It is but by the accidence of our limited experience that sounds are loud
+or soft to that inner ear of us; these words were at one and the same
+time a dreadful thunder and a voice interstellarly inaccessible and
+withdrawn. They, too, were before, behind, without, and within. And
+incorporated (I know not how else to express it) with these words were
+other words, in the English I knew, in the Hebrew in which he had quoted
+them from the sacred Books of his People, in all languages, in no
+language save that essential communication of which languages are but the
+inessential husk and medium--words that told me that though I took the
+Wings of the Morning and fled into the uttermost parts of the earth, yea,
+though I made my bed in Hell, I could not escape him....
+
+He had kept his word. I _did_ know that he knew who and what I was....
+
+I cannot tell whether my lips actually shaped the question that even in
+that moment burst from me.
+
+"But Form--and Forms? It _is_ then true that all things are but aspects
+of One thing?..."
+
+"Yes--in death," the voice seemed to reply.
+
+My next words, I know, were actually spoken aloud.
+
+"Then tell me--tell me--_do you not wish me to write it?"_
+
+Suddenly I leapt out of my chair with a gulping cry. A voice _had_
+spoken....
+
+"Of course we wish you to write it...."
+
+For one instant of time my vision seemed to fold on itself like smoke;
+then it was gone. The face into which I was wildly staring was Maschka's,
+and behind her stood Schofield. They had been announced, but I had heard
+nothing of it.
+
+"Were you thinking of _not_ writing it?" she demanded, while Schofield
+scowled at me.
+
+"No--no--," I stammered, as I got up and tardily placed them chairs.
+
+Schofield did not speak, but he did not remove his eyes from me. Somehow
+I could not meet them.
+
+"Well," she said, "Jack had already told me that you seemed in two minds
+about it. That's what we've called about--to know definitely what it is
+you propose to do."
+
+I saw that she had also called, if necessary, to quarrel. I began to
+recover a little.
+
+"Did you tell her that?" I demanded of Schofield. "If you did,
+you--misinterpreted me."
+
+In my house, he ignored the fact that I was in the room. He replied to
+Maschka.
+
+"I understood Mr. Harrison to say definitely, and in those words, that if
+I didn't like the way in which he was writing Michael's 'Life,' I might
+write and publish one myself," he said.
+
+"I did say that," I admitted; "but I never said that whatever _you_ did I
+should not go on with mine."
+
+"Yours!" cried Maschka. "What right have _you_ in my brother's 'Life'?"
+
+I quickly told her.
+
+"I have the right to write my recollections of him, and, subject to
+certain provisions of the Law, to base anything on them I think fit," I
+replied.
+
+"But," she cried aghast, "there can't be _two_ 'Lives'!..."
+
+"It's news to me that two were contemplated," I returned. "The point is,
+that I can get mine published, and you can't."
+
+Schofield's harsh voice sounded suddenly--but again to Maschka, not to
+me.
+
+"Ye might remind Mr. Harrison that others have capabilities in business
+besides himself. Beyond a doubt our sales will be comparatively small,
+but they'll be to such as have not made the great refusal."
+
+Think of it!... I almost laughed.
+
+"Oh!... Been trying it?" I inquired.
+
+He made no reply.
+
+"Well, those who have made the refusal have at least had something to
+refuse," I said mildly. Then, realising that this was mere quarrelling, I
+returned to the point. "Anyhow, there's no question of refusing to write
+the 'Life.' I admit that during the last fortnight I've met with certain
+difficulties; but the task isn't so easy as perhaps it looks.... I'm
+making progress."
+
+"I suppose," she said hesitatingly, after a pause, "that you don't care
+to show it as far as it is written?"
+
+For a moment I also hesitated. I thought I saw where she was. Thanks to
+that Lancashire jackanapes, there was division between us; and I had
+pretty well made up my mind, not only that he thought himself quite
+capable of writing Andriaovsky's "Life," himself, but that he had
+actually made an attempt in that direction. They had come in the
+suspicion that I was throwing them over, and, though that suspicion was
+removed, Maschka wished, if there was any throwing over to be done, to do
+it herself. In a word, she wanted to compare me with Schofield.
+
+"To see it as far as it is written," I repeated slowly.... "Well, you
+may. That is, you, Michael's sister, may. But on the condition that
+you neither show it to anybody else nor speak of it to anybody else."
+
+"Ah!" she said.... "And only on those conditions?"
+
+"Only on those conditions."
+
+I saw a quick glance between them. "Shall we tell him?" it seemed to
+say....
+
+"Including the man Michael's sister is going to marry?" she said
+abruptly.
+
+My attitude was deeply apologetic, but, "Including anybody whomsoever," I
+answered.
+
+"Then," she said, rising, "we won't bother. But will you at least let us
+know, soon, when we may expect your text?"
+
+"I will let you know," I replied slowly, "one week from to-day."
+
+On that assurance they left; and when they had gone I crossed once more
+to the lower shelf that contained my letter-files. I turned up the file
+for 1900 once more. During their visit I had had an idea.
+
+I ran through the letters, and then replaced them....
+
+Yes, I ought to be able to let them know within the week.
+
+
+V
+
+Against the day when I myself shall come to die, there are in the
+pigeon-holes of the newspaper libraries certain biographical records
+that deal roughly with the outward facts of my life; and these,
+supplemented by documents I shall place in the hands of my executors,
+will tell the story of how I leaped at a bound into wealth and fame with
+the publication of _The Cases of Martin Renard_. I will set down as much
+of that story as has its bearing on my present tale.
+
+_Martin Renard_ was not immediately accepted by the first editor to whom
+it was offered. It does not suffice that in order to be popular a thing
+shall be merely good--or bad; it must be bad--or good--in a particular
+way. For taking the responsibility when they happen to miss that
+particular way editors are paid their salaries. When they happen to hit
+it they grow fat on circulation-money: Since it becomes me ill to quarrel
+with the way in which any man earns his money, I content myself with
+merely stating the fact.
+
+By the time the fourth editor had refused my series I was about at my
+last gasp. To write the things at all I had had to sink four months in
+time; and debts, writs and pawnshops were my familiars. I was little
+better off than Andriaovsky at his very worst. I had read the first of
+the _Martin Renards_ to him, by the way; the gigantic outburst of mirth
+with which he had received it had not encouraged me to read him a second.
+I wrote the others in secret.
+
+I wrote the things in the spring and summer of 1900; and by the last day
+of September I was confident that I had at last sold them. Except by a
+flagrant breach of faith, the editor in whose desk they reposed could
+hardly decline them. As it subsequently happened, I have now nothing but
+gratitude for him that he did, after all, decline them; for I had a
+duplicate copy "on offer" in another quarter.
+
+He declined them, I say; and I was free to possess my soul again among my
+writs, debts and pawnshops.
+
+But four days later I received the alternative offer. It was from the
+_Falchion_. The _Falchion_, as you may remember, has since run no less
+than five complete series of _Martin Renards_. It bought "both sides,"
+that is to say, both British and American serial rights. Of the twelve
+_Martin Renards_ I had written, my wise agent had offered the _Falchion_
+six only. On his advice I accepted the offer.
+
+Instantaneously with the publication of those six stories came my
+success. In two continents I was "home"--home in the hearts of the
+public. I had my small cheque--it was not much more than a hundred
+pounds--but "Wait," said my agent; "let's see what we can do with the
+other six...."
+
+Precisely what he did with them only he and I know; but I don't mind
+saying that L3000 did not buy my first serial rights. Then came second
+and third rights, and after them the book rights, British, American, and
+Colonial. Then came the translation rights. In French, my creation is, of
+course, as in English, _Martin Renard_; in German he is Martin Fuchs; and
+by a similar process you can put him--my translators have put him--into
+Italian, Swedish, Norwegian, Russian, and three-fourths of the tongues of
+Europe. And this was the first series only. It was only with the second
+series that the full splendour of my success appeared. My very imitators
+grew rich; my agent's income from his comparatively small percentage on
+my royalties was handsome; and he chuckled and bade me wait for the
+dramatic rights and the day when the touring companies should get to
+business....
+
+I had "got there."
+
+And I remember, sadly enough now, my first resolution when the day came
+when I was able to survey the situation with anything approaching calm.
+It was, "Enough." For the rest of my days I need not know poverty again.
+Thenceforward I need not, unless I chose, do any but worthy work. _Martin
+Renard_ had served his purpose handsomely, and I intended to have nothing
+more to do with him.
+
+Then came that dazzling offer for the second series....
+
+I accepted it.
+
+I accepted the third likewise; and I have told you about the fourth....
+
+I have tried to kill _Martin Renard_. He was killing me. I have, in
+the pages of the _Falchion_, actually killed him; but I have had to
+resuscitate him. I cannot escape from him....
+
+I am not setting down one word more of this than bears directly on my
+tale of Andriaovsky's "Life." For those days, when my whole future had
+hung in the balance, _were the very days covered by that portion of
+Andriaovsky's life at which I had now arrived_. I had reached, and was
+hesitating at, our point of divergence. Those checks and releases which I
+had at first found so unaccountable corresponded with the vicissitudes of
+the _Martin Renard_ negotiations.
+
+The actual dates did not, of course, coincide--I had quickly discovered
+the falsity of that scent. Neither did the intervals between them, with
+the exception of those few days in which I had been unable to complete
+that half-written sentence--the few days immediately prior to my
+(parallel) acceptance by the _Falchion_. But, by that other reckoning
+of time, of mental and spiritual experience, _they tallied exactly_.
+The gambling chances of five years ago meant present stumblings and
+haltings; the breach of faith of an editor long since meant a present
+respite; and another week should bring me to that point of my so
+strangely reduplicated experience that, allowing for the furious mental
+rate at which I was now living, would make another node with that other
+point in the more slowly lived past that had marked my acceptance of the
+offer for the second half-dozen of the _Martin Renards_.
+
+It had been on this hazardous calculation that I had made my promise to
+Maschka.
+
+I passed that week in a state of constantly increasing apprehension.
+True, I worked at the "Life," even assiduously; but it was plain sailing,
+mere cataloguing of certain of Andriaovsky's works, a chapter I had
+deliberately planned _pour mieux sauter_--to enhance the value of the
+penultimate and final chapters. These were the real crux of the "Life."
+These were what I was reserving myself for. These were to show that only
+his body was dead, and that his spirit still lived and his work was
+still being done wherever a man could be found whose soul burned within
+him with the same divine ardour.
+
+But I was now realising, day by day, hour by hour more clearly, what I
+was incurring. I was penning nothing less than my own artistic damnation.
+Self-condemned, indeed, I had been this long time; but I was now making
+the world a party to the sentence. The crowning of Andriaovsky involved
+my own annihilation; his "Life" would be my "Hic Jacet." And yet I was
+prepared, nay, resolved, to write it. I had started, and I would go
+forward. I would not be spewed with the lukewarm out of the mouth of that
+Spirit from which proceeds all that is bright and pure and true. The
+vehemence with which I had rejected its divine bidding should at least be
+correspondent with my adoration of it. The snivelling claims of the
+Schofields I spurned. If, as they urged, "an artist must live," he must
+live royally or starve with a tight mouth. No complaining....
+
+And one other claim I urged in the teeth of this Spirit, which, if it
+was a human Spirit at all, it could not disregard. Those pigeon-holed
+obituaries of mine will proclaim to the world, one and all, the virtues
+of my public life. In spite of my royal earnings, I am not a rich man. I
+have not accepted wealth without accepting the personal responsibility
+for it. Sick men and women in more than one hospital lie in wards
+provided by _Martin Renard_ and myself; and I am not dishonoured in my
+Institution at Poplar. Those vagrant wanderings with Andriaovsky have
+enabled me to know the poor and those who help the poor. My personal
+labours in the administration of the Institute are great, for outside
+the necessary routine I leave little to subordinates. I have declined
+honours offered to me for my "services to Literature," and I have never
+encouraged a youth, of parts or lacking them, to make of Literature a
+profession. And so on and so forth. All this, and more, you will read
+when the day comes; and I don't doubt the _Falchion_ will publish my
+memoir in mourning borders...
+
+But to resume.
+
+I finished the chapter I have mentioned. Maschka and her fiance kept
+punctiliously away. Then, before sitting down to the penultimate
+chapter, I permitted myself the relaxation of a day in the country.
+
+I can't tell you precisely where I went; I only know it was somewhere in
+Buckinghamshire, and that, ordering the car to await me a dozen miles
+farther on, I set out to walk. Nor can I tell you what I saw during that
+walk; I don't think I saw anything. There was a red wintry disc of a sun,
+I remember, and a land grey with rime; and that is all. I was entirely
+occupied with the attempt I was about to make. I think that even then
+I had the sense of doom, for I know not how otherwise I should have
+found myself several times making little husbandings of my force, as if
+conscious that I should need it all. For I was determined, as never in my
+life have I been determined, to write that "Life." And I intended, not to
+wait to be challenged, but to challenge.... I met the car, returning in
+search of me; and I dined at a restaurant, went home to bed, and slept
+dreamlessly.
+
+On the morrow I deliberately refrained from work until the evening. My
+challenge to Andriaovsky and the Powers he represented should be boldly
+delivered at the very gates of their own Hour. Not until half-past eight,
+with the curtains drawn, the doors locked, and orders given that on no
+account whatever was I to be disturbed, did I switch on the pearly light,
+place Andriaovsky's portrait in its now accustomed place, and draw my
+chair up to my writing-table.
+
+
+VI
+
+But before I could resume the "Life" at the point at which I had left it,
+I felt that there were certain preliminaries to be settled. It was not
+that I wished to sound a parley with any view of coming to terms; I had
+determined what the terms were to be. As a boxer who leaps from his
+corner the moment the signal is given, astounding with suddenness his
+less prompt antagonist, so I should be ready when the moment came. But I
+wished the issue to be defined. I did not propose to submit the whole of
+my manhood to the trial. I was merely asserting my right to speak of
+certain things which, if one chose to exaggerate their importance by a
+too narrow and exclusive consideration of them, I might conceivably be
+thought to have betrayed.
+
+I drew a sheet of paper towards me, and formally made out my claim. It
+occupied not more than a dozen lines, and its nature has already been
+sufficiently indicated. I put my pen down again, leaned back in my chair,
+and waited.
+
+I waited, but nothing happened. It seemed that if this was my attempt to
+justify myself, the plea was certainly not disallowed. But neither had I
+any sign that it was allowed; and presently it occurred to me that
+possibly I had couched it in terms too general. Perhaps a more particular
+claim would meet with a different reception.
+
+During the earlier stages of the book's progress I had many times
+deliberated on the desirability of a Preface that should state succinctly
+what I considered to be my qualifications for the task. Though I had
+finally decided against any such statement, the form of the Preface might
+nevertheless serve for the present occasion. I took another sheet of
+paper, headed it "Preface," and began once more to write.
+
+I covered the page; I covered a second; and half-way down the third I
+judged my statement to be sufficient. Again I laid down my pen, leaned
+back, and waited.
+
+The Preface also produced no result whatever.
+
+Again I considered; and then I saw more clearly. It came to me that, both
+in the first statement and in the Preface, I was merely talking to
+myself. I was convincing myself, and losing both time and strength in
+doing so. The Power with which I sought to come to grips was treating my
+vapourings with high disregard. To be snubbed thus by Headquarters
+would never, never do....
+
+Then I saw more clearly still. It seemed that my _right to challenge_
+was denied. I was not an adversary, with the rights and honours of an
+adversary, but a trangressor, whose trangression had already several
+times been sharply visited, and would be visited once more the moment it
+was repeated. I might, in a sense, please myself whether I brought myself
+into Court; but, once there, I was not the arraigner in the box, but the
+arraigned in the dock.
+
+And I rebelled hotly. Did I sit there, ready for the struggle, only to be
+told that there could be no struggle? Did that vengeful Angel of the Arts
+ignore my very existence?... By Yea and Nay I swore that he should take
+notice of me! Once before, a mortal had wrestled a whole night with an
+angel, and though he had been worsted, it had not been before he had
+compelled the Angel to reveal himself! And so would I...
+
+Challenge, title to challenge, tentatives, preliminaries, I suddenly cast
+them all aside. We would have it in deeds, not in further words. I opened
+a drawer, took out the whole of the "Life" so far written, and began to
+read. I wanted to grasp once more the plan of it in its entirety.
+
+Page after page, I read on, with deepening attention. Quickly I ran
+through half of it. Then I began to concentrate myself still more
+closely. There would come a point at which I should be flush with the
+stream of it again, again feel the force of its current; I felt myself
+drawing nearer to that point; when I should reach it I would go ahead
+without a pause...
+
+I read to the end of Chapter Fifteen, the last completed chapter. Then
+instantly I took my pen and wrote, "Chapter Sixteen...."
+
+I felt the change at the very first word.
+
+       *        *        *        *        *
+
+I will not retraverse any ground I have covered before. If I have not
+already made clear my former sensations of the petrefaction of hand and
+brain, I despair of being able to do so any better now. Suffice it that
+once more I felt that inhibition, and that once more I was aware of the
+ubiquitous presence of the image of the dead artist. Once more I heard
+those voices, near as thunder and yet interstellarly remote, crying that
+solemn warning, that though I took the Wings of the Morning, made my bed
+in Hell, or cried aloud upon the darkness to cover me, there was one
+Spirit from which I could not hope to escape. I felt the slight crawling
+of my flesh on my bones as I listened.
+
+But there was now a difference. On the former occasion, to hear again
+those last horrible words of his, "_You shall very soon know I know who
+you are if_..." had been the signal for the total unnerving of me and for
+that uncontrollable cry, "_Don't you then want me to write it_?" But now
+I intended to write it if I could. In order that I might tell him so I
+was now seeking him out, in what heights or depths I knew not, at what
+peril to myself I cared not. I cared not, since I now felt that I could
+not continue to live unless I pressed to the uttermost attempt. And I
+must repeat, and repeat again, and yet repeat, that in that hour
+Andriaovsky was immanent about me, in the whole of me, in the last fibre
+and cell of me, in all my thoughts, from my consciousness that I was
+sitting there at my own writing-table to my conception of God Himself.
+
+It may seem strange--whether it does so or not will depend on the kind
+ of man you yourself are--that as long as I was content to recognise this
+immanence of Andriaovsky's enlarged and liberated spirit, _and not to
+dispute with it_, I found nothing but mildness and benignity in my
+hazardous experience. More, I felt that, in that clear region to which
+in my intensified state of consciousness I was lifted, I was able to move
+(I must trust you to understand the word aright) without restraint, nay,
+with an amplitude and freedom of movement past setting down, as long as
+I was satisfied to possess my soul in quiescence. The state itself was
+inimical neither to my safety nor to my sanity. I was conscious of it
+as a transposition into another register of the scale of life. And, as
+in this life we move in ignorance and safety only by accepting the
+hair-balance of stupendous forces, so now I felt that my safety depended
+on my observation of the conditions that governed that region of light
+and clarity and Law.
+
+Of clarity and Law; save in the terms of the great abstractions I may not
+speak of it. And that is well-nigh equal to saying that I may not speak
+of it at all. The hand that would have written of it lay (I never for one
+moment ceased to be conscious) heavy as stone on a writing-table in some
+spot quite accidental in my new sense of locality; the tongue that would
+have spoken of it seemed to slumber in my mouth. And I knew that both
+dumbness and stillness were proper. Their opposites would have convicted
+me (the flat and earthly comparison must be allowed) of intrusion into
+some Place of beauty and serenity for which the soilure of my birth
+disqualified me.
+
+For beauty and serenity, austerity and benignity and peace, were the
+conditions of that Place. To other Places belonged the wingy and robed
+and starry and golden things that made the heavens of other lives than
+that which I had shared with Andriaovsky; here, white and shapely Truth
+alone reigned. None questioned, for all knew; none sinned, for sin was
+already judged and punished in its committal; none demonstrated, for
+all things were evident; and those eager to justify themselves were
+permitted no farther than the threshold....
+
+And it was to justify, to challenge, to maintain a right, that I was
+there. I was there to wrestle, if needs be, with the Angel of that Place,
+to vanquish him or to compel him to reveal himself. I had not been
+summoned; I had thrust myself there unbidden. There was a moment in which
+I noticed that my writing-table was a little more than ordinarily removed
+from me, but very little, not more than if I had been looking over the
+shoulder of another writer at it; and I saw my chapter heading. At the
+sight of it something of the egotism that had prompted me to write it
+stirred in me again; everywhere was Andriaovsky's calm face, priest and
+Angel himself; and I became conscious that I was trying to write a
+phrase. I also became conscious that I was being pitifully warned not to
+do so...
+
+Suddenly my whole being was flooded with a frightful pang of pain.
+
+It was not local. It was no more to be located than the other immanences
+of which I have spoken. It was Pain, pure, essential, dissociated; and
+with the coming of it that fair Place had grown suddenly horrible and
+black.
+
+And I knew that the shock came _of my own resistance_, and that it would
+cease to afflict me the moment I ceased to resist.
+
+I did cease. Instantly the pain passed. But as when a knife is plucked
+from a wound, so only with its passing did I shriek aloud....
+
+For I know not how many minutes I sat in stupefaction. Then, as with
+earthly pains, that are assuaged with the passing of accidental time, the
+memory of it softened a little. Blunderingly and only half consciously, I
+cast about to collect my dispersed force.
+
+For--already I was conscious of it--there still remained one claim that
+even in thought I had not advanced. I would, were I permitted, still
+write that "Life," but, since it was decreed so, I would no longer urge
+that in writing it I justified myself. So I might but write it, I would
+embrace my own portion, the portion of doom; yea, though it should be a
+pressing of the searing-iron to my lips, I would embrace it; my name
+should not appear. For the mere sake of the man I had loved I would write
+it, in self-scorn and abasement, humbly craving not to be denied....
+
+_"Oh, let me but do for Love of you what a sinful man can!"_ I
+groaned....
+
+A moment later I had again striven to do so. So do we all, when we
+think that out of a poor human Love we can alter the Laws by which our
+state exists. And with such a hideous anguish as was again mine are we
+visited....
+
+And I knew now what that anguish was. It was the twining of body from
+spirit that is called the bitterness of Death; for not all of the body
+are the pangs of that severance. With that terrible sword of impersonal
+Pain the God of Peace makes sorrowful war that Peace may come again. With
+its flame He ringed the bastions of Heaven when Satan made assault. Only
+on the Gorgon-image of that Pain in the shield may weak man look; and
+its blaze and ire had permeated with deadly nearness the "everywhere"
+where I was...
+
+"_Oh, not for Love? Not even for Love?_" broke the agonised question from
+me....
+
+The next moment I had ceased, and ceased for ever, to resist.
+Instantaneously the terrible flashing of that sword became no more
+than the play of lightning one sees far away in the wide cloudfields
+on a peaceful summer's twilight. I felt a gentle and overpowering
+sleep coming over me; and as it folded me about I saw, with the last
+look of my eyes, my own figure, busily writing at the table.
+
+Had I, then, prevailed? Had Pain so purged me that I was permitted to
+finish my task? And had my tortured cry, "Oh, not even for Love?"
+been heard?
+
+I did not know.
+
+       *        *        *        *        *
+
+I came to myself to find that my head had fallen on my desk. The light
+still shone within its pearly shade, and in the penumbra of its shadow
+the portrait of Andriaovsky occupied its accustomed place. About me were
+my papers, and my pen lay where it had fallen from my hand.
+
+At first I did not look at my papers. I merely saw that the uppermost of
+them was written on. But presently I took it up, and looked at it
+stupidly. Then, with no memory at all of how I had come to write what was
+upon it, I put it down again.
+
+It was indeed a completion.
+
+But it was not of Andriaovsky's "Life" that it was the completion. As you
+may or may not know, Andriaovsky's "Life" is written by "his friend John
+Schofield." I had been allowed to write, but it was my own condemnation
+that, in sadness and obedience, in the absence of wrath but also in the
+absence of mercy, I had written. By the Law I had broken I was broken in
+my turn. It was the draft for the fifth series of _The Cases of Martin
+Renard_.
+
+No, not for Love--not even for Love....
+
+
+
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