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 tomorrow, or the day after. Yes, tomorrow, 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, i
n 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 today.’
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 – goodbye –’
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.
9
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 half-way 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 pondera
ble. 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.