Oliver Onions ...........................................................................................................................................1

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 passerby, 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 fallingin of a lease or two, when doubtless a clearance would be made of the whole

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 entrancealley 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 hatchetlike noticeboard 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 rainworn 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 0leron 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 workingquarters half a mile or 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 0leron, brought

suddenly up by the hatchetlike notice board, looked first down through some scanty privetbushes 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

0leron asked if he might have the key of the old house; and the longnosed man withdrew again.

0leron waited for another five minutes on the step; then the man, appearing again and masticating some of the

"But you won't want it," he said. "The entrance door isn't closed, and a push '11 open any of the others. I'm a

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

He spent a quarter of an hour in the place, and then came out again. Without mounting higher, he descended

The man mentioned a figure, the comparative lowness of which seemed accounted for by the character of the

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

purchasemoney 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 arid haws

of a difference, and the lawyer was by no means certain that it lay within his power to do as 0leron suggested;

but it was finally extracted from him that, provided the noticeboards 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

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 0leron's grandmother's, it ought to be entirely

charming. He went to the storage warehouse to refresh his memory of his halfforgotten belongings, and to

take the measurements; and thence he went to a decorator's. He was very busy with his regular work, and

could have wished that the noticeboard 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, eiderflower 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 effectsthe tall latticeparted 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 rosebowls . These things he set against his

newly painted eiderwhite wallswalls of wood panelled in the happiest proportions, and moulded and

coffered to the lowseated windowrecesses. 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 0leron 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 hatrack 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 settings of his furniture, or preparing to resume the work that his removal had interrupted.

As far as the chief business of his lifehis writingwas 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 fortyfour 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 bee n easily swayed by some

thing 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

In the meantime, his removal into the old house with the insurance marks built into its brick merely

As this tall man with the lean, ascetic face moved about his new abode, arranging, changing, altering, hardly

yet into his workingstride again, he gave the impression of almost spinsterlike precision and nicety. For

twenty years past, in a score of lodgings, garrets, fiats, 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 longnosed 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 relaxationfrom the strain of writing.

His kitchen, together with the adjoining strip of an apartment into which a modern bath had been fitted, over

looked 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 powdercloset 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, rummag ing

on an upper shelf that ran deeply into the wall, Oleron found a couple of mushroomshaped old wooden

wigstands. 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

closetroom; 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 seldomused but nottobedestroyed accumulation of

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 halfcompleted manuscript of

But before beginning work he went to a small rosewood cabinet and took from a drawer his chequebook and

pass book. He totted them up, and his monklike 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

"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

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

mandoline 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 he had formerly been furnishedwhether 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 tambourframe or the picquettable 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 halfpast four in the afternoon; "I must do better than this

And he felt so deliciously lazy that for some minutes he even contemplated the breach of an appointment he

The next morning he sat down to work without even permitting himself to answer one of his three

letterstwo 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 robed northeastwards 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

0leron 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 off 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 notemore and richer flowers, and possibly some warm and gay stuff for

"Of course, I really can't afford it," he muttered, as he went for a twofoot and began to measure the width of

In stooping to measure a recess, his attitude suddenly changed to one of interest and attention. Presently he

"Oho, oho!" he said. "These look to me very much like windowboxes, nailed up. We must look into this!

On that wall of his sittingroom 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.

The sound of the mallet on the wedge seemed, in that sweet and pale apartment, somehow a little

brutalnay, even shocking. The panelling rang and rattled and vibrated to the blows like a soundingboard.

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

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 sittingroom 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

It was some sort of a large bag, of an ancient friezelike 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

"Now whatever can that have been?" Oleron mused as he stood surveying it .... "I give it up. Whatever it is,

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 sittingroom 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

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 thata 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 thirtyfour, large, showy, fair as butter, pink as a dogrose,

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

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

"Don't knock off for me," she said across a mouthful of largeheaded 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

"Oh, that's all right, I'll clear these things away. To tell the truth, I'm rather glad to be interrupted," said

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 sittingroom 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.

"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

"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

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

"I'm afraid there isn't," Oleron replied, still' meditatively dryshaving his chin. Then he added, with a little

burst of candour, "The fact is, Elsie, I've not writtennot actually writtenvery much more of itany

more of it, in fact. But, of course, that doesn't mean I haven't progressed. I've progressed, in one sense, rather

"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."

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 roundeyed stare.

"I should only do it reluctantly, and for the sake of something I thought better."

"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 readand small blame to

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 friendup 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 onetenth part of

Oleron's genius there were few things she could not have donethus making that genius a quantitatively

divisible thing, a sort of ingredient, to be added to or to subtracted from in the admixture of his work. That it

was a qualitative thing, essential, indivisible, inform ing, passed her comprehension. Their spirits parted

"Yes, yes, yes," he said a little. wearily, byandby, "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

"Well," he said, smiling wanly, "what does it mean when you're convinced a thing isn't worth doing? You

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 threeparts

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 ittwenty years of garrets and roofchambers and dingy flats and shabby lodgings, and

he was tired of dinginess and shabbiness. The reward was as far off as everor if it was not, he no longer

cared at 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," 0leron summed up, "I'm happier here than I've been for a long time. That's some sort of a

"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 workwhen 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 fortyfour, 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

"But you knew all that, many, many years ago, Pauland 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

"fortyfour, thenand 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?"

He might have known from her tone what else he could have had for the holding up of a fingerherself. 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

For a minute there was a silence. Then it occurred to Oleron that this was common vulgar grumbling. It was

"Sorry you catch me like this, Elsie," he said, with a little laugh .... "No, I'11 take them out; then we'll go for a

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 Miss Barrett used as a cushion for

"That? I should be glad if you could tell me what it is," Oleron repled as he unfolded the bag and related the

"I think I know what it is," said Miss Bengough. "It's been used to wrap up a harp before putting it in its

"By Jove, that's probably just what it was," said Oleron, "I could make neither head nor tale of it...."

"You'll never finish Romilly here. Why, I don't know, but you won't. I know it. You'll have to leave before

"Perfectly ridiculous. As An argument it hasn't a leg to stand on. But there it is," she replied, her mouth once

"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

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. N man does a thing better fir 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 hardly confounded her.

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 He moved his chair to look round the

room that smiled, positively smile, 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 curtainsthey had a flowered and trellised pattern, with baskets and oaten

pipesfell in long quiet folds to the windowseats; 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

That reflection struck him a little, and presently he returned to it. Yes, the rom had, quite accidentally, done

Miss Bengough a disservice that afternoon. It ad, in some subtle but unmistakable way, paced hr, marked a

contrast of qualities. Assuming for the sake of argument the slightly ridiculous proposition that the room in

which Oleron saw 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 c=general muchness. And if one must contrast

Yes, here Oleron had made a distinct discovery; he wondered he had not made it before. He picture Miss

Bengough again as she had appeared that afternoonlarge, showy, moistly pink, with that quality of the

prize bloom exuding, as it were from here; 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 he 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 seem to lurk some dim shape emblemtic of mrtality.

He had never, during the ten years of their intimacy, dreamed for a moment of asking her to mrry 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 afternoonsshe, the good chum, on whose help he

would have counted had all the rest of the world failed himshe, whose loyalty to him would not, he knew,

swerve as long as there was breath in herElsie to be even in thought dissected thus! He was an ingrate and

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 kitchenthe

dripping of water from an imperfectly turnedoff tap into the vessel beneath it. Mechanically he began to

beat with his fingers 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 ore; ad when he resumed his meditation he was all

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 s he does, is

suddenly brought up sharp by something that falsifies and discredits all that had gone before? He doubted all

now. . . . It did for a moment occur to them that the man who demands of a friend more than can be given to

Again he ceased to think, that again moved his finger to the distant dripping of the tap. . .

And now (he resumed byandby), if these things were true of Elsie Bengough, they were also true of the

creation of which she was the prototypeRomilly Bishop. And since he could say f Romilly what for very

she he could not say of Elsie, he gave his thoughts rein. He did so in that smiling, firelighted room, to the

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 coarsefibered, overcoloured, rank. It became true the

moment he formulated his thought; Gulliver had described the Brobdingnagian maidsofhonour thus: and

mentally and spiritually she correspondedwas 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

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. . . .

She must go, all fifteen chapters of her. That was settled. For what was to take her place in his mind was a

blank; but one ting 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 in the fire.

But instead of putting them in 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 tang irregular changes, and it was

foolishly sweet and dulcimerlike. 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 "Plinkplunk," minimised almost to inaudibility.

Following the lowest note there seemed to be a brief phrase, irregularly repeated; and presently Oleron found

When e 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 doorlocks, and windowfastenings,

But a curious little sequel followed on the morrow. Mrs. Barrett usually tapped, not at his door, but at the

wooden wall beyond which law 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 wit her

"Dear me!" her soft falsetto rose. "But that will be a very Oald tune, Mr. Oleron! I will not have heard it

Oleron had his thumb in the flap of a letter. It remained there. "I was humming? . . . Sing it, Mrs. Barrett."

"I have no voice for singing, Mr. Oleron; it was Ann Pugh was the singer of our family; but the tune will be

"Try to sin it," said Oleron, his thumb still in the envelope; and Mrs. Barrett, with much dimpling and

"They do say it was sung to a harp, Mr. Oleron , and it will be very oald," she concluded.

With a "Very welllet me have breakfast," Oleron opened his letter; but the trifling circumstance struck hi

as more odd than he would have admitted to himself. The phrase he hd hummed had been that which he had

Even more curious than that the commonplace dripping of an ordinary watertap 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 the 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 own anatomy; and certainly a whole world of insect life bored and burrowed in

its baulks and joists. At any rate Oleron had only so it quiet in his chair and to wait for a minute or two in

order to become aware of such a change ion 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

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 his 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 windowsashes changed their position

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 tat, as his own body

stood in friendly relation to his soul, so, by an extension and an attenuation, his habituation might

fantastically be supposed to stand in some relation to himself. He even amused himself with the farfetched

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

In proportion, 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

"It doesn't belong to today 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 patent hasmeter and a tradesman' lift. Nd it would do you all the good in the world if you had a

job that made you scramble and rub elbows with your fellowmen. 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 workwould 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

"I don't mean tp buy stamps or to post a letter. How long is it since you had anything like a stretch?"

"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

"If you mean," said Oleron slowly, "that I've discarded the only 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.

"I want to see it. I want to show some of it to you. I want, if you're not woolgathering entirely, to bring you

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 iteven 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

Miss Bengough crossed quickly to the windowseat, 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:

"What? What is it? What's the matter?" he asked. "I did knock them inor rather, pulled them out."

"You left enough to scratch with," she replied, showing her hand. From the upper wrist to the knuckle of the

"GoodGracious!" 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 phases 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

Presently he led her back to the sittingroom 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

windowboxes, 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

"It shall come out now, at ll events," he muttered, as he went for a pair of pincers. And he made no mistake

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

"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 hopeless gesture. "Don't you see that I must be guided by

"Come, Elsie," he aid 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.

"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

"Poor child!" he murmured. "Will you let me take you to a doctor and have it properly dressed?"

She put her elbow on the back of the chair, and the bandaged hand rested lightly on his shoulder.

At that thought 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

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 againstsomething entirely

strange and new, that, had he analyzed 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 word.

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 hr this guardianship over him that lately she had put forward so

But by the time she had opened her eyes again he had overcome his resentment sufficiently to speak gently,

"No thank you, Paul," she sad. "I'll go now. If I need a dressing I'll get one; take the other hand, please.

He did not attempt to detain her. He walked with her to the foot of the stairs. Halfway along the narrow

"It would be a long way to come if you happened not to be in," she said; " l'll send you a post card the next

"Leave here, Paul," she said, with a mournful look. "Everything's wrong with this house."

Oleron returned to his room. He crossed straight to the windowbox. He opened the lid and stood long

"Tat's rather frightening," he muttered. "It's simply not possible that I should not have removed that nail...."

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 knewknew, 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

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 sw 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. Halfway down the

staircase there was a 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. . .

He thrust downwards at the broken boards. The extrication was no easy matter, and her torn boot shows him

At her words, that she was not wanted, his head dropped as if she had given him a buffet.

"Oh, Paul, not thatnot youof course I do mean that too in a senseoh, you know what I mean! . . . But

if the other can't be, spare me this now! II wouldn't have come, butbut oh, I did, I did try to keep away!"

It was intolerable, heartbreaking; but what could he dowhat could he say? He did not love her. . . .

"No, not thatnot anything lessdon't offer me anything lessleave me a little pride"

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?"

"Then if you won't see a doctor, will you go across the square and let Mrs. Barrett look at you? Look, there's

The longnosed Barrett was looking curiously down the alley, but as Oleron was about to call him he made

off with our a word. Elsie seemed anxious for nothing so much as to be clear of the place, and finally

And Oleron watched her until she was past the hatchetlike "To Let" boards, as if he feared that even they

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 way from Elsie Bengough's haunting cry that still rang in his ears. "I'm not

He walked until twilight fell, then, without lighting candles, he stirred up the fire and flung himself into a

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 armwhat a fool he had been!. . . Well,

it was too late now. It was she, not he, who must now actact 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.

His room grew dark; the fire burned dead; and he continued to it, wincing from time to time as a fresh

Then suddenly, he knew not why, he found himself anxious for her in a new senseuneasy about her

personal safety. A horrible fancy that even then he 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 these 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 illhealed wound on the hand and a bad abrasion of the ankle.

Then he recognised that his thoughts were morbid. By an effort of will he put them aside, and sat for awhile

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. Uglyyes, positively blubbered; if tears were

women's weapons, as they were said to be, such tears were weapons turning against themselves . . . suicide

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 the 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 nowa sort

of soft sweeping rustle that seemed to hold an almost inaudible minute crackling. For half a minute or so it

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 worldhow 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 noisethe

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 agin; he was trying

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 fireirons clattering as it fell. There was only one noise in the world like that

The next time it came Oleron felt behind him at the empty air with his hand, and backed slowly until he

"God in Heaven!" The ejaculation broke from Oleron's lips. The sound had ceased.

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

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 he found none. He thought

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.

The room was as usual. He struck a second match. A candle stood on the table. He lighted it, and the flame

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.

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 publichouse round the corner; Oleron had never

entered it; but he entered it now, and put down a shilling that missed the counter by inches.

He had the little sawdusted bar to himself; what company there wascarters and labourers and the small

tradesmen of the neighbourhoodwas gathered in the farther compartment, beyond the space where the

whitehaired 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 publichouse would undertake

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 pithwhite, fascinating room.

He would go back for the present to his old arrangement, of workroom and separate sleepingquarters; he

would go to his old landlady at oncepresentlywhen he had finished his brandy and see if she could

And if anybody asked his reason for removing again? Oh, he had reason enoughreason 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

A cutglass partition divided the compartment where Oleron sat from the space where the whitehaired

landlady moved; but it stopped seven or eight inches above the level of the counter. There was no partition at

the further bar. Presently Oleron, raising his eyes, saw that faces were watching him through the aperture.

He moved to a corner where he could not be seen from the other bar; but this brought him into line with the

She knew him by sighthad 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 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 himsitting hatless, drinking

brandy, in a publichouse. Suppose he were to tell the whitehaired landlady all about itto 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 frightwhat 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),

Yes, he would go back. He would take a walk in the air firsthe hadn't walked enough latelyand 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 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 selfassurances

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 had so

confounded and humiliated Oleron. Luckily she had expressed her intention of staying away; she must be

And he must see to it all the more that he now saw his first example, 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

He mastered the faint chill of fear that came with the decision, and turned in his walk abruptly. Should fear

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 t hem as he passed, and he noticed further that the longnosed Barrett,

whom he passed a little lower down, did not return his goodnight. He turned in at the broken gate, hesitated

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 ha ll that he noticed that a letter lay on the floor. He carried it into his

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

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 cleaningout 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

A seldomseen 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 ...

The foulminded 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 dayoffhand, 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

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 thereis 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

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 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

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 after wards, so now the question 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 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

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 cotenant 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 halfwritten novelor rather, in both Romillys, the I old and the proposed new one.

A little while before Oleron would have thought himself mad to have embraced such an opinion; now he

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 first Romilly having been definitely thrown over, second had instantly fastened herself upon him,

clamoring 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

Yet that a malignancy almost homicidal should be ex tended 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

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 able to be either challenged or brow

beaten 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.

"Ideasmine!" 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....

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

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

Besides, he was deep in certain rather abstruse investigations, in which it was better that he should not be

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 caves as if something drew them. He did not know that a

"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.

"Yes, yesto town," he replied. "I've got to call onon 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 after noon. To Brighton. I had a letter from him this

He took her arm and led her up the square. She had to remind him that his way to town lay in the other

"Of coursehow stupid of me l" he said, with a little loud laugh. "I'm so used to going the other way with

youof course; it's the other way to the bus. Will you come along with me? I am so awfully sorry it's

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 pallidfaced 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

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

"Somewhere for a change. I need a change. I think I shall go tomorrow, or the day after. Yes, tomorrow, I

"I don't quite know how long I shall be," he continued. "I shall have to let you know when I am back."

"You don't ask me where I'm going," he said, with a little cumbrous effort to rally her.

He found not a word to say. It was a minute or so before she continued, in the same controlled voice she had

"You're not going anywhere. You weren't going out this morning. You only came out because I appeared;

A flush of pink had mounted to his cheeks. He noticed that the wind had given her the pink of early rhubarb.

"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

"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." 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, businesswomen, 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

valuationand 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 ....

"I suppose," he said tremblingly, looking down between his knees, "I suppose the real trouble is in the life

He could not tell in what sense she took the lame generality; she merely replied, "I suppose so."

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."

"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

She took his meaning with perfect ease. She merely shivered a little as she pronounced the name.

Anything further that was to be said must come from her. It came as the bus stopped at a stage and fresh

"You'd better get down here and go back, Paul," she said. "I understand perfectlyperfectly. 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

"All over. I want you now to consider yourself, as far as I'm concerned, perfectly free. I make only one

"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, PaulI shall know if you are, and you will bethen I

"So that's understood," she concluded. "And I think all. Now go back. I should advise you to walk back, for

She gave him a cold hand, and he descended. He turned on the 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

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 an d 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, andaha! Oleron chuckled things might be

But he gained less information than he had hoped for. The house, the vicar said, was oldbut there needed

no vicar to tell Oleron that; it was reputed (0leron pricked up hisears) to be hauntedbut there were few

old houses about which some such rumour did not circulate among 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

"You may leave my nerves out of the question," he said. "How long has the place been empty?"

"And the last tenantdid you know himor her?" Oleron was conscious of a tingling of his nerves as he

"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 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 postmortem that there was not a particle of food in his

stomach, although he was found to benot 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

"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 on e 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

He walked slowly for a reason, twice turning away from the house within a stone'sthrow 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 halfpast 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

meadowsweetcoloured panels and mouldings, the polished floor, and the lofty and faintly tarred ceiling,

He spent that afternoon as a convalescent who expected a dear visitor might have spent itin a delicious

vacancy, smiling now and then as if in 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....

He waited similarly in vain on the morrow, maintaining, though with less ease, that sensitisedlatelike

condition of his mind. Nothing occurred to give it an impression. Whatever it was which he so patiently

And then on the third day he thought he understood. A look of gentle drollery and cunning came into his

"Oho, oho! . . . Well, if the wind sits in thatquarter 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

He was standing musing, thumbing his lean jaw, looking aslant; suddenly he crossed to his hall, took down

"My lady is coquettish, is she? Well, we'll see what a little neglect will do," he chuckled as he went down the

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 one to deal with Fair Ones who beckoned, and invited, and then took refuge in shyness

"< I>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 peacockblue by contrast with his candleframe, 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

bout. The door of the powdercloset 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 harpbag. From the kitchen he passed to the

bathroom. There, another slant of blue moonlight cut the windowsill and law across the pipes on the wall. He

visited his seldomused study, and stood for a moment gazing at the silvered roofs across the square. Then,

walking straight through his sittingroom, his stockinged feet making no noise, he entered the bedroom and

put the candle on the chest of drawers. His face all this time wore no expression save that of tiredness. He had

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, he then

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

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 the 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 selfpossession. 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.. . .

In the middle of the 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 pictureglass the little glancings of light from the bevels and facets

of the objects about the mirror and candle. But he could see more. These tinglings and reflections and

rereflections 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

Oleron finished the emptying of his pockets; then, under cover of another simulated yawn, not so much

summoning his resolution as overmastered by an exorbitant 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

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 the 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

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

"Hm!" he muttered as he threw the manuscript into a chair. . . . "As I thought. . . . She's just blindly, ragingly,

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,

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

The weather grew bright and warm. The privet bushes among the chopperlike noticeboards flowered, and

in the streets where Oleron did his shopping the baskets of flowerwomen 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 changea 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, tenebr� Jovi. The name of this terror was agoraphobia. Oleron had begun to dread air and space and

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

Quickly he was confirmed in his choice. It became his pleasure to remain immured.

But he was not happyor, 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 newborn fear that

kept him, on the increasingly rare occasions when he did go out, sidling close to walls and feeling friendly

rails with his hand. He moved from room to room softly and in slippers, and sometimes stood for any 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 longnosed Barrett

adhered. These came with a great drum and large brassbellied 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 unbelieversas 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 object 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 sittingroom, al 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

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 bloodred

One day, as he drew down the blind of his little study and backed in good order out of the room again, he

"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 th at 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 harpbag, and was standing with his back

well protected in the embrasure, when he thought he saw the tail of a blackandwhite check skirt disappear

round the corner of the house. He could not be surehad he run to the window of the other wall, which was

blinded, the skirt must have been already pastbut he was almost sure that it was Elsie. He listened in an

And he continued to mutter from time to time, "Horribly compromising . . . no woman would stand that . . .

Yet he was not happy. He could not have assigned the cause of the fits of quit 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 been granted. He was waiting for that granting, in that flowerladen,

frightfully enticing apartment of his, with the pithwhite walls tinged and subdued by the crimson blinds to a

He paid no heed to it that his stock of money was running perilously low, nor that he ha cease 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 amaking 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 Howd'yedo's. The men to whom

it is committed to father them must weep wretched tears, as Oleron did, must swell with vain presumptions

hopes, as Oleron did, must pursue, as Oleron pursued, the capricious, fair, mocking, slippery, eager Spirit tat,

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

And if all else was falling away from Oleron, gladly he was letting it go. So do we all when out 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

home wheedling; perhaps there lurks within us all the time a heartless sprite who is never fooled; but in the

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 trothplighting, 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 windowseat, forgotten their very existence. But his own jealousy of Madley put him in

mind of hrs 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 divide allegiance?

What, and she with a passion so fierce and centered that it had not hesitated at the destruction, twice

But if that was all the pledge and sacrifice she required she should have itah, yes, and quickly!

He kept the 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

downit had seemed a foolish measure 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 bee loudit had

been, indeed, no more than a tap, twice or thrice repeatedbut it had filled Oleron with alarm. His face grew

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. . . .

"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 cal 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,

With his teeth hard set, he dropped the first page of Romilly into the fire. Then he began to drop the rest in,

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

Oleron crossed the room. All his door were open; his eyes shone as he placed himself within that of his

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 throughthe glimpse

of greeny blue moonlight seen through the distant kitchen doorthe sulky glow of the fire under the black

ashes of the burnt manuscriptthe glimmering of the tulips and the moondaisies and narcissi in the bowls

and jugs and jarsthese 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 itbut not 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 mon). The low illumination on the blind at his elbow grew

dimmer (the time had been when Oleron would have concluded that the lamplight 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

Suddenly, inclining his head, he withdrew a little from the doorjamb. 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. . . .

One knows not whether there can be human compassion for an�mia 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

And this we must do even though Love so transfuse us that e 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 (wislier 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 lt 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

For the handwriting of the two letters that Oleron, stealing noiselessly one June day into his kitchen to rid his

sittingroom 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

telegraphboy 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

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 redtinged 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 halfmemory, of a novel to be written, a

novel it was important that he could 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 great 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 eave until they fetched him outa place that some might

have thought a little on the greensick side, that others might have considered to be a little too redolent of

longdead 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 has

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 Madleyhad a strong feeling that he wouldn't have liked himwould rather he had lived somewhere

elsereally couldn't stand the fellowhated 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 longnosed 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 dustup with

him about something or other . . . some girl of 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. Chef of those 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 Barrettto 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 at the threshold

of some golden portal prepared for Oleron a pit should suddenly gape, as if a batlike shadow should turn the

growing dawn to mirk and darkness again. . . . Therefore, Oleron strove to stifle even the nascent thought of

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 had just comewas there. Strive as he would, he could not

But for her to come at that moment of all moments! . . . Really, t 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! tactreticencehe had never credited her with an overwhelming amount of either; but he had

never attributed mereoh, there was no word for it! Monstrousmonstrous! Did she intend thenceforward.

But the next moment his heat and resentment had changed to a cold sweat of cowering fear. Panicstricken,

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 hisnot his that open

rift of bright and searing Hellnot his, not his! His hand 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

The revulsion was instant. As if a cold slow billow ha 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

Yes, he was himself, Paul Oleron, tired novelist, already past the summit of his best work, and slipping

downhill again emptyhanded from it all. He had struck short in his life's aim. He ha tried too much, had

It all came to him in the single word, enwrapped and complete; it needed no sequential thought; he was a

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 a profitless, illdone,

unrequited work again, and so on the morrow after that, and the morrow after that, and as many morrows as

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 halffinished 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

If only he had chosen the wife, the child, the faithful friend at the fireside, and let them follow an ignis fatuus

In the meantime it began to puzzle him exceedingly why he should be so weak, that his room should smell so

overpoweringly of decaying vegetable mater, and that his hand, chancing to stray to his face in the darkness,

"Most extraordinary!" he began to mutter to himself. "Have I been ill? M I ill now? And if so, why have they

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!

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

"This is a queer thing altogether," he muttered. "By Jove, I'm as weak as a kitten too, , , , Hallo, there!

"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 gt 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

But before putting out the other leg he stopped and considered, picking at his newfound 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 defenseless back for the sake of such a spoilsport as she!. . . If

she was in, let her lt 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 asoh, 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. . . .

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' noticeboards hanging like wooden choppers

over the paling. Two constables stood at the broken gate of the narrow entrancealley, keeping folk back.

The women kept to the outskirts of the throng, moving now an 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 longnosed man had a little group about him, and he was telling some story over and over again; and

another man, little and fat and wideeyed, sought to capture the longnosed man's audience with some

". . . and it was revealed to me that there'd been something that very afternoon," the longnosed man was

saying. "I was standing there, where Constable Saunders isor rather, I was passing about my business,

when they came out. There was no deceiving me, oh, no deceiving me! I saw her face. . . . "

"It was like hers whom our Lord said to, Woman, doth any man accuse tee?'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 fourandsixpence a week'them was her words. Jane,"

I says, if it was fortysix thousand pounds it should top' . . . and from that day to this she hasn't set foot inside

"What Mrs. Barrett saw and Mrs. Barrett didn't see shall not pas these lips; even as it is written, keep thy

"He was pretty near canned up in the Wagon and Horses that night, weren't he, Jim?"

"She got the key off of meshe had the number of itshe came into my shop of a Tuesday evening. . . . "

"Shut your heads," a heavy labourer commented gruffly, "she hasn't been found yet. Ere's the inspectors; we

Two inspectors had come up and were talking to the constables who guarded the gate. The little fat man ran

eagerly forwarded, saying that she had bought the key of him. "I remember the number, because of it's being

"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

"This don't look as if he'd been out much lately," one of the inspectors uttered as he kicked aside a littler of

dead leaves and papers that lay outside Oleron's door. "I don't think we need knockbreak a pane,

The door had two glazed panels; there was a sound of shattered glass; and Brackley put his hand through the

"Faugh!" . . . choked one of the inspectors as they entered. "Let some light and air in, quick. It stinks like a

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 waxywhite, 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"

"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 ankledeep mass of vegetable refuse that cumbered the floor. The kitchen window had no

blind, and was overshadowed by the blank end of the house across the alley. The kitchen appeared to be

But the inspector, kicking aside the dead flowers, noticed that a shuffling trick 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

The inspector advanced, put out his hand to the little knob, and slid the hatch along the groove.

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 puddingbag of faded browny, red frieze.

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 and 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

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 fourwheeler and a stretcher; and he

couldn't understand what heavy article they seemed to be moving about in the kitchenhis kitchen. . . .

Then he heard a murmur in the square, and the stopping of a fourwheeler 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

wordssomething about "used in evidence against you." They had lifted him to his feet, and were assisting

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

frightenedeyed 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

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 fourwheeler 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 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 hatchetlike "To

Let" boards among the privettree. One of them said that the key was at Number Six. . . .

Suddenly the raging of voices was hushed. Along the entrancealley shuffling steps were heard, and the other

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