“Yes, let me know,” she replied in an even tone.
The tone was, for her, suspiciously even. He was a little uneasy. “You don't ask me where I'm going,” he said, with a little cumbrous effort to rally her.
She was looking straight before her, past the bus-driver. “I know,” she said.
He was startled. “How do you know?”
“You're not going anywhere,” she replied.
He found not a word to say. It was a minute or so before she continued, in the same controlled voice she had employed from the start.
“You're not going anywhere. You weren't going out this morning. You only came out because I appeared; don't behave as if we were strangers, Paul.”
A flush of pink had mounted to his cheeks. He noticed that the wind had given her the pink of early rhubarb. Still he found nothing to say.
“Of course, you ought to go away,” she continued. “I don't know whether you look at yourself often in the glass, but you're rather noticeable. Several people have turned to look at you this morning. So, of course, you ought to go away. But you won't, and I know why.”
He shivered, coughed a little, and then broke silence.
“Then if you know, there's no use in continuing this discussion,” he said curtly.
“Not for me, perhaps, but there is for you,” she replied. “Shall I tell you what I know?”
“No,” he said in a voice slightly raised.
“No?” she asked, her round eyes earnestly on him. “No.”
Again he was getting out of patience with her; again he was conscious of the strain. Her devotion and fidelity and love plagued him; she was only humiliating both herself and him. It would have been bad enough had he ever, by word or deed, given her cause for thus fastening herself on him… but there; that was the worst of that kind of life for a woman. Women such as she, business women, in and out of offices all the time, always, whether they realised it or not, made comradeship a cover for something else. They accepted the unconventional status, came and went freely, as men did, were honestly taken by men at their own valuation—and then it turned out to be the other thing after all, and they went and fell in love. No wonder there was gossip in shops and squares and public houses! In a sense the gossipers were in the right of it. Independent, yet not efficient; with some of womanhood's graces forgone, and yet with all the woman's hunger and need; half sophisticated, yet not wise; Oleron was tired of it all…
And it was time he told her so.
“I suppose,” he said tremblingly, looking down between his knees, “I suppose the real trouble is in the life women who earn their own living are obliged to lead.”
He could not tell in what sense she took the lame generality; she merely replied, “I suppose so.”
“It can't be helped,” he continued, “but you do sacrifice a good deal.”
She agreed: a good deal; and then she added after a moment, “What, for instance?”
“You may or may not be gradually attaining a new status, but you're in a false position today.”
It was very likely, she said; she hadn't thought of it much in that light.
“And,” he continued desperately, “you're bound to suffer. Your most innocent acts are misunderstood; motives you never dreamed of are attributed to you; and in the end it comes to”—he hesitated a moment and then took the plunge,“—to the sidelong look and the leer.”
She took his meaning with perfect ease. She merely shivered a little as she pronounced the name.
“Barrett?”
His silence told her the rest.
Anything further that was to be said must come from her. It came as the bus stopped at a stage and fresh passengers mounted the stairs.
“You'd better get down here and go back, Paul,” she said. “I understand perfectly—perfectly. It isn't Barrett. You'd be able to deal with Barrett. It's merely convenient for you to say it's Barrett. I know what it is… but you said I wasn't to tell you that. Very well. But before you go let me tell you why I came up this morning.”
In a dull tone he asked her why. Again she looked straight before her as she replied:
“I came to force your hand. Things couldn't go on as they have been going, you know; and now that's all over.”
“All over,” he repeated stupidly.
“All over. I want you now to consider yourself, as far as I'm concerned, perfectly free. I make only one reservation.”
He hardly had the spirit to ask her what that was.
“If I merely need you,” she said, “please don't give that a thought; that's nothing; I shan't come near for that. But,” she dropped her voice, “if you're in need of me, Paul—I shall know if you are, and you will be—then I shall come at no matter what cost. You understand that?”
He could only groan.
“So that's understood,” she concluded. “And I think that's all. Now go back. I should advise you to walk back, for you're shivering—goodbye—”
She gave him a cold hand, and he descended. He turned on the edge of the kerb as the bus started again. For the first time in all the years he had known her she parted from him with no smile and no wave of her long arm.
IX
He stood on the kerb plunged in misery, looking after her as long as she remained in sight; but almost instantly with her disappearance he felt the heaviness lift a little from his spirit. She had given him his liberty; true, there was a sense in which he had never parted with it, but now was no time for splitting hairs; he was free to act, and all was clear ahead. Swiftly the sense of lightness grew on him: it became a positive rejoicing in his liberty; and before he was halfway home he had decided what must be done next.
The vicar of the parish in which his dwelling was situated lived within ten minutes of the square. To his house Oleron turned his steps. It was necessary that he should have all the information he could get about this old house with the insurance marks and the sloping “To Let” boards, and the vicar was the person most likely to be able to furnish it. This last preliminary out of the way, and— aha! Oleron chuckled—things might be expected to happen!
But he gained less information than he had hoped for. The house, the vicar said, was old—but there needed no vicar to tell Oleron that; it was reputed (Oleron pricked up his ears) to be haunted—but there were few old houses about which some such rumour did not circulate among the ignorant; and the deplorable lack of Faith of the modern world, the vicar thought, did not tend to dissipate these superstitions. For the rest, his manner was the soothing manner of one who prefers not to make statements without knowing how they will be taken by his hearer. Oleron smiled as he perceived this.
“You may leave my nerves out of the question,” he said. “How long has the place been empty?”
“A dozen years, I should say,” the vicar replied.
“And the last tenant—did you know him—or her?” Oleron was conscious of a tingling of his nerves as he offered the vicar the alternative of sex.
“Him,” said the vicar. “A man. If I remember rightly, his name was Madley; an artist. He was a great recluse; seldom went out of the place, and”—the vicar hesitated and then broke into a little gush of candour—“and since you appear to have come for this information, and since it is better that the truth should be told than that garbled versions should get about, I don't mind saying that this man Madley died there, under somewhat unusual circumstances. It was ascertained at the post-mortem that there was not a particle of food in his stomach, although he was found to be not without money. And his frame was simply worn out. Suicide was spoken of, but you'll agree with me that deliberate starvation is, to say the least, an uncommon form of suicide. An open verdict was returned.”
“Ah!” said Oleron… “Does there happen to be any comprehensive history of this parish?”
“No; partial ones only. I myself am not guiltless of having made a number of notes on its purely ecclesiastical history, its registers and so forth, which I shall be happy to show you if you woul
d care to see them; but it is a large parish, I have only one curate, and my leisure, as you will readily understand… ”
The extent of the parish and the scantiness of the vicar's leisure occupied the remainder of the interview, and Oleron thanked the vicar, took his leave, and walked slowly home.
He walked slowly for a reason, twice turning away from the house within a stone's-throw of the gate and taking another turn of twenty minutes or so. He had a very ticklish piece of work now before him; it required the greatest mental concentration; it was nothing less than to bring his mind, if he might, into such a state of unpreoccupation and receptivity that he should see the place as he had seen it on that morning when, his removal accomplished, he had sat down to begin the sixteenth chapter of the first Romilly.
For, could he recapture that first impression, he now hoped for far more from it. Formerly, he had carried no end of mental lumber. Before the influence of the place had been able to find him out at all, it had had the inertia of those dreary chapters to overcome. No results had shown. The process had been one of slow saturation, charging, filling up to a brim. But now he was light, unburdened, rid at last both of that Romilly and of her prototype. Now for the new unknown, coy, jealous, bewitching, Beckoning Fair!…
At half-past two of the afternoon he put his key into the Yale lock, entered, and closed the door behind him…
His fantastic attempt was instantly and astonishingly successful. He could have shouted with triumph as he entered the room; it was as if he had escaped into it. Once more, as in the days when his writing had had a daily freshness and wonder and promise for him, he was conscious of that new ease and mastery and exhilaration and release. The air of the place seemed to hold more oxygen; as if his own specific gravity had changed, his very tread seemed less ponderable. The flowers in the bowls, the fair proportions of the meadowsweet-coloured panels and mouldings, the polished floor, and the lofty and faintly starred ceiling, fairly laughed their welcome. Oleron actually laughed back, and spoke aloud.
“Oh, you're pretty, pretty!” he flattered it. Then he lay down on his couch.
He spent that afternoon as a convalescent who expected a dear visitor might have spent it—in a delicious vacancy, smiling now and then as if in his sleep, and ever lifting drowsy and contented eyes to his alluring surroundings. He lay thus until darkness came, and, with darkness, the nocturnal noises of the old house…
But if he waited for any specific happening, he waited in vain.
He waited similarly in vain on the morrow, maintaining, though with less ease, that sensitised lake-like condition of his mind. Nothing occurred to give it an impression. Whatever it was which he so patiently wooed, it seemed to be both shy and exacting.
Then on the third day he thought he understood. A look of gentle drollery and cunning came into his eyes, and he chuckled.
“Oho, oho!… Well, if the wind sits in that quarter we must see what else there is to be done. What is there, now? No, I won't send for Elsie; we don't need a wheel to break the butterfly on; we won't go to those lengths, my butterfly…”
He was standing musing, thumbing his lean jaw, looking aslant; suddenly he crossed to his hall, took down his hat, and went out.
“My lady is coquettish, is she? Well, we'll see what a little neglect will do,” he chuckled as he went down the stairs.
He sought a railway station, got into a train, and spent the rest of the day in the country. Oh, yes: Oleron thought he was the man to deal with Fair Ones who beckoned, and invited, and then took refuge in shyness and hanging back!
He did not return until after eleven that night.
“Now, my Fair Beckoner!” he murmured as he walked along the alley and felt in his pocket for his keys…
Inside his flat, he was perfectly composed, perfectly deliberate, exceedingly careful not to give himself away. As if to intimate that he intended to retire immediately, he lighted only a single candle; and as he set out with it on his nightly round he affected to yawn. He went first into his kitchen. There was a full moon, and a lozenge of moonlight, almost peacock-blue by contrast with his candle-frame, lay on the floor. The window was uncurtained, and he could see the reflection of the candle, and, faintly, that of his own face, as he moved about. The door of the powder-closet stood a little ajar, and he closed it before sitting down to remove his boots on the chair with the cushion made of the folded harp-bag. From the kitchen he passed to the bathroom. There, another slant of blue moonlight cut the windowsill and lay across the pipes on the wall. He visited his seldom-used study, and stood for a moment gazing at the silvered roofs across the square. Then, walking straight through his sitting-room, his stockinged feet making no noise, he entered his bedroom and put the candle on the chest of drawers. His face all this time wore no expression save that of tiredness. He had never been wilier nor more alert.
His small bedroom fireplace was opposite the chest of drawers on which the mirror stood, and his bed and the window occupied the remaining sides of the room. Oleron drew down his blind, took off his coat, and then stooped to get his slippers from under the bed. He could have given no reason for the conviction, but that the manifestation that for two days had been withheld was close at hand he never for an instant doubted. Nor, though he could not form the faintest guess of the shape it might take, did he experience fear. Startling or surprising it might be; he was prepared for that; but that was all; his scale of sensation had become depressed. His hand moved this way and that under the bed in search of his slippers…
But for all his caution and method and preparedness, his heart all at once gave a leap and a pause that was almost horrid. His hand had found the slippers, but he was still on his knees; save for this circumstance he would have fallen. The bed was a low one; the groping for the slippers accounted for the turn of his head to one side; and he was careful to keep the attitude until he had partly recovered his self-possession. When presently he rose there was a drop of blood on his lower lip where he had caught at it with his teeth, and his watch had jerked out of the pocket of his waistcoat and was dangling at the end of its short leather guard…
Then, before the watch had ceased its little oscillation, he was himself again.
In the middle of his mantelpiece there stood a picture, a portrait of his grandmother; he placed himself before this picture, so that he could see in the glass of it the steady flame of the candle that burned behind him on the chest of drawers. He could see also in the picture-glass the little glancings of light from the bevels and facets of the objects about the mirror and candle. But he could see more. These twinklings and reflections and re-reflections did not change their position; but there was one gleam that had motion. It was fainter than the rest, and it moved up and down through the air. It was the reflection of the candle on Oleron's black vulcanite comb, and each of its downward movements was accompanied by a silky and crackling rustle.
Oleron, watching what went on in the glass of his grandmother's portrait, continued to play his part. He felt for his dangling watch and began slowly to wind it up. Then, for a moment ceasing to watch, he began to empty his trousers pockets and to place methodically in a little row on the mantelpiece the pennies and halfpennies he took from them. The sweeping, minutely electric noise filled the whole bedroom, and had Oleron altered his point of observation he could have brought the dim gleam of the moving comb so into position that it would almost have outlined his grandmother's head.
Any other head of which it might have been following the outline was invisible.
Oleron finished the emptying of his pockets; then, under cover of another simulated yawn, not so much summoning his resolution as overmastered by an 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 l
evel of the chest of drawers. Oleron continued to act to admiration. He walked to his little washstand in the corner, poured out water, and began to wash his hands. He removed his waistcoat, and continued his preparations for bed. The combing did not cease, and he stood for a moment in thought. Again his eyes twinkled. The next was very cunning—
“Hm!… I think I'll read for a quarter of an hour,” he said aloud…
He passed out of the room.
He was away a couple of minutes; when he returned again the room was suddenly quiet. He glanced at the chest of drawers; the comb lay still, between the collar he had removed and a pair of gloves. Without hesitation Oleron put out his hand and picked it up. It was an ordinary eighteenpenny comb, taken from a card in a chemist's shop, of a substance of a definite specific gravity, and no more capable of rebellion against the Laws by which it existed than are the worlds that keep their orbits through the void. Oleron put it down again; then he glanced at the bundle of papers he held in his hand. What he had gone to fetch had been the fifteen chapters of the original Romilly.
“Hm!” he muttered as he threw the manuscript into a chair… “As I thought… She's just blindly, ragingly, murderously jealous.”
On the night after that, and on the following night, and for many nights and days, so many that he began to be uncertain about the count of them, Oleron, courting, cajoling, neglecting, threatening, beseeching, eaten out with unappeased curiosity and regardless that his life was becoming one consuming passion and desire, continued his search for the unknown co-numerator of his abode.
X
As time went on, it came to pass that few except the postman mounted Oleron's stairs; and since men who do not write letters receive few, even the postman's tread became so infrequent that it was not heard more than once or twice a week. There came a letter from Oleron's publishers, asking when they might expect to receive the manuscript of his new book; he delayed for some days to answer it, and finally forgot it. A second letter came, which also he failed to answer. He received no third.
There Is a Graveyard That Dwells in Man Page 24