She agreed: a good deal; and then she added after a moment, "What, for instance?"
"You may or may not be gradually attaining a new status, but you"re in a false position to-day."
It was very likely, she said; she hadn"t thought of it much in that light--
"And," he continued desperately, "you"re bound to suffer. Your most innocent acts are misunderstood; motives you never dreamed of are attributed to you; and in the end it comes to--" he hesitated a moment and then took the plunge, "--to the sidelong look and the leer."
She took his meaning with perfect ease. She merely shivered a little as she p.r.o.nounced 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 pa.s.sengers mounted the stairs.
"You"d better get down here and go back, Paul," she said. "I understand perfectly--perfectly. It isn"t Barrett. You"d be able to deal with Barrett. It"s merely convenient for you to say it"s Barrett. I know what it is ... but you said I wasn"t to tell you that. Very well. But before you go let me tell you why I came up this morning."
In a dull tone he asked her why. Again she looked straight before her as she replied:
"I came to force your hand. Things couldn"t go on as they have been going, you know; and now that"s all over."
"All over," he repeated stupidly.
"All over. I want you now to consider yourself, as far as I"m concerned, perfectly free. I make only one reservation."
He hardly had the spirit to ask her what that was.
"If _I_ merely need _you_," she said, "please don"t give that a thought; that"s nothing; I shan"t come near for that. But," she dropped her voice, "if _you"re_ in need of _me_, Paul--I shall know if you are, _and you will be_--then I shall come at no matter what cost. You understand that?"
He could only groan.
"So that"s understood," she concluded. "And I think that"s all. Now go back. I should advise you to walk back, for you"re shivering--good-bye--"
She gave him a cold hand, and he descended. He turned on the edge of the kerb as the bus started again. For the first time in all the years he had known her she parted from him with no smile and no wave of her long arm.
IX
He stood on the kerb plunged in misery, looking after her as long as she remained in sight; but almost instantly with her disappearance he felt the heaviness lift a little from his spirit. She had given him his liberty; true, there was a sense in which he had never parted with it, but now was no time for splitting hairs; he was free to act, and all was clear ahead. Swiftly the sense of lightness grew on him: it became a positive rejoicing in his liberty; and before he was halfway home he had decided what must be done next.
The vicar of the parish in which his dwelling was situated lived within ten minutes of the square. To his house Oleron turned his steps. It was necessary that he should have all the information he could get about this old house with the insurance marks and the sloping "To Let" boards, and the vicar was the person most likely to be able to furnish it. This last preliminary out of the way, and--aha! Oleron chuckled--things might be expected to happen!
But he gained less information than he had hoped for. The house, the vicar said, was old--but there needed no vicar to tell Oleron that; it was reputed (Oleron p.r.i.c.ked 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 superst.i.tions. 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 s.e.x.
"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 circ.u.mstances. It was ascertained at the post-mortem that there was not a particle of food in his stomach, although he was found to be not without money. And his frame was simply worn out. Suicide was spoken of, but you"ll agree with me that deliberate starvation is, to say the least, an uncommon form of suicide. An open verdict was returned."
"Ah!" said Oleron.... "Does there happen to be any comprehensive history of this parish?"
"No; partial ones only. I myself am not guiltless of having made a number of notes on its purely ecclesiastical history, its registers and so forth, which I shall be happy to show you if you would care to see them; but it is a large parish, I have only one curate, and my leisure, as you will readily understand ..."
The extent of the parish and the scantiness of the vicar"s leisure occupied the remainder of the interview, and Oleron thanked the vicar, took his leave, and walked slowly home.
He walked slowly for a reason, twice turning away from the house within a stone"s-throw of the gate and taking another turn of twenty minutes or so. He had a very ticklish piece of work now before him; it required the greatest mental concentration; it was nothing less than to bring his mind, if he might, into such a state of unpreoccupation and receptivity that he should see the place as he had seen it on that morning when, his removal accomplished, he had sat down to begin the sixteenth chapter of the first _Romilly_.
For, could he recapture that first impression, he now hoped for far more from it. Formerly, he had carried no end of mental lumber. Before the influence of the place had been able to find him out at all, it had had the inertia of those dreary chapters to overcome. No results had shown.
The process had been one of slow saturation, charging, filling up to a brim. But now he was light, unburdened, rid at last both of that _Romilly_ and of her prototype. Now for the new unknown, coy, jealous, bewitching, Beckoning Fair!...
At half-past two of the afternoon he put his key into the Yale lock, entered, and closed the door behind him....
His fantastic attempt was instantly and astonishingly successful. He could have shouted with triumph as he entered the room; it was as if he had _escaped_ into it. Once more, as in the days when his writing had had a daily freshness and wonder and promise for him, he was conscious of that new ease and mastery and exhilaration and release. The air of the place seemed to hold more oxygen; as if his own specific gravity had changed, his very tread seemed less ponderable. The flowers in the bowls, the fair proportions of the meadowsweet-coloured panels and mouldings, the polished floor, and the lofty and faintly starred ceiling, fairly laughed their welcome. Oleron actually laughed back, and spoke aloud.
"Oh, you"re pretty, pretty!" he flattered it.
Then he lay down on his couch.
He spent that afternoon as a convalescent who expected a dear visitor might have spent it--in a delicious vacancy, smiling now and then as if in his sleep, and ever lifting drowsy and contented eyes to his alluring surroundings. He lay thus until darkness came, and, with darkness, the nocturnal noises of the old house....
But if he waited for any specific happening, he waited in vain.
He waited similarly in vain on the morrow, maintaining, though with less ease, that sensitised-plate-like condition of his mind. Nothing occurred to give it an impression. Whatever it was which he so patiently wooed, it seemed to be both shy and exacting.
Then on the third day he thought he understood. A look of gentle drollery and cunning came into his eyes, and he chuckled.
"Oho, oho!... Well, if the wind sits in _that_ quarter we must see what else there is to be done. What is there, now?... No, I won"t send for Elsie; we don"t need a wheel to break the b.u.t.terfly on; we won"t go to those lengths, my b.u.t.terfly...."
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 peac.o.c.k-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 pa.s.sed 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 circ.u.mstance 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 att.i.tude 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....