lad had left the impression that his words meant more than they said. He
almost wished he had encouraged him to talk. “The small bright things in
this great room”--what an admirable description, almost a criticism! He
felt like a prisoner of state in the Tower. He stared about him into the
alcoves, recesses, deep embrasured windows; the tapestries and huge
curtains oppressed him; next he fell to wondering who the other guests
would be, whom he would take in to dinner, how early he could make an
excuse and slip off to bed; then, midway in these desultory thoughts,
became suddenly aware of a curiously sharp impression--that he was being
watched. Somebody, quite close, was looking at him. He dismissed the
fancy as soon as it was born, putting it down to the size and mystery of
the old-world chamber; but in spite of himself the idea persisted
teasingly, and several times he caught himself turning nervously to look
over his shoulder. It was not a ghostly feeling; his nature was not
accessible to ghostly things. The strange idea, lodged securely in his
brain, was traceable, he thought, to something the Irish lad had
said--grew out, rather, of what he had left unsaid. He idly allowed his
imagination to encourage it. Someone, friendly but curious, with
inquisitive, peeping eyes, was watching him. Someone very tiny was
hiding in the enormous room. He laughed about it; but he felt different.
A certain big, protective feeling came over him that he must go gently
lest he tread on some diminutive living thing that was soft as a kitten
and elusive as a baby mouse. Once, indeed, out of the corner of his eye,
he fancied he saw a little thing with wings go fluttering past the great
purple curtains at the other end. It was by a window. “A bird, or
something, outside,” he told himself with a laugh, yet moved thenceforth
more often than not on tiptoe. This cost him a certain effort: his
proportions were elephantine. He felt a more friendly interest now in
the stately, imposing chamber.
The dressing-gong brought him back to reality and stopped the flow of
his imagining. He shaved, and laboriously went on dressing then; he was
slow and leisurely in his movements, like many big men; very orderly,
too. But when he was ready to put in his collar stud it was nowhere to
be found. It was a worthless bit of brass, but most important; he had
only one. Five minutes ago it had been standing inside the ring of his
collar on the marble slab; he had carefully placed it there. Now it had
disappeared and left no trail. He grew warm and untidy in the search. It
was something of a business for Dutton to go on all fours. “Malicious
little beast!” he grunted, rising from his knees, his hand sore where he
had scraped it beneath the cupboard. His trouser-crease was ruined, his
hair was tumbled. He knew too well the elusive activity of similar small
objects. “It will turn up again,” he tried to laugh, “if I pay it no
attention. Mal----” he abruptly changed the adjective, as though he had
nearly said a dangerous thing--“naughty little imp!” He went on
dressing, leaving the collar to the last. He fastened the cigar-cutter
to his chain, but the nail-scissors, he noticed now, had also gone.
“Odd,” he reflected, “very odd!” He looked at the place where they had
been a few minutes ago. “Odd!” he repeated. And finally, in desperation,
he rang the bell. The heavy curtains swung inwards as he said, “Come
in,” in answer to the knock, and the Irish boy, with the merry, dancing
eyes, stood in the room. He glanced half nervously, half expectantly,
about him. “It’ll be something ye have lost, sorr?” he said at once, as
though he knew.
“I rang,” said Dutton, resenting it a little, “to ask you if you could
get me a collar stud--for this evening. Anything will do.” He did not
say he had lost his own. Someone, he felt, who was listening, would
chuckle and be pleased. It was an absurd position.
“And will it be a shtud like this, sorr, that yez wanting?” asked the
boy, picking up the lost object from inside the collar on the marble
slab.
“Like that, yes,” stammered the other, utterly amazed. He had overlooked
it, of course, yet it was in the identical place where he had left it.
He felt mortified and foolish. It was so obvious that the boy grasped
the situation--more, had expected it. It was as if the stud had been
taken and replaced deliberately. “Thank you,” he added, turning away to
hide his face as the lad backed out--with a grin, he imagined, though he
did not see it. Almost immediately, it seemed, then he was back again,
holding out a little cardboard box containing an assortment of ugly bone
studs. Dutton felt as if the whole thing had been prepared beforehand.
How foolish it was! Yet behind it lay something real and true
and--utterly incredible!
“_They_ won’t get taken, sorr,” he heard the lad say from the doorway.
“They’re not nearly bright enough.”
The other decided not to hear. “Thanks,” he said curtly; “they’ll do
nicely.”
There was a pause, but the boy did not go. Taking a deep breath, he said
very quickly, as though greatly daring, “It’s only the bright and
little lovely things he takes, sorr, if ye plaze. He takes thim for his
collection, and there’s no stoppin’ him at all.” It came out with a
rush, and Dutton, hearing it, let the human thing rise up in him. He
turned and smiled.
“Oh, he takes these things for his collection, does he?” he asked more
gently.
The boy looked dreadfully shame-faced, confession hanging on his lips.
“The little bright and lovely things, sorr, yes. I’ve done me best, but
there’s things he can’t resist at all. The bone ones is safe, though. He
won’t look at thim.”
“I suppose he followed you across from Ireland, eh?” the other inquired.
The lad hung his head. “I told Father Madden,” he said in a lower voice,
“but it’s not the least bit of good in the wurrld.” He looked as though
he had been convicted of stealing and feared to lose his place.
Suddenly, lifting his blue eyes, he added, “But if ye take no notice at
all he ginrelly puts everything back in its place agin. He only borrows
thim, just for a little bit of toime. Pretend ye’re not wantin’ thim at
all, sorr, and back they’ll come prisintly again, brighter than before
maybe.”
“I see,” answered Dutton slowly. “All right, then,” he dismissed him,
“and I won’t say a word downstairs. You needn’t be afraid,” as the lad
looked his gratitude and vanished like a flash, leaving the other with
a queer and eerie feeling, staring at the ugly bone studs. He finished
dressing hurriedly and went downstairs. He went on tiptoe out of the
great room, moving delicately and with care, lest he might tread on
something very soft and tiny, almost wounded, like a butterfly with a
broken wing. And from the corners, he felt positive, something watched
him go.
The ordeal of dinner passed off well enough; the rather heavy evening
too. He found the opportunity to slip off early to bed. The
nail-scissors were in their place again. He read till midnight; nothing
happened. His hostess had told him the history of his room, inquiring
kindly after his comfort. “Some people feel rather lost in it,” she
said; “I hope you found all you want,” and, tempted by her choice of
words--the “lost” and “found”--he nearly told the story of the Irish lad
whose goblin had followed him across the sea and “borrowed little bright
and lovely things for his collection.” But he kept his word; he told
nothing; she would only have stared, for one thing. For another, he was
bored, and therefore uncommunicative. He smiled inwardly. All that this
giant mansion could produce for his comfort and amusement were ugly bone
studs, a thieving goblin, and a vast bedroom where dead royalty had
slept. Next day, at intervals, when changing for tennis or back again
for lunch, the “borrowing” continued; the little things he needed at
the moment had disappeared. They turned up later. To ignore their
disappearance was the recipe for their recovery--invariably, too, just
where he had seen them last. There was the lost object shining in his
face, propped impishly on its end, just ready to fall upon the carpet,
and ever with a quizzical, malicious air of innocence that was truly
goblin. His collar stud was the favourite; next came the scissors and
the silver pencil-sharpener.
Trains and motors combined to keep him Sunday night, but he arranged to
leave on Monday before the other guests were up, and so got early to
bed. He meant to watch. There was a merry, jolly feeling in him that he
had established quasi-friendly relations with the little Borrower. He
might even see an object go--catch it in the act of disappearing! He
arranged the bright objects in a row upon the glass-topped
dressing-table opposite the bed, and while reading kept an eye slyly on
the array of tempting bait. But nothing happened. “It’s the wrong way,”
he realised suddenly. “What a blunderer I am!” He turned the light out
then. Drowsiness crept over him.... Next day, of course, he told himself
it was a dream....
The night was very still, and through the latticed windows stole faintly
the summer moonlight. Outside the foliage rustled a little in the wind.
A night-jar called from the fields, and a secret, furry owl made answer
from the copse beyond. The body of the chamber lay in thick darkness,
but a slanting ray of moonlight caught the dressing-table and shone
temptingly upon the silver objects. “It’s like setting a nightline,” was
the last definite thought he remembered--when the laughter that followed
stopped suddenly, and his nerves gave a jerk that turned him keenly
alert.
From the enormous open fireplace, gaping in darkness at the end of the
room, issued a thread of delicate sound that was softer than a feather.
A tiny flurry of excitement, furtive, tentative, passed shivering across
the air. An exquisite, dainty flutter stirred the night, and through the
heavy human brain upon the great four-poster fled this picture, as from
very far away, picked out in black and silver--of a wee knight-errant
crossing the frontiers of fairyland, high mischief in his tiny, beating
heart. Pricking along over the big, thick carpet, he came towards the
bed, towards the dressing-table, intent upon bold plunder. Dutton lay
motionless as a stone, and watched and listened. The blood in his ears
smothered the sound a little, but he never lost it altogether. The
flicking of a mouse’s tail or whiskers could hardly have been more
gentle than this sound, more wary, circumspect, discreet, certainly not
half so artful. Yet the human being in the bed, so heavily breathing,
heard it well. Closer it came, and closer, oh, so elegant and tender,
this bold attack of a wee Adventurer from another world. It shot swiftly
past the bed. With a little flutter, delicious, almost musical, it rose
in the air before his very face and entered the pool of moonlight on the
dressing-table. Something blurred it then; the human sight grew troubled
and confused a moment; a mingling of moonlight with the reflections from
the mirror, slab of glass, and shining objects obscured clear vision
somehow. For a second Dutton lost the proper focus. There was a tiny
rattle and a tiny click. He saw that the pencil-sharpener stood balanced
on the table’s very edge. It was in the act of vanishing.
But for his stupid blunder then, he might have witnessed more. He simply
could not restrain himself, it seems. He sprang, and at the same instant
the silver object fell upon the carpet. Of course his elephantine leap
made the entire table shake. But, anyhow, he was not quick enough. He
saw the reflection of a slim and tiny hand slide down into the mirrored
depths of the reflecting sheet of glass--deep, deep down, and swift as a
flash of light. This he thinks he saw, though the light, he admits, was
oddly confusing in that moment of violent and clumsy movement.
One thing, at any rate, was beyond all question: the pencil-sharpener
had disappeared. He turned the light up; he searched for a dozen
minutes, then gave it up in despair and went back to bed. Next morning
he searched again. But, having overslept himself, he did not search as
thoroughly as he might have done, for half-way through the tiresome
operation the Irish lad came in to take his bag for the train.
“Will ut be something ye’ve lost, sorr?” he asked gravely.
“Oh, it’s all right,” Dutton answered from the floor. “You can take the
bag--and my overcoat.” And in town that day he bought another
pencil-sharpener and hung it on his chain.
X
IMAGINATION
Having dined upon a beefsteak and a pint of bitter, Jones went home to
work. The trouble with Jones--his first name William--was that he
possessed creative imagination: that luggage upon which excess charges
have to be paid all through life--to the critic, the stupid, the
orthodox, the slower minds without the “flash.” He was alone in his
brother’s flat. It was after nine o’clock. He was half-way into a story,
and had--stuck! Sad to relate, the machinery that carries on the details
of an original inspiration had blocked. And to invent he knew not how.
Unless the imagination “produced” he would not allow his brain to devise
mere episodes--dull and lifeless substitutes. Jones, poor fool, was also
artist.
And the reason he had “stuck” was not surprising, for his story was of a
kind that might well tax the imagination of any sane man. He was writing
at the moment about a being who had survived his age--a study of one of
those rare and primitive souls who walk the earth to-day in a man’s
twentieth-century body, while yet the spirit belongs to the Golden Age
of the world’s history. You may come across them sometimes, rare,
ingenuous, delightful beings, the primal dews still upon their eyelids,
the rush and glow of earth’s pristine fires pulsing in their veins,
careless of gain, indifferent to success, lost, homeless,
exiled--_dépaysés_.... The idea had seized him. He had met such folk. He
burned to describe their exile, the pathos of their loneliness, their
yearnings and their wanderings--rejected by a world they had outlived.
And for his type, thus representing some power of unexpended
mythological values strayed back into modern life to find itself denied
and ridiculed--he had chosen a Centaur! For he wished it to symbolise
what he believed was to be the next stage in human evolution: Intuition
no longer neglected, but developed equally with Reason. His Centaur was
to stand for instinct (the animal body close to Nature) combined with,
yet not dominated by, the upright stature moving towards deity. The
conception was true and pregnant.
And--he had stuck. The detail that blocked him was the man’s
_appearance_. How would such a being look? In what details would he
betray that, though outwardly a man, he was inwardly this survival of
the Golden Age, escaped from some fair Eden, splendid, immense, simple,
and beneficent, yet--a Centaur?
Perhaps it was just as well he had “stuck,” for his brother would
shortly be in, and his brother was a successful business man with the
money-sense and commercial instincts strongly developed. He dealt in
rice and sugar. With his brother in the flat no Centaur could possibly
survive for a single moment. “It’ll come to me when I’m not thinking
about it,” he sighed, knowing well the waywardness of his particular
genius. He threw the reins upon the subconscious self and moved into an
arm-chair to read in the evening paper the things the public loved--that
public who refused to buy his books, pleading they were “queer.” He
waded down the list of immoralities, murders and assaults with a dreamy
eye, and had just reached the witness’s description of finding the
bloody head in the faithless wife’s bedroom, when there came a hurried,
pelting knock at the door, and William Jones, glad of the relief, went
to open it. There, facing him, stood the bore from the flat below.
Horrors!
It was not, however, a visit after all. “Jones,” he faltered, “there’s
an odd sort of chap here asking for you or your brother. Rang my bell by
mistake.”
Jones murmured some reply or other, and as the bore vanished with a
hurry unusual to him, there passed into the flat a queer shape, born
surely of the night and stars and desolate places. He seemed in some
undefinable way bent, humpbacked, very large. With him came a touch of
open spaces, winds, forests, long clean hills and dew-drenched fields.
“Come in, please....” said Jones, instantly aware that the man was not
for his brother. “You have something to--er----” he was going to use the
word “ask,” then changed it instinctively--“_say_ to me, haven’t you?”
The man was ragged, poor, outcast. Clearly it was a begging episode; and
yet he trembled violently, while in his veins ran fire. The caller
refused a seat, but moved over to the curtains by the window, drawing
them slightly aside so that he could see out. And the window was high
above old smoky London--open. It felt cold. Jones bent down, always
keeping his caller in view, and lit the gas-stove. “You wish to see me,”
he said, rising again to an upright position. Then he added more
hurriedly, stepping back a little towards the rack where the
walking-sticks were, “Please let me know what I can do for you!”
Bearded, unkempt, with massive shoulders and huge neck, the caller stood
a moment and stared. “Your name and address,” he said at length, “were
given to me”--he hesitated a moment, then added--“you know by whom.” His
voice was deep and windy and echoing. It made the stretched cords of the
upright piano ring against the wall. “He told me to call,” the man
concluded.
“Ah yes; of course,” Jones stammered, forgetting for the moment who or
where he was. “Let me see--where are you”--the word did not want to come
out--“staying?” The caller made an awful and curious movement; it seemed
so much bigger than his body. “In what way--er--can I be of assistance?”
Jones hardly knew what he said. The other volunteered so little. He was
frightened. Then, before the man could answer, he caught a dreadful
glimpse, as of something behind the outline. It moved. Was it shadow
that thus extended his form? Was it the glare of that ugly gas-stove
that played tricks with the folds of the curtain, driving bodily outline
forth into mere vacancy? For the figure of his strange caller seemed to
carry with it the idea of projections, extensions, growths, in
themselves not monstrous, fine and comely, rather--yet awful.
The man left the window and moved towards him. It was a movement both
swift and enormous. It was instantaneous.
“Who are you--_really_?” asked Jones, his breath catching, while he went
pluckily out to meet him, irresistibly drawn. “And what is it you
_really_ want of me?” He went very close to the shrouded form, caught
the keen air from the open window behind, sniffed a wind that was not
London’s stale and weary wind, then stopped abruptly, frozen with terror
and delight. The man facing him was splendid and terrific, exhaling
something that overwhelmed.
“What can I ... do ... for ... you?” whispered Jones, shaking like a
leaf. A delight of racing clouds was in him.
The answer came in a singular roaring voice that yet sounded far away,
as though among mountains. Wind might have brought it down.
“There is nothing you can do for me! But, by Chiron, there is something
I can do for you!”
“And that is?” asked Jones faintly, feeling something sweep against his
feet and legs like the current of a river in flood.
The man eyed him appallingly a moment.
“Let you see me!” he roared, while his voice set the piano singing
again, and his outline seemed to swim over the chairs and tables like a
fluid mass. “Show myself to you!”
The figure stretched out what looked like arms, reared gigantically
aloft towards the ceiling, and swept towards him. Jones saw the great
visage close to his own. He smelt the odour of caves, river-beds,
hillsides--space. In another second he would have been lost----
His brother made a great rattling as he opened the door. The atmosphere
of rice and sugar and office desks came in with him.
“Why, Billy, old man, you look as if you’d seen a ghost. You’re white!”
William Jones mopped his forehead. “I’ve been working rather hard,” he
answered. “Feel tired. Fact is--I got stuck in a story for a bit.”
“Too bad. Got it straightened out at last, I hope?”
“Yes, thanks. _It came to me_--in the end.”
The other looked at him. “Good,” he said shortly. “Rum thing,
imagination, isn’t it?” And then he began talking about his day’s
business--in tons and tons of food.
XI
THE INVITATION
They bumped into one another by the swinging doors of the little Soho
restaurant, and, recoiling sharply, each made a half-hearted pretence of
lifting his hat (it was French manners, of course, _inside_). Then,
discovering that they were English, and not strangers, they exclaimed,
“Sorry!” and laughed.
“Hulloa! It’s Smith!” cried the man with the breezy manner; “and when
did _you_ get back?” It sounded as though “Smith” and “_you_” were
different persons. “I haven’t seen you for months!” They shook hands
cordially.
“Only last Saturday--on the _Rollitania_,” answered the man with the
pince-nez. They were acquaintances of some standing. Neither was aware
of anything in the other he disliked. More positive cause for friendship
there was none. They met, however, not infrequently.
“Last Saturday! Did you really?” exclaimed the breezy one; and, after an
imperceptible pause which suggested nothing more vital, he added, “And
had a good time in America, eh?”
“Oh! not bad, thanks--not bad at all.” He likewise was conscious of a
rather barren pause. “Awful crossing, though,” he threw in a few seconds
later with a slight grimace.
“Ah! At this time of year, you know----” said Breezy, shaking his head
knowingly; “though _sometimes_, of course, one has better trips in
winter than in summer. I crossed once in December when it was like a
mill-pond the whole blessed way.”
They moved a little to one side to let a group of Frenchmen enter the
swinging doors.
“It’s a good line,” he added, in a voice that settled the reputation of
the steamship company for ever. “By Jove, it’s a good line.”
“Oh! it’s a good line, yes,” agreed Pince-nez, gratified to find his
choice approved. He shifted his glasses modestly. The discovery
reflected glory upon his judgment. “_And_ such an excellent table!”
Breezy agreed heartily. “I’d never cross now on any other,” he declared,
as though he meant the table. “You’re right.”
This happy little agreement about the food pleased them both; it showed
their judgment to be sound; also it established a ground of common
interest--a link--something that gave point to their little chat, and
made it seem worth while to have stopped and spoken. They rose in one
another’s estimation. The chance meeting ought to lead to something,
perhaps. Yet neither found the expected inspiration; for neither _au
fond_ had anything to say to the other beyond passing the time of day.
“Well,” said Pince-nez, lingeringly but very pleasantly, making a
movement towards the doors; “I suppose I must be going in.
You--er--you’ve had lunch, of course?”
“Thanks, yes, I have,” Breezy replied with a certain air of
disappointment, as though the question had been an invitation. He moved
a few steps backwards down the pavement. “But, now you’re back,” he
added more cheerfully, “we must try and see something of one another.”
“By all means. Do let’s,” said Pince-nez. His manner somehow suggested
that he too expected an invitation, perhaps. He hesitated a moment, as
though about to add something, but in the end said nothing.
“We must lunch together one day,” observed Breezy, with his jolly smile.
He glanced up at the restaurant.
“By all means--let’s,” agreed the other again, with one foot on the
steps. “Any day you like. Next week, perhaps. You let me know.” He
nodded cordially, and half turned to enter.
“Lemme see, where are you staying?” called Breezy by way of
after-thought.
“Oh! I’m at the X----,” mentioning an obscure hostel in the W.C.
district.
“Of course; yes, I remember. That’s where you stopped before, isn’t it?
Up in Bloomsbury somewhere----?”
“Rooms ain’t up to much, but the cooking’s _quite_ decent.”
“Good. Then we’ll lunch one day soon. What sort of time, by the bye,
suits you?” The breezy one, for some obscure reason, looked vigorously
at his watch.
“Oh! any time; one o’clock onwards, sort of thing, I suppose?” with an
air of “just let me know and I’ll be there.”
“Same here, yes,” agreed the other, with slightly less enthusiasm.
“That’s capital, then,” from Pince-nez. He paused a moment, not finding
precisely the suitable farewell phrase. Then, to his own undoing, he
added carelessly, “There are one or two things--er--I should like to
tell you about----”
“And luncheon _is_ the best time,” Breezy suggested at once, “for busy
men like us. You might bespeak a table, in fact.” He jerked his head
towards the restaurant.