II

As far as the chief business of his life--his writing--was 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 forty-four 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 been easily swayed by something 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 profited him better to have ruled his life

by less exigent ideals.

In the meantime, his removal into the old house with the insurance marks

built into its brick merely interrupted _Romilly Bishop_ at the fifteenth

chapter.

As this tall man with the lean, ascetic face moved about his new abode,

arranging, changing, altering, hardly yet into his working-stride again,

he gave the impression of almost spinster-like precision and nicety. For

twenty years past, in a score of lodgings, garrets, flats, 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 long-nosed 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 relaxation from the strain of writing.

His kitchen, together with the adjoining strip of an apartment into

which a modern bath had been fitted, overlooked 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

powder-closet, 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, rummaging on an

upper shelf that ran deeply into the wall, Oleron found a couple of

mushroom-shaped old wooden wig-stands. 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 closet-room; 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 seldom-used but not-to-be-destroyed

accumulations of papers.

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 half-completed manuscript of _Romilly Bishop_.

But before beginning work he went to a small rosewood cabinet and took

from a drawer his cheque-book and pass-book. He totted them up, and his

monk-like 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 of more.

"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

autumn, that's all. So here goes--"

He drew his papers towards him.

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 mandolin 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 it had formerly

been furnished--whether 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

tambour-frame or the picquet-table 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 half-past four in the

afternoon; "I must do better than this to-morrow--"

And he felt so deliciously lazy that for some minutes he even

contemplated the breach of an appointment he had for the evening.

The next morning he sat down to work without even permitting himself to

answer one of his three letters--two 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 rolled north-eastwards 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 begun

again.

Oleron 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 on 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 note--more and richer

flowers, and possibly some warm and gay stuff for cushions for the

window-seats....

"Of course, I really can't afford it," he muttered, as he went for a

two-foot and began to measure the width of the window recesses....

In stooping to measure a recess, his attitude suddenly changed to one of

interest and attention. Presently he rose again, rubbing his hands with

gentle glee.

"Oho, oho!" he said. "These look to me very much like window-boxes,

nailed up. We must look into this! Yes, those are boxes, or

I'm ... oho, this is an adventure!"

On that wall of his sitting-room 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.

"Now for our little mystery--" he said.

The sound of the mallet on the wedge seemed, in that sweet and pale

apartment, somehow a little brutal--nay, even shocking. The panelling

rang and rattled and vibrated to the blows like a sounding-board. 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_ will still have to be out by

the autumn. Let's have a look at the others."

He turned to the second window.

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 sitting-room 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 bucket, took a duster to it.

It was some sort of a large bag, of an ancient frieze-like 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 parts of it.

"Now whatever can that have been?" Oleron mused as he stood surveying

it.... "I give it up. Whatever it is, it's settled my work for today,

I'm afraid--"

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 sitting-room 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 should settle fairly down to his work again.