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 that--a 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 thirty-four, large,
showy, fair as butter, pink as a dog-rose, 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 fluttered and spun.
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 down on a chair.
"Don't knock off for me," she said across a mouthful of large-headed
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
coffee, I suppose?--No, don't get up--I'll find the kitchen--"
"Oh, that's all right, I'll clear these things away. To tell the truth,
I'm rather glad to be interrupted," said Oleron.
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 sitting-room 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.
"Hm!... Anybody'd think you were going to get married, Paul."
He laughed.
"Oh no. But it's an improvement on some of them, isn't it?"
"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 _Romilly_?"
Oleron thumbed his chin.
"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 the night, as you used to say."
"Stuck?"
"Rather stuck."
"Got any of it you care to read to me?..."
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 "real work"; hers merely filled
space, not always even grammatically.
"I'm afraid there isn't," Oleron replied, still meditatively dry-shaving
his chin. Then he added, with a little burst of candour, "The fact
is, Elsie, I've not written--not actually written--very much more of
it--_any_ more of it, in fact. But, of course, that doesn't mean I
haven't progressed. I've progressed, in one sense, rather alarmingly.
I'm now thinking of reconstructing the whole thing."