"Making Romilly herself a different type of woman. Somehow, I've begun to
feel that I'm not getting the most out of her. As she stands, I've
certainly lost interest in her to some extent."
"But--but--" Miss Bengough protested, "you had her so real, so _living_,
Paul!"
Oleron smiled faintly. He had been quite prepared for Miss Bengough's
disapproval. He wasn't surprised that she liked Romilly as she at present
existed; she would. Whether she realised it or not, there was much of
herself in his fictitious creation. Naturally Romilly would seem "real,"
"living," to her....
"But are you really serious, Paul?" Miss Bengough asked presently, with a
round-eyed stare.
"Quite serious."
"You're really going to scrap those fifteen chapters?"
"I didn't exactly say that."
"That fine, rich love-scene?"
"I should only do it reluctantly, and for the sake of something I thought
better."
"And that beautiful, _beau_tiful description of Romilly on the shore?"
"It wouldn't necessarily be wasted," he said a little uneasily.
But Miss Bengough made a large and windy gesture, and then let him have
it.
"Really, you are _too_ trying!" she broke out. "I do wish sometimes you'd
remember you're human, and live in a world! You know I'd be the _last_ to
wish you to lower your standard one inch, but it wouldn't be lowering it
to bring it within human comprehension. Oh, you're sometimes altogether
too godlike!... Why, it would be a wicked, criminal waste of your powers
to destroy those fifteen chapters! Look at it reasonably, now. You've
been working for nearly twenty years; you've now got what you've been
working for almost within your grasp; your affairs are at a most critical
stage (oh, don't tell me; I know you're about at the end of your money);
and here you are, deliberately proposing to withdraw a thing that will
probably make your name, and to substitute for it something that ten to
one nobody on earth will ever want to read--and small blame to them!
Really, you try my patience!"
Oleron had shaken his head slowly as she had talked. It was an old story
between them. The noisy, able, practical journalist was an admirable
friend--up to a certain point; beyond that ... well, each of us knows
that point beyond which we stand alone. Elsie Bengough sometimes said
that had she had one-tenth part of Oleron's genius there were few things
she could not have done--thus making that genius a quantitatively
divisible thing, a sort of ingredient, to be added to or subtracted
from in the admixture of his work. That it was a qualitative thing,
essential, indivisible, informing, passed her comprehension. Their
spirits parted company at that point. Oleron knew it. She did not appear
to know it.
"Yes, yes, yes," he said a little wearily, by-and-by, "practically you're
quite right, entirely right, and I haven't a word to say. If I could only
turn _Romilly_ over to you you'd make an enormous success of her. But
that can't be, and I, for my part, am seriously doubting whether she's
worth my while. You know what that means."
"What does it mean?" she demanded bluntly.
"Well," he said, smiling wanly, "what _does_ it mean when you're
convinced a thing isn't worth doing? You simply don't do it."
Miss Bengough's eyes swept the ceiling for assistance against this
impossible man.
"What utter rubbish!" she broke out at last. "Why, when I saw you last
you were simply oozing _Romilly_; you were turning her off at the rate of
four chapters a week; if you hadn't moved you'd have had her three-parts
done by now. What on earth possessed you to move right in the middle of
your most important work?"
Oleron tried to put her off with a recital of inconveniences, but she
wouldn't have it. Perhaps in her heart she partly suspected the reason.
He was simply mortally weary of the narrow circumstances of his life. He
had had twenty years of it--twenty years of garrets and roof-chambers
and dingy flats and shabby lodgings, and he was tired of dinginess and
shabbiness. The reward was as far off as ever--or if it was not, he no
longer cared as once he would have cared to put out his hand and take it.
It is all very well to tell a man who is at the point of exhaustion that
only another effort is required of him; if he cannot make it he is as far
off as ever....
"Anyway," Oleron summed up, "I'm happier here than I've been for a long
time. That's some sort of a justification."
"And doing no work," said Miss Bengough pointedly.
At that a trifling petulance that had been gathering in Oleron came to a
head.
"And why should I do nothing but work?" he demanded. "How much happier am
I for it? I don't say I don't love my work--when it's done; but I hate
doing it. Sometimes it's an intolerable burden that I simply long to be
rid of. Once in many weeks it has a moment, one moment, of glow and
thrill for me; I remember the days when it was all glow and thrill; and
now I'm forty-four, and it's becoming drudgery. Nobody wants it; I'm
ceasing to want it myself; and if any ordinary sensible man were to ask
me whether I didn't think I was a fool to go on, I think I should agree
that I was."
Miss Bengough's comely pink face was serious.
"But you knew all that, many, many years ago, Paul--and still you chose
it," she said in a low voice.
"Well, and how should I have known?" he demanded. "I didn't know. I was
told so. My heart, if you like, told me so, and I thought I knew. Youth
always thinks it knows; then one day it discovers that it is nearly
fifty--"
"Forty-four, Paul--"
"--forty-four, then--and it finds that the glamour isn't in front,
but behind. Yes, I knew and chose, if _that's_ knowing and
choosing ... but it's a costly choice we're called on to make when
we're young!"
Miss Bengough's eyes were on the floor. Without moving them she said,
"You're not regretting it, Paul?"
"Am I not?" he took her up. "Upon my word, I've lately thought I am! What
_do_ I get in return for it all?"
"You know what you get," she replied.
He might have known from her tone what else he could have had for the
holding up of a finger--herself. She knew, but could not tell him, that
he could have done no better thing for himself. Had he, any time these
ten years, asked her to marry him, she would have replied quietly,
"Very well; when?" He had never thought of it....
"Yours is the real work," she continued quietly. "Without you we jackals
couldn't exist. You and a few like you hold everything upon your
shoulders."
For a minute there was a silence. Then it occurred to Oleron that this
was common vulgar grumbling. It was not his habit. Suddenly he rose and
began to stack cups and plates on the tray.
"Sorry you catch me like this, Elsie," he said, with a little
laugh.... "No, I'll take them out; then we'll go for a walk, if you
like...."
He carried out the tray, and then began to show Miss Bengough round his
flat. She made few comments. In the kitchen she asked what an old faded
square of reddish frieze was, that Mrs. Barrett used as a cushion for her
wooden chair.
"That? I should be glad if you could tell _me_ what it is," Oleron
replied as he unfolded the bag and related the story of its finding in
the window-seat.
"I think I know what it is," said Miss Bengough. "It's been used to wrap
up a harp before putting it into its case."
"By Jove, that's probably just what it was," said Oleron. "I could make
neither head nor tail of it...."
They finished the tour of the flat, and returned to the sitting-room.
"And who lives in the rest of the house?" Miss Bengough asked.
"I dare say a tramp sleeps in the cellar occasionally. Nobody else."
"Hm!... Well, I'll tell you what I think about it, if you like."
"I should like."
"You'll never work here."
"Oh?" said Oleron quickly. "Why not?"
"You'll never finish _Romilly_ here. Why, I don't know, but you won't.
I know it. You'll have to leave before you get on with that book."
He mused for a moment, and then said:
"Isn't that a little--prejudiced, Elsie?"
"Perfectly ridiculous. As an argument it hasn't a leg to stand on. But
there it is," she replied, her mouth once more full of the large-headed
hat pins.
Oleron was reaching down his hat and coat. He laughed.
"I can only hope you're entirely wrong," he said, "for I shall be in a
serious mess if _Romilly_ isn't out in the autumn."