"Why am I doing this?" he once more asked himself, when he heard the
bell ring, in answer to his pull, within the house in Preston Street.
The desire for a tranquil life had always been one of his strongest
instincts, and of late years the instinct had been satisfied, and so
strengthened. Now he seemed to be obstinately searching for tumult; and
he did not know why. He trembled at the sound of movement behind the
door. "In a moment," he thought, "I shall be right in the thick of it!"
As he was expecting, she opened the door herself; but only a little,
with the gesture habitual to women who live alone in apprehension, and
she kept her hand on the latch.
"Good morning," he said curtly. "Can I speak to you?"
His eye could not blaze like hers, but all his self-respect depended on
his valour now, and with desperation he affronted her. She opened the
door wider, and he stepped in, and at once began to wipe his boots on
the mat with nervous particularity.
"Frightful morning!" he grinned.
"Yes," she said. "Is that your cab outside?"
He admitted that it was.
"Perhaps if we go upstairs," she suggested.
Thanking her, he followed her upwards into the gloom at the head of the
narrow stairs, and then along a narrow passage. The house appeared
quite as unfavourably by day as by night. It was shabby. All its tints
had merged by use and by time into one tint, nondescript and unpleasant,
in which yellow prospered. The drawing-room was larger than the
dining-room by the poor width of the hall. It was a heaped, confused
mass of chairs, sofas, small tables, draperies, embroideries, and
valueless knick-knacks. There was no peace in it for the eye, neither
on the walls nor on the floor. The gaze was driven from one ugliness to
another without rest.
The fireplace was draped; the door was draped; the back of the piano was
draped; and none of the dark suspicious stuffs showed a clear pattern.
The faded chairs were hidden by faded antimacassars; the little futile
tables concealed their rickets under vague needlework, on which were
displayed in straw or tinsel frames pale portraits of dowdy people who
had stood like sheep before fifteenth-rate photographers. The
mantelpiece and the top of the piano were thickly strewn with fragments
of coloured earthenware. At the windows hung heavy dark curtains from
great rings that gleamed gilt near the ceiling; and lest the light which
they admitted should be too powerful it was further screened by greyish
white curtains within them. The carpet was covered in most places by
small rugs or bits of other carpets, and in the deep shadows beneath
sofas and chairs and behind the piano it seemed to slip altogether out
of existence into black nothingness. The room lacked ventilation, but
had the appearance of having been recently dusted.
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