Sir Dominick Ferrand | Page 6

shop-girls, often rosy, to look at; a different
air was in the streets and a chaff of traffic for the observer of manners
to catch. Above all, it was the time when poor Baron made his
purchases, which were wholly of the wandering mind; his
extravagances, for some mysterious reason, were all matutinal, and he
had a foreknowledge that if ever he should ruin himself it would be
well before noon. He felt lavish this morning, on the strength of what

the Promiscuous would do for him; he had lost sight for the moment of
what he should have to do for the Promiscuous. Before the old
bookshops and printshops, the crowded panes of the curiosity-mongers
and the desirable exhibitions of mahogany "done up," he used, by an
innocent process, to commit luxurious follies. He refurnished Mrs.
Bundy with a freedom that cost her nothing, and lost himself in pictures
of a transfigured second floor.
On this particular occasion the King's Road proved almost
unprecedentedly expensive, and indeed this occasion differed from
most others in containing the germ of real danger. For once in a way he
had a bad conscience--he felt himself tempted to pick his own pocket.
He never saw a commodious writing-table, with elbow-room and
drawers and a fair expanse of leather stamped neatly at the edge with
gilt, without being freshly reminded of Mrs. Bundy's dilapidations.
There were several such tables in the King's Road--they seemed indeed
particularly numerous today. Peter Baron glanced at them all through
the fronts of the shops, but there was one that detained him in supreme
contemplation. There was a fine assurance about it which seemed a
guarantee of masterpieces; but when at last he went in and, just to help
himself on his way, asked the impossible price, the sum mentioned by
the voluble vendor mocked at him even more than he had feared. It was
far too expensive, as he hinted, and he was on the point of completing
his comedy by a pensive retreat when the shopman bespoke his
attention for another article of the same general character, which he
described as remarkably cheap for what it was. It was an old piece,
from a sale in the country, and it had been in stock some time; but it
had got pushed out of sight in one of the upper rooms--they contained
such a wilderness of treasures--and happened to have but just come to
light. Peter suffered himself to be conducted into an interminable dusky
rear, where he presently found himself bending over one of those
square substantial desks of old mahogany, raised, with the aid of front
legs, on a sort of retreating pedestal which is fitted with small drawers,
contracted conveniences known immemorially to the knowing as
davenports. This specimen had visibly seen service, but it had an
old-time solidity and to Peter Baron it unexpectedly appealed.
He would have said in advance that such an article was exactly what he
didn't want, but as the shopman pushed up a chair for him and he sat

down with his elbows on the gentle slope of the large, firm lid, he felt
that such a basis for literature would be half the battle. He raised the lid
and looked lovingly into the deep interior; he sat ominously silent
while his companion dropped the striking words: "Now that's an article
I personally covet!" Then when the man mentioned the ridiculous price
(they were literally giving it away), he reflected on the economy of
having a literary altar on which one could really kindle a fire. A
davenport was a compromise, but what was all life but a compromise?
He could beat down the dealer, and at Mrs. Bundy's he had to write on
an insincere card-table. After he had sat for a minute with his nose in
the friendly desk he had a queer impression that it might tell him a
secret or two--one of the secrets of form, one of the sacrificial
mysteries--though no doubt its career had been literary only in the
sense of its helping some old lady to write invitations to dull dinners.
There was a strange, faint odour in the receptacle, as if fragrant,
hallowed things had once been put away there. When he took his head
out of it he said to the shopman: "I don't mind meeting you halfway."
He had been told by knowing people that that was the right thing. He
felt rather vulgar, but the davenport arrived that evening at Jersey
Villas.

CHAPTER II.

"I daresay it will be all right; he seems quiet now," said the poor lady of
the "parlours" a few days later, in reference to their litigious neighbour
and the precarious piano. The two lodgers had grown regularly
acquainted, and the piano had had