Widdershins | Page 6

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."
Miss Bengough gave a gasp. "Reconstructing!"
"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, beautiful 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,