Widdershins | Page 8

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."
IV
As Oleron sat by his fire that evening, pondering Miss Bengough's
prognostication that difficulties awaited him in his work, he came to the
conclusion that it would have been far better had she kept her beliefs to
herself. No man does a thing better for having his confidence damped
at the outset, and to speak of difficulties is in a sense to make them.
Speech itself becomes a deterrent act, to which other discouragements
accrete until the very event of which warning is given is as likely as not
to come to pass. He heartily confounded her. An influence hostile to the
completion of Romilly had been born.
And in some illogical, dogmatic way women seem to have, she had
attached this antagonistic influence to his new abode. Was ever
anything so absurd! "You'll never finish Romilly here." ... Why not?

Was this her idea of the luxury that saps the springs of action and
brings a man down to indolence and dropping out of the race? The
place was well enough--it was entirely charming, for that matter--but it
was not so demoralising as all that! No; Elsie had missed the mark that
time....
He moved his chair to look round the room that smiled, positively
smiled, in the firelight. He too smiled, as if pity was to be entertained
for a maligned apartment. Even that slight lack of robust colour he had
remarked was not noticeable in the soft glow. The drawn chintz
curtains--they had a flowered and trellised pattern, with baskets and
oaten pipes--fell in long quiet folds to the window-seats; the rows of
bindings in old bookcases took the light richly; the last trace of
sallowness had gone with the daylight; and, if the truth must be told, it
had been Elsie herself who had seemed a little out of the picture.
That reflection struck him a little, and presently he returned to it. Yes,
the room had, quite accidentally, done Miss Bengough a disservice that
afternoon. It had, in some subtle but unmistakable way, placed her,
marked a contrast of qualities. Assuming for the sake of argument the
slightly ridiculous proposition that the room in which Oleron sat was
characterised by a certain sparsity and lack of vigour; so much the
worse for Miss Bengough; she certainly erred on the side of
redundancy and general muchness. And if one must contrast abstract
qualities, Oleron inclined to the austere in taste....
Yes, here Oleron had made a distinct discovery; he wondered he had
not made it before. He pictured Miss Bengough again as she had
appeared that afternoon--large, showy, moistly pink, with that quality
of the prize bloom exuding, as it were, from her; and instantly she
suffered in his thought. He even recognised now that he had noticed
something odd at the time, and that unconsciously his attitude, even
while she had been