Oleron knew very well what Elsie had meant when she had said that her next visit would be preceded by a postcard. She, too, had realised that at last, at last he knew--knew, and didn't want her. It gave him a miserable, pitiful pang, therefore, when she came again within a week, knocking at the door unannounced. She spoke from the landing; she did not intend to stay, she said; and he had to press her before she would so much as enter.
Her excuse for calling was that she had heard of an inquiry for short stories that he might be wise to follow up. He thanked her. Then, her business over, she seemed anxious to get away again. Oleron did not seek to detain her; even he saw through the pretext of the stories; and he accompanied her down the stairs.
But Elsie Bengough had no luck whatever in that house. A second accident befell her. Half-way down the staircase there was the sharp sound of splintering wood, and she checked a loud cry. Oleron knew the woodwork to be old, but he himself had ascended and descended frequently enough without mishap....
Elsie had put her foot through one of the stairs.
He sprang to her side in alarm.
"Oh, I say! My poor girl!"
She laughed hysterically.
"It's my weight--I know I'm getting fat--"
"Keep still--let me clear these splinters away," he muttered between his teeth.
She continued to laugh and sob that it was her weight--she was getting fat--
He thrust downwards at the broken boards. The extrication was no easy matter, and her torn boot showed him how badly the foot and ankle within it must be abraded.
"Good God--good God!" he muttered over and over again.
"I shall be too heavy for anything soon," she sobbed and laughed.
But she refused to reascend and to examine her hurt.
"No, let me go quickly--let me go quickly," she repeated.
"But it's a frightful gash!"
"No--not so bad--let me get away quickly--I'm--I'm not wanted."
At her words, that she was not wanted, his head dropped as if she had given him a buffet.
"Elsie!" he choked, brokenly and shocked.
But she too made a quick gesture, as if she put something violently aside.
"Oh, Paul, not that--not you--of course I do mean that too in a sense--oh, you know what I mean!... But if the other can't be, spare me this now! I--I wouldn't have come, but--but--oh, I did, I did try to keep away!"
It was intolerable, heartbreaking; but what could he do--what could he say? He did not love her...
"Let me go--I'm not wanted--let me take away what's left of me--"
"Dear Elsie--you are very dear to me--"
But again she made the gesture, as of putting something violently aside.
"No, not that--not anything less--don't offer me anything less--leave me a little pride--"
"Let me get my hat and coat--let me take you to a doctor," he muttered.
But she refused. She refused even the support of his arm. She gave another unsteady laugh.
"I'm sorry I broke your stairs, Paul.... You will go and see about the short stories, won't you?"
He groaned.
"Then if you won't see a doctor, will you go across the square and let Mrs. Barrett look at you? Look, there's Barrett passing now--"
The long-nosed Barrett was looking curiously down the alley, but as Oleron was about to call him he made off without a word. Elsie seemed anxious for nothing so much as to be clear of the place, and finally promised to go straight to a doctor, but insisted on going alone.
"Good-bye," she said.
And Oleron watched her until she was past the hatchet-like "To Let" boards, as if he feared that even they might fall upon her and maim her.
That night Oleron did not dine. He had far too much on his mind. He walked from room to room of his flat, as if he could have walked away from Elsie Bengough's haunting cry that still rang in his ears. "I'm not wanted--don't offer me anything less--let me take away what's left of me--"
Oh, if he could only have persuaded himself that he loved her!
He walked until twilight fell, then, without lighting candles, he stirred up the fire and flung himself into a chair.
Poor, poor Elsie!...
But even while his heart ached for her, it was out of the question. If only he had known! If only he had used common observation! But those walks, those sisterly takings of the arm--what a fool he had been!... Well, it was too late now. It was she, not he, who must now act--act by keeping away. He would help her all he could. He himself would not sit in her presence. If she came, he would hurry her out again as fast as he could.... Poor, poor Elsie!
His room grew dark; the fire burned dead; and he continued to sit, wincing from time to time as a fresh tortured phrase rang again in his ears.
Then suddenly, he knew not why, he found himself anxious for her in a new sense--uneasy about her personal safety. A horrible fancy that even then she might be looking over an embankment down into dark water, that she might even now be glancing up at the hook on the door, took him. Women had been known to do those things.... Then there would be an inquest, and he himself would be called upon to identify her, and would be asked how she had come by an ill-healed wound on the hand and a bad abrasion of the ankle. Barrett would say that he had seen her leaving his house....
Then he recognised that his thoughts were morbid. By an effort of will he put them aside, and sat for a while listening to the faint creakings and tickings and rappings within his panelling.... If only he could have married her!... But he couldn't. Her face had risen before him again as he had seen it on the stairs, drawn with pain and ugly and swollen with tears. Ugly--yes, positively blubbered; if tears were women's weapons, as they were said to be, such tears were weapons turned against themselves ... suicide again....
Then all at once he found himself attentively considering her two accidents.
Extraordinary they had been, both of them. He could not have left that old nail standing in the wood; why, he had fetched tools specially from the kitchen; and he was convinced that that step that had broken beneath her weight had been as sound as the others. It was inexplicable. If these things could happen, anything could happen. There was not a beam nor a jamb in the place that might not fall without warning, not a plank that might not crash inwards, not a nail that might not become a dagger. The whole place was full of life even now; as he sat there in the dark he heard its crowds of noises as if the house had been one great microphone....
Only half conscious that he did so, he had been sitting for some time identifying these noises, attributing to each crack or creak or knock its material cause; but there was one noise which, again not fully conscious of the omission, he had not sought to account for. It had last come some minutes ago; it came again now--a sort of soft sweeping rustle that seemed to hold an almost inaudibly minute crackling. For half a minute or so it had Oleron's attention; then his heavy thoughts were of Elsie Bengough again.
He was nearer to loving her in that moment than he had ever been. He thought how to some men their loved ones were but the dearer for those poor mortal blemishes that tell us we are but sojourners on earth, with a common fate not far distant that makes it hardly worth while to do anything but love for the time remaining. Strangling sobs, blearing tears, bodies buffeted by sickness, hearts and mind callous and hard with the rubs of the world--how little love there would be were these things a barrier to love! In that sense he did love Elsie Bengough. What her happiness had never moved in him her sorrow almost awoke....
Suddenly his meditation went. His ear had once more become conscious of that soft and repeated noise--the long sweep with the almost inaudible crackle in it. Again and again it came, with a curious insistence and urgency. It quickened a little as he became increasingly attentive ... it seemed to Oleron that it grew louder....
All at once he started bolt upright in his chair, tense and listening. The silky rustle came again; he was trying to attach it to something....
The next moment he had leapt to his feet, unnerved and terrified. His chair hung poised for a moment, and then went over, setting the fire-irons clattering as it fell. There was only one noise in the world like that which had caused him to spring thus to his feet....
The next time it came Oleron felt behind him at the empty air with his hand, and backed slowly until he found himself against the wall.
"God in Heaven!" The ejaculation broke from Oleron's lips. The sound had ceased.
The next moment he had given a high cry.
"What is it? What's there? Who's there?"
A sound of scuttling caused his knees to bend under him for a moment; but that, he knew, was a mouse. That was not something that his stomach turned sick and his mind reeled to entertain. That other sound, the like of which was not in the world, had now entirely ceased; and again he called....
He called and continued to call; and then another terror, a terror of the sound of his own voice, seized him. He did not dare to call again. His shaking hand went to his pocket for a match, but found none. He thought there might be matches on the mantelpiece--
He worked his way to the mantelpiece round a little recess, without for a moment leaving the wall. Then his hand encountered the mantelpiece, and groped along it. A box of matches fell to the hearth. He could just see them in the firelight, but his hand could not pick them up until he had cornered them inside the fender.
Then he rose and struck a light.
The room was as usual. He struck a second match. A candle stood on the table. He lighted it, and the flame sank for a moment and then burned up clear. Again he looked round.
There was nothing.
There was nothing; but there had been something, and might still be something. Formerly, Oleron had smiled at the fantastic thought that, by a merging and interplay of identities between himself and his beautiful room, he might be preparing a ghost for the future; it had not occurred to him that there might have been a similar merging and coalescence in the past. Yet with this staggering impossibility he was now face to face. Something did persist in the house; it had a tenant other than himself; and that tenant, whatsoever or whosoever, had appalled Oleron's soul by producing the sound of a woman brushing her hair.
