Latest / Occult & Supernatural Audiobooks: Forbidden Rituals, Esoteric Texts & Paranormal Tales / 🟡 Beckoning Fair One (Full Audiobook) | Oliver Onions

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🟡 Beckoning Fair One (Full Audiobook) | Oliver Onions · Occult & Supernatural Audiobooks: Forbidden Rituals, Esoteric Texts & Paranormal Tales

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: CHAPTER I. The three or four tillet boards had stood
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: within the low paling as long as the inhabitants of
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: the little triangular square could remember, and if they had
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: ever been vertical, it was a very long time ago.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: They now overhung the palings, each at its own angle,
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: and resembled nothing so much as a row of wooden choppers,
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: ever in the act of falling upon some passer-by, yet
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: never cutting off a tenant for the old house on
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: the stream of his fellows. not that there was ever
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: any great stream through the square. The stream passed a
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: furlong and more away, beyond the intricacy of tenements and
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: alleys and byways that had sprung up since the old
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: house had been built, hemming it in completely, and probably
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: the house itself would only suffer to stand pending the
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: falling in of a lease or two, when doubtless a
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: clearance would be made of the whole neighbourhood. It was
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: of bloomy old red brick, and built into its walls
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: were the crowns and clasped hands and other insignia of
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: insurance companies long since defunct. The children of the secluded
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: square had swung upon the low gate at the end
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: of the entrant alley, until little more than the solid
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: top bar of it remained, and the alley itself ran
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: past boarded basement windows on which tramps had chalked their
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: cryptic marks. The path was washed and worn uneven by
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: the spilling of water from the eaves of the encroaching
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: next house, and cats and dogs had made the approach
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: their own. The chances of a tenant did not seem
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: such as to warrant the keeping of the Gillette boards
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: in a state of legibility and repair, and as a
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: matter of fact, they were not so kept. For six
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: months Oleron had passed the old place twice a day
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: or oftener, on his way from his lodgings to the room,
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: ten minutes' walk away. He had taken to work in,
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: and for six months no hatchet-like notice-board had fallen across
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: his path. This might have been due to the fact
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: that he usually took the other side of the square,
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: but he chanced one morning to take the side that
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: ran past the broken gate and the rain-worn entrance alley,
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: and to pause before one of the inclined boards. The
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: board bore, beside the agent's name, the announcement, written apparently
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: about the time of Oleron's own early youth, that the
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: key was to be had at number six. Now Oleron
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: was already paying, for his separate bedroom and workroom, more
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: than an author who, without private means, habitually disregards his public,
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: can afford, and he was paying in addition a small
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: rent for the storage of the greater part of his
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: grandmother's furniture. Moreover, it invariably happened that the book he
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: wished to read in bed was at his working quarters
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: half a mile and more away, while the note or
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: letter he had sudden need of during the day was
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: as likely as not to be in the pocket of
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: another coat hanging behind his bedroom door. And there were
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: other inconveniences in having a divided domicile. Therefore, Oleron— roared
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: suddenly up by the hatchet-like notice-board, looked first down through
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: some scanty privet bushes at the boarded basement windows, then
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: up at the blank and grimy windows of the first floor,
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: and so up to the second floor and the flat
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: stone coping of the leads. He stood for a minute,
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: thumbing his lean and shaving jaw. Then, with another glance
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: at the board, he walked slowly across the square to No. 6.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: He knocked and waited for two or three minutes, but
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: although the door stood open received no answer. He was
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: knocking again when a long-nosed man in shirt-sleeves appeared.' I
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: was asking a blessing on our food,' he said in
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: severe explanation. Oluon asked if he might have the key
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: of the old house, and the long-nosed man withdrew again.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: Oluon waited for another five minutes on the step. Then
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: the man, appearing again and masticating some of the food
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: of which he had spoken, announced that the key was lost.'
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: But you won't want it,' he said.' The entrance door
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: isn't closed, and a push'll open any of the others.'
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: I' m a agent for it, if you're thinking of taking it.'
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: All along we crossed the square, descended the two steps
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: at the broken gate, passed along the alley, and turned
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: in at the old wide doorway. To the right, immediately
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: within the door, steps descended to the roomy cellars, and
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: the staircase before him had a carved rail, and was
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: broad and handsome and filthy. Alloran ascended it, avoiding contact
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: with the rail and wall, and stopped at the first landing.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: A door facing him had been boarded up, but he
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: pushed at that on his right hand, and an insecure
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: bolt or staple yielded. He entered the empty first floor.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: He spent a quarter of an hour in the place,
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: and then came out again. Without mounting higher, he descended
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: and recrossed the square to the house of the man
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: who had lost the key.' Can you tell me how
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: much the rent is?' he asked, the comparative lowness of
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: which seemed accounted for by the character of the neighbourhood
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: and the abominable state of unrepair of the place.' Would
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: it be possible to rent a single floor?' The long-nosed
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: man did not know. They might. Who are they? The
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: man gave Oleron the name of a firm of lawyers
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: in Lincoln's Inn. You might mention my name. Barrett, he added.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: Pressure of work prevented Oleron from going down to Lincoln's
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: Inn that afternoon, but he went on the morrow, and
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: was instantly offered the whole house as a purchase for
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: fifty pounds down, the remainder of the purchase money to
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: remain on mortgage. it took him half an hour to
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: disabuse the lawyer's mind of the idea that he wished
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: anything more of the place than to rent a single
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: floor of it this made certain hums and haws of
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: a difference and the lawyer was by no means certain
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: that it lay within his power to do as oleron
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: suggested but it was finally extracted from him that provided
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: the notice-boards were allowed to remain up, and that, provided
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: it was agreed that in the event of the whole
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: house-letting the arrangement should terminate automatically without further notice, something
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: might be done. That the old place should suddenly let
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: over his head seemed to Olleron the slightest of risks
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: to take, and he promised a decision within a week.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: On the morrow he visited the house again, went through
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: it from top to bottom, and then went home to
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: his lodgings to take a bath. He was immensely taken
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: with that portion of the house he had already determined
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: should be his own, scraped clean and repainted, and with
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: that old furniture of Oleron's grandmother's, it ought to be
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: entirely charming. He went to the storage warehouse to refresh
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: his memory of his half-forgotten belongings, and to take measurements,
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: and thence he went to a decorator's. He was very
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: busy with his regular work. and could have wished that
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: the notice-board had caught his attention either a few months
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: earlier or else later in the year, but the quickest
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: way would be to suspend work entirely until after his removal.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: A fortnight later, his first floor was painted throughout in
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: a tender elderflower white. The paint was dry, and Oleron
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: was in the middle of his installations. He was animated, delighted,
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: and he rubbed his hands as he polished and made
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: disposals of his grandmother's effects. The tall, lattice-paned china cupboard
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: with its derby and mason and spode. The large folding
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: Sheraton table. The long, low bookshelves. He had had two
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: of them copied. The chairs. The Sheffield candlesticks. The riveted
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: rose bowls. These things he set against his newly painted
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: elder-white walls. walls of wood panelled in the happiest proportions,
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: and moulded and coffered to the low-seated window recess, in
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: a mood of gaiety and rest that the builders of
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: rooms no longer know. The ceilings were lofty and faintly
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: painted with an old pattern of stars. Even the tapering
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: mouldings of his iron fireplace were as delicately designed as jewellery,
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: and Olloran walked about rubbing his hands, frequently stopping for
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: the mere pleasure of the glimpses from white room to
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: white room.' Charming, charming,' he said to himself.' I wonder
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: what Elsie Bengo will think of this.'' He brought a
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: bolt and a Yale lock for his door,' and shut
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: off his quarters from the rest of the house.' If
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: he now wanted to read in bed,' his book could
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: be had for stepping into the next room.' All the
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: time he thought how exceedingly lucky he was to get
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: the place.' He put up a hat-rack in the little
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: square hall, and hung up his hats and caps and coats,
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: and passes through the small triangular square late at night,
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: looking up over the little serried row of wooden to-let hatchets,
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: could see the light within Oleron's red blinds, or else
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: the sudden darkening of one blind and the illumination of another,
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: as Oleron, candlestick in hand, passed from room to room,
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: making final settlings of his furniture, or preparing to resume
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: the work that his removal had interrupted. As far as
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: the chief business of his life, his writing, was concerned,
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: Paul Oleron treated the world a good deal better than
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: he was treated by it, but he seldom took the
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: trouble to strike a balance, or to compute how far,
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: at forty-four years of age, he was behind his points
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: on the handicap. To have done so wouldn't have altered matters,
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: and it might have depressed Oleron. He had chosen his path,
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: and was committed to it beyond the possibility of withdrawal.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: Perhaps he had chosen it in the days when he
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: had been easily swayed by something a little disinterested, a
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: little generous, a little noble, and had he ever thought
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: of questioning himself, he would still have held to it
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: that a life without nobility and generosity and disinterestedness was
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: no life for him. Only quite recently, and rarely, had
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: he even vaguely suspected that there was more in it
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: than this. But it was no good anticipating the day when,
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: he supposed, he would reach that maximum point of his
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: powers beyond which he must inevitably decline, and be left
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: face to face with the question whether it would not
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: have profited him better to have ruled his life by
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: less exigent ideals. In the meantime, his removal into the
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: old house with the insurance marks built into its brick
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: merely interrupted Romilly Bishop at the fifteenth chapter. As this
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: tall man, with the lean, ascetic face, moved about his
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: new abode, arranging, changing, altering, hardly yet into his working
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: stride again, he gave the impression of an almost spinster-like
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: precision and nicety. For twenty years past, in a score
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: of lodgings, garrets, flats, and rooms furnished and unfurnished, he
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: had been accustomed to do many things for himself, and
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: he had discovered that it saves time and temper to
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: be methodical. He had arranged with the wife of the
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: long-nosed barret, a stout Welsh woman with a falsetto voice,
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: the marionetshire accent of which long residence in london had
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: not perceptibly modified to come across the square each morning
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: to prepare his breakfast and also to turn the place
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: out on saturday mornings and for the rest he even
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: welcomed a little housework as a relaxation from the strain
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: of writing His kitchen, together with the adjoining strip of
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: an apartment into which a modern bath had been fitted,
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: overlooked the alley at the side of the house, and
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: at one end of it was a large closet with
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: a door, and a square sliding hatch in the upper
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: part of the door. This had been a powder closet,
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: and through the hatch the elaborately dressed head had been
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: thrust to receive the click and puff of the powder pistol.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: Ollowan puzzled a little over this closet. Then, as its
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: use occurred to him, he smiled faintly, a little moved.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: He knew not by what. He would have to put
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: it to a very different purpose from its original one.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: It would probably have to serve as his larder. It
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: was in this closet that he made a discovery. The
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: back of it was shelved, and, rummaging on an upper
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: shelf that ran deeply into the wall, Olleran found a
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: couple of mushroom-shaped old wooden wigstands. He did not know
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: how they had come to be there. Doubtless the painters
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: had turned them up somewhere or other, and had put
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: them there. But his five rooms as a whole were
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: short of cupboard and closet room. and it was only
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: by the exercise of some ingenuity that he was able
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: to find places for the bestowal of his household linen,
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: his boxes, and his seldom used but not to be
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: destroyed accumulations of papers. It was in early spring that
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: Olwen entered on his tenancy, and he was anxious to
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: have Romilly ready for publication in the coming autumn. Nevertheless,
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: he did not intend to force its production, Should it
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: demand longer in the doing, so much the worse. He
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: realized its importance, its crucial importance, in his artistic development,
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: and it must have its own length and time. In
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: the workroom he had recently left, he had been making
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: excellent progress. Romilly had begun, as the saying is, to
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: speak and act of herself, and he did not doubt
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: she would continue to do so the moment the distraction
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: of his removal was over. This distraction was almost over.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: He told himself it was time he pulled himself together again,
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: and on a March morning he went out, returned again
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: with two great bunches of yellow daffodils, placed one bunch
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: on his mantelpiece between the Sheffield sticks and the other
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: on the table before him, and took out the half-completed
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: manuscript of Romilly Bishop. But before beginning work, he went
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: to a small rosewood cabinet and took from a drawer
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: his check-book and pass-book, He totted them up, and his
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: monk-like face grew thoughtful. His installation had cost him more
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: than he had intended it should, and his balance was
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: rather less than fifty pounds, with no immediate prospect of more.' Hm,
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: I'd forgotten rugs and chintz curtains and so forth mounted
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: up so,' said Oleron.' But it would have been a
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: pity to spoil the place for the want of ten
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: pounds or so. Well, Romilly simply must be out for
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: the autumn, that's all.' So here goes. He drew his
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: papers towards him. But he worked badly, or rather, he
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: did not work at all. The square outside had its
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: own noises, frequent and new, and Oleron could only hope
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: that he would speedily become accustomed to these. First came
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: hawkers with their carts and cries. At midday the children,
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: returning from school, trooped into the square and swung on
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: Oleron's gate. and when the children had departed again for
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: afternoon school, an intimate musician with a mandolin posted himself
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: beneath Oleron's window and began to strum. This was not
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: an unpleasant distraction, and Oleron, pushing up his window, threw
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: the man a penny. Then he returned to his table again.
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: But it was no good. He came to himself, at
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: long intervals, to find that he had been looking about
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: his room and wondering how it had formerly been furnished.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: whether a settee in buttercup or petunia satin had stood
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: under the farther window, whether from the centre moulding of
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: the light, lofty ceiling had depended a glimmering crystal chandelier,
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: or where the tambour frame or the piquet table had stood. No,
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: it was no good. He had far better be frankly
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: doing nothing than getting fruitlessly tired. He decided that he
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: would take a walk, but, chancing to sit down for
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: a moment, dozed in his chair instead.' This won't do,'
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: he yawned when he awoke at half-past four in the afternoon.'
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: I must do better than this to-morrow.' And he felt
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: so deliciously lazy that for some minutes he even contemplated
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: the breach of an appointment he had for the evening.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: The next morning he sat down to work without even
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: permitting himself to answer one of his three letters. two
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: of them tradesmen's accounts, the third a note from Miss Bengo,
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: forwarded from his old address. It was a jolly day
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: of white and blue, with a gay noisy wind and
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: a subtle turn in the colour of growing things, and
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: over and over again, once or twice a minute, his
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: room became suddenly light and then subdued again, as the
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: shining white clouds rolled north-eastwards over the square. The soft,
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: fitful illumination was reflected in the polished surface of the table,
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: and even in the foot-worn old floor, and the morning
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: noises had begun again. Oleron made a pattern of dots
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: on the paper before him, and then broke off to
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: move the jar of daffodils exactly opposite the centre of
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: the creamy panel. Then he wrote a sentence that ran
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: continuously for a couple of lines, after which it broke
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: on into notes and jottings. For a time he succeeded
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: in persuading himself that in making these memoranda he was
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: really working. Then he rose and began to pace his room.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: As he did so, he was struck by an idea.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: It was that the place might possibly be a little
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: better for more positive colour. It was, perhaps, a thought
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: too pale, mild and sweet as a kind old face,
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: but a little devitalised, even wan. Yes, he decided it
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: would bear a robuster note, more and richer flowers, and
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: possibly some warm and gay stuff for cushions for the
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: window seats.' Of course, I really can't afford it,' he muttered,
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: as he went for a two-foot and began to measure
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: the width of the window recess. In stooping to measure
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: a recess, his attitude suddenly changed to one of interest
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: and attention. Presently he rose again, rubbing his hands with
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: gentle glee.' Oh ho, oh ho!' he said.' These look
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: to me very much like window-boxes, nailed up. We must
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: look into this.'' Yes, those are boxes, or I'm—oh this
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: is an adventure.' On that wall of his sitting-room there
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: were two windows, the third was in another corner, and
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: beyond the open bedroom door, on the same wall, was another.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: The seats of all had been painted, repainted, and painted again,
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: and Oloron's investigating finger had barely detected the old nail-heads
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: beneath the paint.' Under the ledge over which he stooped,
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: an old keyhole also had been puttied up. Olleron took
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: out his penknife. He worked carefully for five minutes, and
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: then went into the kitchen for a hammer and chisel.
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: Driving the chisel cautiously under the seat, he started the
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: hole-lid slightly, and using the penknife, he cut along the
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: hinged edge and outward along the ends, and then he
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: fetched a wedge and a wooden mallet.' Now for our
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: little mystery,' he said. The sound of the mallet on
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: the wedge seemed, in that sweet and pale apartment, somehow
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: a little brutal, nay, even shocking. The panelling rang and rattled,
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: and vibrated to the blows like a sounding-board. The whole
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: house seemed to echo. From the roomy cellarage to the
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: garrets above, a flock of echoes seemed to awake, and
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: the sound got a little on Oleron's nerves. All at
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: once he paused, fetched a duster, and muffled the mallet.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: When the edge was sufficiently raised, he put his fingers
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: under it and lifted. The paint flaked and stirred a little.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: The rusty old nails squeaked and grunted, and the lid
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: came up, laying open the box beneath. Oleron looked into it.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: Save for a couple of inches of scurf and mould
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: and old cobwebs, it was empty. No treasure there, said Oleron,
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: a little amused that he should have thought there might
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: have been.' Romilly will still have to be out by
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: the autumn. Let's have a look at the others.' He
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: turned to the second window. The raising of the two
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: remaining seats occupied him well into the afternoon. That of
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: the bedroom, like the first, was empty, but from the
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: second seat of his sitting-room he drew out something yielding,
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: and folded and furred over an inch thick with dust.'
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: He carried the object into the kitchen, and having swept
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: it over a bucket, took a duster to it. It
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: was some sort of large bag, of an ancient frieze-like material,
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: and when unfolded it occupied the greater part of the
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: small kitchen floor. In shape it was an irregular, a
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: very irregular, triangle, and it had a couple of wide flaps,
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: with the remains of straps and buckles. The patch that
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: had been uppermost in the folding was of a faded yellowish-brown,
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: but the rest of it was of shades of crimson
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: that varied according to the exposure of the parts of it.'
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: Now whatever can that have been?' Aloran mused as he
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: stood surveying it.' I give it up. Whatever it is,
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: it's settled my work for to-day, I'm afraid.' He folded
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: the object up carelessly and thrust it into a corner
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: of the kitchen. Then, taking pans and brushes and an
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: old knife, he returned to the sitting-room and began to
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: scrape and wash, and to line with paper his newly
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: discovered receptacles. When he had finished, he put his spare
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: boots and boots and papers into them, and he closed
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: the lids again, amused with his little adventure, but also
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: a little anxious for the hour to come when he
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: should settle fairly down to his work again. CHAPTER III
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: OF THE BECKONING FAIR ONE BY OLIVER ONIONS It peaked
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: Olleron a little that his friend, Miss Wengole, should dismiss
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: with a glance the place he himself had found so
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: singularly winning. Indeed, she scarcely lifted her eyes to it.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: But then she had always been more or less like that,
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: a little indifferent to the graces of life, careless of appearances,
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: and perhaps a shade more herself when she ate biscuits
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: from a paper bag than when she dined with greater
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: observance of the conveniences. She was an unattached journalist of thirty-four, large, showy,
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: fair as butter, pink as a dog-rose, reminding one of
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: a florist's picked specimen bloom, and given to sudden and
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: ample movements and moist and explosive utterances. She pulled a
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: better living out of the pool, as she expressed it,
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: than Oloron did, and by cunningly disguised puffs of drapers
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: and haberdashers she pulled, also, the greater part of her
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: very varied wardrobe. She left small whirlwinds of air behind
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: her when she moved, in which her veils and scarves
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: fluttered and spun. Oloron heard the flurry of her skirts
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: on his staircase, and her single loud knock at his
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: door when he had been a month in his new abode.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: Her garments brought in the outer air, and she flung
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: a bundle of ladies' journals down on the chair.' Don' t
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: knock off for me,' she said across a mouthful of
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: large-headed hat-pins as she removed her hat and veil. I
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: don't know whether you were straight yet, so I've brought
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: some sandwiches for lunch. You've got coffee, I suppose. No,
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: don't get up. I'll find the kitchen. Oh, that's all right.
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: I'll clear these things away. To tell the truth, I'm
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: rather glad to be interrupted, said Oleron. He gathered his
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: work together and put it away. She was already in
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: the kitchen. He heard the running of water into the kettle.
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: He joined her, and ten minutes later followed her back
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: to the sitting-room with the coffee and sandwiches on a tray.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: They sat down, with the tray on a small table
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: between them.' Well, what do you think of the new place?'
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: Alwyn asked as she poured out coffee.' Hm. Anybody would
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: think you were going to get married, Paul,' he laughed.' Oh, no.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: But it's an improvement on some of them, isn't it?''
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: Is it? I suppose it is.' I don't know. I
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: like the last place, in spite of the black ceiling
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: and no water tap. How's Romilly? Oloron thumbed his chin. Hmm.
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: I'm rather ashamed to tell you. The fact is I've
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: not got on very well with it, but it will
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: be all right on the night, as you used to say. Stuck?
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: Rather stuck. Got any of it you'd care to read
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: to me? Oleron had long been in the habit of
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: reading portions of his work to Miss Bengot occasionally. Her
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: comments were always quick and practical, sometimes directly useful, sometimes
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: indirectly suggestive. She, in return for his confidence, always kept
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: all mention of her own work sedulously from him. His,
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: she said, was real work, hers merely filled space, not
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: always even grammatically. I'm afraid there isn't, Oloron replied, still
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: meditatively dry-shaving his chin. Then he added, with a little
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: burst of candour, The fact is, Elsie, I've not written,
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: not actually written, very much more of it. Any more
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: of it, in fact. But of course that doesn't mean
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: I haven't progressed. I've progressed in one sense, rather alarmingly.
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: I'm now thinking of reconstructing the whole thing. Miss Bingo
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: gave a gasp. Reconstructing? 'making Romilly herself a different type
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: of woman.' Somehow I've begun to feel that I'm not
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: getting the most out of her.' As she stands, I've
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: certainly lost interest in her to some extent.' But, but,'
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: Miss Bengo protested,' you had her so real, so living.' Paul!''
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: Oleron smiled faintly.' He had been quite prepared for Miss
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: Bengo's disapproval.' He wasn't surprised that she liked Romilly, as
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: she at present existed. She would. Whether she realized it
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: or not, there was much of herself in his fictitious creation. Naturally,
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: Romilly would seem real, living, to her.' But are you
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: really serious, Paul?' Miss Bengo asked presently, with a round-eyed stare.'
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: Quite serious.'' You' re really going to scrap those fifteen chapters?''
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: I didn't exactly say that.' That fine, rich love scene.
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: I should only do it reluctantly, and for the sake
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: of something I thought better. And that beautiful, beautiful description
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: of Romilly on the shore. It wouldn't necessarily be wasted,
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: he said a little uneasily. But Miss Bengal made a
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: large and windy gesture, and then let him have it. Really,
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: you are too trying, she broke out. I do wish
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: sometimes you'd remember you're human and live in a world.
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: You know I'd be the last to wish you to
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: lower your stand at one inch, but it wouldn't be
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: lowering it to bring it within human comprehension. Oh, you're
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: sometimes altogether too godlike. Why, it would be a wicked,
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: criminal waste of your powers to destroy those fifteen chapters.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: Look at it reasonably now. You've been working for nearly
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: twenty years. You've now got what you've been working for
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: almost within your grasp. your affairs are at a most
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: critical stage oh don't tell me i know you're about
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: at the end of your money and here you are
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: deliberately proposing to withdraw a thing that will probably make
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: your name and to substitute it for something that ten
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: to one nobody on earth will ever want to read,
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: and small blame to them. Really, you try my patience.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: Oleron had shaken his head slowly as she had talked.
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: It was an old story between them. The noisy, able,
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: practical journalist was an admirable friend, up to a certain point.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: Beyond that, well, each of us knows that point beyond
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: which we stand alone. Elsie Bengo sometimes said that had
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: she one-tenth part of Oloron's genius, there were few things
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: she could not have done, thus making that genius a
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: quantitatively divisible thing, a sort of ingredient, to be added
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: to or subtracted from in the admixture of his work.
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: That it was a qualitative thing, essential, indivisible, informing, passed
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: her comprehension. Their spirits parted company at that point. Alleron
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: knew it. She did not appear to know it.' Yes, yes, yes,'
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: he said a little wearily, by and by.' Practically you're
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: quite right, entirely right, and I haven't a word to say.'
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: If I could only turn Romilly over to you, you'd
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: make an enormous success of her. But that can't be.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: And I, for my part, am seriously doubting whether she's
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: worth my while. You know what that means. What does
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: it mean? she demanded bluntly. Well, he said, smiling wanly,
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: what does it mean when you're convinced a thing isn't
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: worth doing? You simply don't do it. Miss Bengo's eyes
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: swept the ceiling for assistance against this impossible man. What
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: utter rubbish, she broke out at last. Why, when I
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: saw you last, you were simply oozing, Romilly. You were
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: turning her off at the rate of four chapters a week.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: If you hadn't moved, you'd have had her three parts
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: done by now. What on earth possessed you to move
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: right in the middle of your most important work? Oleron
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: tried to put her off with a recital of inconveniences,
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: but she wouldn't have it. Perhaps in her heart she
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: partly suspected the reason. He was simply mortally weary of
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: the narrow circumstances of his life. He had had twenty
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: years of it, twenty years of garrets and roof chambers
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: and dingy flats and shabby lodgings, and he was tired
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: of dinginess and shabbiness. The reward was as far off
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: as ever, or if it was not, he no longer
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: cared as once he would have cared to put out
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: his hand and take it. It is all very well
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: to tell a man who is at the point of
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: exhaustion that only another effort is required of him. If
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: he cannot make it, he is as far off as ever. Anyway,
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: Olloron summed up, I'm happier here than I've been for
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: a long time. That's some sort of a justification. And
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: doing no work, said Miss Bengal pointedly. At that, a
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: trifling petulance that had been gathering in Olloron came to
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: a head. And why should I do nothing but work?
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: he demanded. How much happier am I for it? I
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: don't say I don't love my work, when it's done,
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: but I hate doing it. Sometimes it's an intolerable burden
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: that I simply long to be rid of. Once in
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: many weeks it has a moment, one moment, of glow
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: and thrill for me. I remember the days when it
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: was all glow and thrill, and now I'm forty-four, and
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: it's becoming drudgery.' Nobody wants it. I'm ceasing to want
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: it myself. And if any ordinary, sensible man were to
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: ask me whether I didn't think I was a fool
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: to go on, I think I should agree that I was.'
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: Miss Bengall's comely pink face was serious.' But you knew
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: all that, many, many years ago, Paul. And still you
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: chose it,' she said in a low voice.' Well, and
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: how should I have known?' he demanded.' I didn't know.
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: I was told so.' My heart, if you like, told
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: me so, and I thought I knew.' Youth always thinks
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: it knows.' Then one day it discovers that it is
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: nearly fifty.'' Forty- four, Paul.'' Forty- four, then.' And it finds that
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: the glamour isn't in front, but behind.' Yes, I knew
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: and chose, if that's knowing and choosing.' but it's a
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: costly choice we're called on to make when we're young.
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: Miss Bengo's eyes were on the floor. Without moving them,
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: she said, You're not regretting it, Paul? Am I not?
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: he took her up. Upon my word, I've lately thought
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: I am. What do I get in return for it all?
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: You know what you get, she replied. He might have
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: known from her tone what else he could have had
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: for the holding up of a finger. Herself. She knew,
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: but could not tell him, that he could have done
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: no better thing for himself. Had he, any time these
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: ten years, asked her to marry him, she would have
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: replied quietly, Very well. When? He had never thought of it.
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: Yours is the real work, she continued quietly. Without you,
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: we jackals couldn't exist. You and a few like you
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: hold everything upon your shoulders. For a minute there was silence.
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: Then it occurred to Oleron that this was a common
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: vulgar grumbling. It was not his habit. Suddenly he rose
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: and began to stack cups and plates on the tray.'
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: Sorry you catch me like this, Elsie,' he said with
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: a little laugh.' No, I'll take them out. Then we'll
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: go for a walk, if you like.' He carried out
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: the tray, and then began to show Miss Bengo round
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: his flat. She made few comments— In the kitchen she
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: asked what an old faded square of reddish frieze was
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: that Mrs. Barrett used as a cushion for her wooden chair.' That,
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: I should be glad if you could tell me what
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: it is,' Olleron replied, as he unfolded the bag and
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: related the story of its finding in the window-seat.' I
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: think I know what it is,' said Miss Bengot.' It' s
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: been used to wrap up a harp before putting it
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: into its case.' By Jove, that's probably just what it was,
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: said Oleron. I could make neither head nor tail of it.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: They finished the tour of the flat and returned to
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: the sitting-room. And who lives in the rest of the house?
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: Miss Bengo asked. I dare say a tramp sleeps in
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: the cellar occasionally. Nobody else. Hmm. Well, I'll tell you
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: what I think about it, if you like. I should like.
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: You'll never work here. Oh, said Olleran quickly. Why not?
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: You'll never finish Romilly here. Why, I don't know. But
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: you won't. I know it. You'll have to leave before
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: you get on with that book. He mused for a moment,
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: and then said, Isn't that a little prejudiced, Elsie? Perfectly ridiculous.
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: As an argument it hasn't a leg to stand on.
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: But there it is, she replied, her mouth once more
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: full of the large-headed hat-pins. Oleron was reaching down his
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: hat and coat. He laughed. I can only hope you're
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: entirely wrong, he said, for I shall be in a
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: serious mess as Romilly isn't out in the autumn. This
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Morgan Scorpion.
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: Chapter 4 of The Beckoning Fair One by Oliver Onions
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: As Olloran sat by his fire that evening, pondering Miss
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: Bengo's prognostication that difficulties awaited him in his work, he
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: came to the conclusion that it would have been far
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: better had she kept her beliefs to herself. No man
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: does a thing better for having his confidence damped at
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: the outset, and to speak of difficulties is in a
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: sense to make them. Speech itself becomes a deterrent act,
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: to which other discouragements accrete until the very event of
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: which warning is given is as likely as not to
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: come to pass. He heartily confounded her. An influence hostile
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: to the completion of Romilly had been born. and in
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: some illogical, dogmatic way women seem to have, she had
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: attached this antagonistic influence to his new abode. Was ever
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: anything so absurd? You'll never finish Romilly, here. Why not?
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: Was this her idea of the luxury that saps the
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: springs of action and brings a man down to indolence
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: and dropping out of the race? The place was well enough.
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: It was entirely charming, for that matter. but it was
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: not so demoralising as all that. No, Elsie had missed
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: the mark that time. He moved his chair to look
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: around the room, but smiled, positively smiled, in the firelight.
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: He too smiled, as if pity was to be entertained
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: from a lined apartment. Even that slight lack of robust
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: colour he had remarked was not noticeable in the soft glow.
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: The drawn chintz curtains, they had a flowered and trellised pattern,
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: with baskets and open pipes, fell in long quiet folds
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: to the window-seats. The rows of bindings in old bookcases
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: took the light richly. The last trace of sullenness had
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: gone with the daylight, and, if the truth must be told,
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: it had been Elsie herself who had seemed a little
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: out of the picture. That reflection struck him a little,
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: and presently he returned to it. Yes, the room had,
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: quite accidentally, done Miss Bengot a disservice that afternoon. It had,
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: in some subtle but unmistakable way, placed her, marked a
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: contrast of qualities, and Assuming for the sake of argument
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: the slightly ridiculous proposition that the room in which Oleron
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: sat was characterised by a certain sparsity and lack of vigour,
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: so much the worse for Miss Bengal. She certainly erred
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: on the side of redundancy and general muchness. And if
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: one must contrast abstract qualities, Oleron inclined to the austere
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: in taste. Yes, here Oleron had made a distinct discovery.
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: He wondered he had not made it before. He pictured
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: Miss Bengot again as she had appeared that afternoon. Large, showy,
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: moistly pink, with that quality of the prize bloom exuding,
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: as it were, from her. And instantly she suffered in
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: his thought. He even recognised now that he had noticed
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: something odd at the time, and that unconsciously his attitude,
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: even while she had been there, had been one of criticism.
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: The mechanism of her was a little obvious. Her melting
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: humidity was the result of analysable processes, and behind her
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: there had seemed to lurk some dim shape emblematic of mortality.
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: He had never, during the ten years of their intimacy,
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: dreamed for a moment of asking her to marry him. Nonetheless,
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: he now felt for the first time a thankfulness that
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: he had not done so. Then, suddenly and swiftly, his
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: face flamed that he should be thinking thus of his friend.' What?
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: El Simbengol?' with whom he had spent weeks and weeks
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: of afternoons. She, the good chum on whose help he
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: would have counted had all the rest of the world
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: failed him. She, whose loyalty to him would not, he knew,
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: swerve as long as there was breath in her. Elsie,
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: to be even in thought, dissected thus. He was an
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: ingrate and a cad. Had she been there in that moment,
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: he would have abased himself before her. For ten minutes
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: and more he sat, still gazing into the fire, with
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: that humiliating red fading slowly from his cheeks. All was
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: still within and without, save for a tiny musical tinkling
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: that came from his kitchen, the dripping of water from
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: an imperfectly turned-off tap into the vessel beneath it. Mechanically
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: he began to beat with his finger to the faintly
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: heard falling of the drops. the tiny regular movement seemed
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: to hasten that shameful withdrawal from his face. He grew
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: cool once more, and when he resumed his meditation he
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: was all unconscious that he took it up again at
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: the same point. It was not only her florid superfluity
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: of build that he had approached in the attitude of criticism.
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: He was conscious also of the wide differences between her
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: mind and his own, He felt no thankfulness that up
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: to a certain point their natures had ever run companionly
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: side by side. He was now full of questions beyond
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: that point. Their intellects diverged. There was no denying it,
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: and looking back he was inclined to doubt whether there
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: had been any real coincidence. True, he had read his
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: writings to her, and she had appeared to speak comprehendingly
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: and to the point. But what can a man do who,
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: having assumed that another sees as he does, is suddenly
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: brought up sharp by something that falsifies and discredits all
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: that has gone before? He doubted all now. It did
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: for a moment occur to him that the man who
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: demands of a friend more than can be given to
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: him is in danger of losing that friend, but he
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: put the thought aside. Again he ceased to think, and
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: again moved his finger to the distant dripping of the tap.
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: And now, he resumed by and by, if these things
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: were true of Elsie Ben Goh, they were also true
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: of the creation of which she was the prototype, Romilly Bishop.
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: And since he could say of Romilly what for very
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: shame he could not say of Elsie, he gave his
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: thoughts reign. He did so in that smiling, fire-lighted room,
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: to the accompaniment of the faintly heard tap. There was
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: no longer any doubt about it. He hated the central
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: character of his novel. Even as he had described her physically,
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: she overpowered the senses. She was coarse-fibred, over-coloured, rank. It
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: became true the moment he formulated his thought. Gulliver had
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: described the Brobdignarion Maids of Honour thus, and mentally and
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: spiritually she corresponded, was unsensitive, limited, common. The model, he
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: closed his eyes for a moment. The model stuck out
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: through fifteen vulgar and blatant chapters to such a pitch that,
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: without seeing the reason, he had been unable to begin
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: the sixteenth. He marvelled that it had only just dawned
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: upon him. and this was to have been his beatrice,
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: his vision. As Elsie she was to have gone into
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: the furnace of his art, and she was to have
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: come out the woman all men desire. Her thoughts were
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: to have been culled from his own finest, her form
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: from his dearest dreams, and her setting wherever he could
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: find one fit for her worth. He had brooded long
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: before making the attempt, Then one day he had felt
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: her stir within him as a mother feels a quickening,
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: and he had begun to write, and so he had
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: added chapter to chapter. And those fifteen chapters were what
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: he had produced. Again he sat, softly moving his finger.
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: Then he bestirred himself.' She must go, all fifteen chapters
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: of her, that was settled.' For what was to take
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: her place, his mind was a blank, but one thing
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: at a time. A man is not excused from taking
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: the wrong course, because the right one is not immediately
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: revealed to him. Better would come if it was to come.
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: In the meantime, he rose, fetched the fifteen chapters, and
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: read them over before he should drop them into the fire.
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: But instead of putting them into the fire, he let
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: them fall from his hand. he became conscious of the
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: dripping of the tap again it had a tinkling gamut
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: of four or five notes on which it rang irregular
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: changes and it was foolishly sweet and dulcimer-like In his mind,
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: Oleron could see the gathering of each drop, its little
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: tremble on the lip of the tap, and the tiny
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: percussion of its fall. Plink, plunk, minimized almost inaudibility. Following
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: the lowest note, there seemed to be a brief phrase,
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: irregularly repeated, and presently Oleron found himself waiting for the
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: recurrence of this phrase. It was quite pretty. but it
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: did not conduce to wakefulness, and Oleron dozed over his fire.
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: When he awoke again the fire had burned low, and
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: the flames of the candles were licking the rims of
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: the Sheffield sticks. Sluggishly he rose, yawned, went his nightly
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: round of door-locks and window-fastenings, and passed into his bedroom.
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: Soon he slept soundly. But a curious little sequel followed
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: on the morrow. Mrs. Barrett usually tapped, not at his door,
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: but at the wooden wall beyond which lay Olleron's bed,
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: and then Olleron rose, put on his dressing-gown, and admitted her.
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: He was not conscious that as he did so that
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: morning he hummed an air, but Mrs. Barrett lingered with
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: her hand on the doorknob, and her face a little
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: averted and smiling.' Dear me!' her soft falsetto rose. But
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: that will be a very old tune, Mr. Oleron. I
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: will not have heard it this forty years. What tune?
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: Oleron asked. The tune, indeed, that you are humming, sir.
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: Oleron had his thumb in the flap of a letter.
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: It remained there. I was humming? Sing it, Mrs. Barrett. Mrs.
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: Barrett putt-putted.' I have no voice for singing, Mr. Oleron.
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: It was Anne Pugh was the singer of our family,
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: but the tune will be very old, and it is
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: called The Beckoning Fair One.'' Try to sing it,' said Oleron,
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: his thumb still in the envelope, and Mrs. Barrett, with
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: much dimpling and confusion, hummed the air.'' They do say
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: it was sung to a harp, Mr. Oleron, and it
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: will be very old,' she concluded,' and I was singing that.''
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: Indeed you was. I would not be likely to tell
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: you lies.' With a,' Very well, let me have breakfast,'
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: Oleron opened his letter. But the trifling circumstance struck him
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: as more odd than he would have admitted to himself.
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: The phrase he had hummed had been that which he
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: had associated with the falling from the tap on the
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: evening before. The Beckoning Fair One by Oliver Onions Chapter
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: 5 Even more curious than that the dripping of an
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: ordinary water-tap should have tallied so closely with an actually
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: resisting air was another result it had, namely, that it
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: awakened or seemed to awaken in Oliver an abnormal sensitiveness
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: to other noises of the old house. It has been
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: remarked that silence obtains its fullest and most impressive quality
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: when it is broken by some minute sound, and, truth
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: to tell, the place was never still. Perhaps the mildness
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: of the spring air operated on its torpid old timbers,
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: perhaps Oloron's fires caused it to stretch its old anatomy,
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: and certainly a whole world of insect life bored and
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: burrowed in its bulks and joists. At any rate, Aloron
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: had only to sit quiet in his chair, and to
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: wait for a minute or two in order to become
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: aware of such a change in the auditory scale, as
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: comes upon a man who, conceiving the midsummer woods to
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: be motionless and still, all at once finds his ear
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: sharpened to the crepitation of a myriad insects. And he
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: smiled to think of man's arbitrary distinction between that which
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: has life and that which has not. Here, quite apart
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: from such recognisable sounds as the scampling of mice, the
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: falling of plaster behind his panelling, and the popping of
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: purses or coffins from his fire, was a whole house
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: talking to him, had he but known its language. Beans
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: settled with a tired sigh into their old mortices. Creatures
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: ticked in the walls. Joints cracked. Boards complained. With no
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: palpable stirring of the air, window-sashes changed their positions with
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: a soft knock in their frames, and whether the place
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: had a life in this sense or not, it had
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: all events a winsome personality. It needed but an hour
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: of musing for Oleron to conceive the idea that, as
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: his own body stood in friendly relation to his soul, so,
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: by an extension and an attenuation, his habitation might fantastically
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: be supposed to stand in some relation to himself. He
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: even amused himself with the far-fetched fancy that he might
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: so identify himself with the place that some future tenant,
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: taking possession, might regard it as, in a sense, haunted.
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: It would be rather a joke if he, a perfectly
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: harmless author, with nothing on his mind worse than a
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: novel he had discovered he must begin again, should turn
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: out to be laying the foundation of a future ghost.
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: In proportion, however, as he felt this growing attachment to
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: the fabric of his abode, Elsie Bengal, from being merely unattracted,
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: began to show a dislike of the place that was
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: more and more marked, and she did not scruple to
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: speak of her aversion.' It doesn't belong to to-day at all,
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: and for you especially it's bad,' she said with decision.'
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: You' re only too ready to let go your hold on
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: actual things and to slip into apathy,' You ought to
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: be in a place with concrete floors and a patent
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: gas-meter and a tradesman's lift, and it would do you
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: all the good in the world if you had a
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: job that made you scramble and rub elbows with your fellow-men. Now,
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: if I could get you a job for, say, two
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: or three days a week, one that would allow you
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: heaps of time for your paperwork, would you take it?'
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: Somehow Oleron resented a little being diagnosed like this. He
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: thanked Miss Bengal, but without a smile. Thank you, but
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: I don't think so. After all, each of us has
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: his own life to live, he could not refrain from adding.
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: His own life to live? How long is it since
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: you were out, Paul? About two hours. I don't mean
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: to buy stamps or to post a letter. How long
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: is it since you had anything like a stretch? Oh,
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: some little time, perhaps. I don't know. Since I was
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: here last. I haven't been out much. And has Romilly
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: progressed much better for your being cooped up? I think
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: she has. I'm laying the foundations of her. I shall
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: begin the actual writing presently. It seemed as if Miss
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: Van Gogh had forgotten their tussle about the first Romilly.
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: She frowned, turned half away, and then quickly turned again. Ah,
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: so you've still got that ridiculous idea in your head.
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: If you mean, said Olloran slowly, That I've discarded the
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: old Romilly and am at work on a new one,
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: you're right. I have still got that idea in my head.
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: Something uncordial in his tone struck her. But she was
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: a fighter. His own absurd sensitiveness hardened her. She gave
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: a pshaw of impatience. Where is the old one? she
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: demanded abruptly. Why? asked Oleron. I want to see it.
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: I want to show some of it to you. I want,
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: if you're not wool-gathering entirely, to bring you back to
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: your senses. This time it was he who turned his back,
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: but when he turned round again he spoke more gently.
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: It's no good, Elsie. I'm responsible for the way I go,
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: and you must allow me to go it, even if
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: it should seem wrong to you. Believe me, I am
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: giving thought to it, The manuscript. I was on the
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: point of burning it, but I didn't. It's in that window-seat,
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: if you must see it. Miss Bengo crossed quickly to
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: the window-seat and lifted the lid. Suddenly she gave a
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: little exclamation and put the back of her hand to
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: her mouth. She spoke over her shoulder. You ought to
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: knock those nails in, Paul, she said. He strode to
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: her side. What? What is it? What's the matter? he asked.
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: I did knock them in, or rather pulled them out.'
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: You left enough to scratch with,' she replied, showing her hand.
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: From the upper wrist to the knuckle of the little
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: finger a welling red wound showed.' Good gracious!' Alorne ejaculated.' Here,
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: come to the bathroom and bathe it quickly.' He hurried
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: her to the bathroom, turned on warm water, and bathed
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: and cleansed the bad gash. Then, still holding the hand,
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: he turned cold water on it, uttering broken phrases of
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: astonishment and concern.' Good Lord! How did that happen? As
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: far as I knew I'd—'' Is this water too cold?
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: Does that hurt? I can't imagine how on earth—'' There.
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: That'll do.'' No.'' One moment longer. I can bear it,'
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: she murmured, her eyes closed. Presently he led her back
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: to the sitting-room and bound the hand in one of
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: his handkerchiefs, but his face did not lose its expression
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: of perplexity. He had spent half a day in opening
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: and making service of all these three window-boxes, and he
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: could not conceive how he had come to leave an
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: inch and a half of rusty nails standing in the wood.'
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: He himself had opened the lids of each of them
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: a dozen times, and had not noticed any nail. But
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: there it was.' It shall come out now, at all events,'
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: he muttered, as he went for a pair of pincers.
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: And he made no mistake about it that time. Elsie
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: Van Gogh had sunk into a chair, and her face
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: was rather white, but in her hand was the manuscript
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: of Romilly. She had not finished with Romilly yet.' Presently
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: she returned to the charge.' Oh, Paul, it will be
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: the greatest mistake you ever, ever made' if you do
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: not publish this,' she said.' He hung his head, genuinely distressed.'
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: He couldn't get that incident of the nail out of
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: his head,' and Romilly occupied a second place in his
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: thought for the moment.' But still she insisted, and when
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: presently he spoke' it was almost as if he asked
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: her pardon for something.'' What can I say, Elsie? I
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: can only hope that when you see the new version,
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: you'll see how right I am, and if in spite
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: of all you don't like her, well—' He made a
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: hopeless gesture.' Don' t you see that I must be guided
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: by my own lights?' She was silent.' Come, Elsie,' he
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: said gently.' We' ve got along well so far. Don't let
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: us split on this.' The last words had hardly passed
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: his lips before he regretted them. She had been nursing
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: her injured hand with her eyes once more closed, but
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: her lips and lids quivered simultaneously. Her voice shook as
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: she spoke.' I can't help saying it, Paul, but you
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: are so greatly changed.'' Ah, Chelsea,' he murmured soothingly,' you' ve
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: had a shock. Rest for a while. How could I change?'
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: i don't know but you are you've not been yourself
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: ever since you came here i wish you'd never seen
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: the place it's stopped your work it's making you into
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: a person i hardly know and it's made me horribly
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: anxious about you oh how my hands is beginning to throb!''
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: Poor child,' he murmured.' Will you let me take you
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: to a doctor and have it properly dressed?'' No, I
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: shall be all right presently.' I' ll keep it raised.'' She
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: put her elbow on the back of her chair,' and
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: the bandaged hand rested lightly on his shoulder.' At that
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: touch an entirely new anxiety stirred suddenly within him. Hundreds
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: of times previously, on their jaunts and excursions, she had
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: slipped her hand within his arm as she might have
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: slipped it into the arm of a brother, and he
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: had accepted the little affectionate gesture as a brother might
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: have accepted it. But now, for the first time, there
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: rushed into his mind a hundred startling questions. Her eyes
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: were still closed, and her head had fallen pathetically bathed.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: and there was a lost and ineffable smile on her
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: parted lips. The truth broke in upon him. Good God,
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: and he had never divined it. And stranger than all
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: that was, now that she did see that she was
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: lost in love of him, there came to him not
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: sorrow and humility and abasement, but something else that he
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: struggled in vain against. something entirely strange and new, that,
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: had he analysed it, he would have found to be
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: petulance and irritation and resentment and ungentleness. The sudden selfish
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: prompting mastered him before he was aware. He all but
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: gave it words. What was she doing there at all?
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: Why was she not getting on with her own work?
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: Why was she here interfering with his? Who had given
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: her this guardianship over him that lately she had put
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: forward so assertively? Changed? It was she, not himself, who
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: had changed. But by the time she had opened her
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: eyes again, he had overcome his resentment sufficiently to speak gently,
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: albeit with reserve. I wish you would let me take
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: you to a doctor. She rose. No, thank you, Paul,
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: she said. I'll go now. If I need a dressing,
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: I'll get one. Take the other hand, please. Good-bye. He
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: did not attempt to detain her. He walked with her
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: to the foot of the stairs. Halfway along the narrow
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: alley she turned.' It would be a long way to
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: come if you happened not to be in,' she said.'
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: I' ll send you a postcard the next time.' At the
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: gate she turned again.' Leave here, Paul,' she said with
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: a mournful look.' Everything' s wrong with this house.' Then she
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: was gone. Oleron returned to his room. He crossed straight
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: to the window-box. He opened the lid and stood long
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: looking at it. Then he closed it again and turned away.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: That's rather frightening, he muttered. It's simply not possible that
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: I should not have removed that nail. End of chapter
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: 5 Chapter 6 of The Beckoning Fair One This LibriVox
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: recording is in the public domain. The Beckoning Fair One
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: by Oliver Onions CHAPTER VI Oleron knew very well what
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: Elsie had meant when she had said that her next
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: visit would be preceded by a postcard. She, too, had
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: realized that at last, at last he knew, knew and
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: didn't want her. It gave him a miserable, pitiful pang, therefore,
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: when she came again within a week, knocking at the
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: door unannounced. She spoke from the landing. She did not
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: intend to stay, she said, and he had to press
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: her before she would so much as enter. Her excuse
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: for calling was that she had heard of an inquiry
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: for short stories that he might be wise to follow up.
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: He thanked her. Then, her business over, she seemed anxious
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: to get away again.' Oleron did not seek to detain her.'
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: Even he saw through the pretext of the stories,' and
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: he accompanied her down the stairs.' But Elsie Bengot had
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: no luck whatever in that house.' A second accident befell her.'
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: Halfway down the staircase there was the sharp sound of
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: splintering wood,' and she checked a loud cry.' Oleron knew
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: the woodwork to be old,' but he himself had ascended
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: and descended frequently enough without mishap.' Elsie had put her
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: foot through one of the stairs. He sprang to her
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: side in alarm.' Oh, I say, my poor girl!' she
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: laughed hysterically.' It' s my weight. I know I'm getting fat.''
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: Keep still. Let me clear these splinters away,' he muttered
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: between his teeth. She continued to laugh and sob that
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: it was her weight. She was getting fat. He thrust
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: downwards at the broken boards. The extrication was no easy matter,
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: and her torn wound showed him how badly the foot
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: and ankle within it must be abraded. Good God! Good God!
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: he muttered over and over again. I shall be too
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: heavy for anything soon, she sobbed and laughed. But she
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: refused to re-ascend and to examine her hurt. No, let
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: me go quickly, let me go quickly, she repeated. But
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: it's a frightful gash. No, not so bad.' Let me
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: get away quickly. I'm—I'm not wanted!' At her words that
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: she was not wanted, his head dropped as if she
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: had given him a buffet.' Elsey!' he choked brokenly and shocked.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: But she too made a quick gesture, as if she
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: put something violently aside.' Oh, Paul, not that! Not you!''
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: Course I do mean that, too, in a sense.' Oh,
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean.' But if the other can't be,
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: spare me this now.' I wouldn't have come, but, oh,
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: I did.' I did try to keep away.' It was intolerable, heartbreaking.'
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: But what could he do?' What could he say?' He
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: did not love her.' Let me go.' I'm not wanted.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: Let me take away what's left of me. Dear Elsie,
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: you are very dear to me. But again she made
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: the gesture, as of putting something violently aside. No, not that.
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: Not anything less. Don't offer me anything less. Leave me
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: a little pride. Let me get my hat and coat.
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: Let me take you to a doctor, he muttered. But
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: she refused. She refused even the support of his arm.
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: She gave another unsteady laugh.' I' m sorry I broke your stairs, Paul.
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: You will go and see about the short stories, won't you?'
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: He groaned.' Then if you won't see a doctor, will
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: you go across the square and let Mrs. Barrett look
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: at you? Look, there's Barrett passing now.' The long-nosed Barrett
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: was looking curiously down the alley, but as Olleron was
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: about to call him, he made off without a word.
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: Elsie seemed anxious for nothing so much as to be
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: clear of the place, and finally promised to go straight
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: to a doctor, but insisted on going alone.' Good- bye,' she said,
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: and Oleron watched her until she was past the hatchet-like
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: tillet boards, as if he feared that even they might
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: fall upon her and maim her. That night Oleron did
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: not dine. He had far too much on his mind.
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: He walked from room to room of his flat, as
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: if he could have walked away from Elsie Bengal's haunting
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: cry that still rang in his ears.' I' m not wanted.
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: Don't offer me anything less. Let me take away what's
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: left of me.'' Oh, if he could only have persuaded
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: himself that he loved her!' He walked until twilight fell. Then,
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: without lighting candles, he stirred up the fire and flung
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: himself into a chair. Poor, poor Elsie! But even while
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: his heart ached for her, it was out of the question.
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: If only he had known! If only he had used
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: common observation! But those walks, those sisterly takings of the arm!
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: What a fool he had been! Well, it was too
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: late now. It was she, not he, who must now act.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: Act by keeping away. He would help her all he could.
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: He himself would not sit in her presence. If she came,
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: he would hurry her out again as fast as he could. Poor,
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: poor Elsie. His room grew dark, the fire burned dead,
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: and he continued to sit, wincing from time to time
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: as a fresh, tortured phrase rang again in his ears.
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: Then suddenly, he knew not why, he found himself anxious
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: for her in a new sense, uneasy about her personal safety.
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: A horrible fancy that even then she might be looking
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: over an embankment down into dark water, that she might
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: even now be glancing up at the hook on the door,
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: took him. Women had been known to do these things.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: then there would be an inquest and he himself would
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: be called upon to identify her and would be asked
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: how she had come by an ill-healed wound on the
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: hand and a bad abrasion of the ankle barrett would
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: say that he had seen her leaving his house then
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: he recognised that his thoughts were morbid by an effort
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: of will he put them aside, and sat for a
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: while listening to the faint creakings and tickings and wrappings
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: within his panelling. If only he could have married her!
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: But he couldn't. Her face had risen before him again
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: as he had seen it on the stairs, drawn with
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: pain and ugly and swollen with tears. Ugly, yes, positively blubbered.
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: If tears weren't women's weapons, as they were said to be,
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: such tears were weapons turned against themselves. Suicide again. Then
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: all at once he found himself attentively considering her two accidents.
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: Extraordinary they had been, both of them. He could not
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: have left that old nail standing in the wood. Why,
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: he had fetched tools specially from the kitchen— and he
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: was convinced that that step that had been broken beneath
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: her weight could have been as sound as the others.
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: It was inexplicable. If these things could happen, anything could happen.
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: There was not a beam nor a jam in the
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: place that might not fall without warning, not a plank
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: that might not crash inwards, not a nail that might
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: not become a dagger. The whole place was full of
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: life even now, As he sat there in the dark
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: he heard its crowds of noises as if the house
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: had been one great microphone. Only half conscious that he
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: did so he had been sitting for some time identifying
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: these noises attributing each crack or creak or knock its
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: material cause. But there was one noise which again not
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: fully conscious of the omission he had not sought to
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: account for. It had last come some minutes ago It
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: came again now, a sort of soft, sweeping rustle that
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: seemed to hold an almost inaudibly minute crackling. For half
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: a minute or so it had Oleron's attention. Then his
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: heavy thoughts were of Elsie Bengo again. He was nearer
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: to loving her in that moment than he had ever been.
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: He thought how to some men their loved ones were
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: but the dearer for those poor mortal blemishes that tell
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: us we are but sojourners on earth. with a common
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: fate not far distant, that makes it hardly worthwhile to
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: do anything but love for the time remaining. Strangling sobs,
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: blearing tears, bodies buffeted by sickness, hearts and minds callous
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: and hard with the rubs of the world. How little
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: love there would be were these things a barrier to love.
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: In that sense he did love Elsie Bengal. What her
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: happiness had never moved in him, her sorrow almost awoke.
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: Suddenly his meditation went. His ear had once more become
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: conscious of that soft and repeated noise, the long sweep
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: with the almost inaudible crackle in it. Again and again
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: it came, with a curious insistence and urgency. It quickened
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: a little as he became increasingly attentive. It seemed to
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: Oleron that it grew louder. All at once he started
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: bolt upright in his chair, tense and listening. The silky
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: rustle came again. He was trying to attach it to something.
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: The next moment he had leapt to his feet, unnerved
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: and terrified. His chair hung poised for a moment, and
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: then went over, setting the fire lines clattering as it fell.
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: There was only one noise in the world like that
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: which had caused him to spring thus to his feet.
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: The next time it came, Oleron felt behind himself at
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: the empty chair with his hand, and backed slowly until
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: he found himself against the wall.' God in heaven!' the
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: ejaculation broke from Oleron's lips. The sound had ceased. The
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: next moment he had given a high cry.' What is it?
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: What's there? Who's there?' A sound of scuttling caused his
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: knees to bend under him for a moment, but that,
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: he knew, was a mouse. That was not something that
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: his stomach turned sick and his mind reeled to entertain.
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: The other sound, the like of which was not in
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: the world, had now entirely ceased, and again he called.
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: He called and continued to call, and then another terror,
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: a terror of the sound of his own voice, seized him.
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: He did not dare to call again. His shaking hands
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: went to his pocket for a match, but found none.
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: He thought there might be matches on the mantelpiece, He
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: worked his way to the mantelpiece round a little recess,
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: without for a moment leaving the wall. Then his hand
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: encountered the mantelpiece and groped along it. A box of
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: matches fell to the hearth. He could just see them
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: in the firelight, but his hand could not pick them
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: up until he had cornered them inside the fender. Then
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: he rose and struck a light. The room was as usual.
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: He struck a second match. A candle stood on the table.
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: He lighted it, and the flame sank for a moment,
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: and then burned up clear. Again he looked round. There
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: was nothing. There was nothing, but there had been something,
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: and might still be something. Formally, Oluon had smiled at
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: the fantastic thought that, by emerging an interplay of identities
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: between himself and his beautiful room, he might be preparing
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: a ghost for the future. It had not occurred to
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: him that there might have been a similar merging and
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: coalescence in the past. Yet, with this staggering impossibility, he
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: was now face to face. Something did persist in the house.
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: It had a tenant other than himself. And that tenant,
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: whatsoever or whosoever, had appalled Ola and Sol by producing
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: the sound of a woman brushing her hair. End of
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: chapter 6 Chapter 7 of The Beckoning Fair One This
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Beckoning Fair
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: One by Oliver Onions Chapter 7 Without knowing how he
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: came to be there, Oleron found himself striding over the
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: loose board he had temporarily placed on the step broken
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: by Miss Van Gogh. He was heartless and descending the stairs.
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: Not until later did there return to him a hazy
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: memory that he had left the candle burning on the table,
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: had opened the door no wider than was necessary to
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: allow the passage of his body, and had sidled out,
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: closing the door softly behind him. At the foot of
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: the stairs another shock awaited him. Something dashed with a
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: flurry up from the disused cellars and disappeared out of
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: the door. It was only a cat, but Olorun gave
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: a childish sob. He passed out of the gate and
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: stood for a moment under the chalet boards, plucking foolishly
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: at his lip and looking up at the glimmer of
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: light behind one of his red blinds. Then, Still looking
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: over his shoulder, he moved stumblingly up the square. There
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: was a small public house round the corner. Oleron had
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: never entered it, but he entered it now, and put
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: down a shilling that missed the counter by inches.' Fran— Frandy,'
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: he said, and then stooped to look for the shilling.
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: He had the little sawdusted bar to himself. What company
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: there was, carters and labourers and the small tradesmen of
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: the neighbourhood, was gathered in the farther compartment, beyond the
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: space where the white-haired landlady moved among her taps and bottles.
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: Ollawan sat down on a hardwood settee with a perforated seat,
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: drank half his brandy, and then, thinking he might as
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: well drink it as spill it, finished it. Then he
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: fell to wondering which of the men whose voices he
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: heard across the public house would undertake the removal of
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: his effects on the morrow. In the meantime, he ordered
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: more brandy, for he did not intend to go back
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: to that room where he had left the candle burning. Oh, no!
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: He couldn't have faced even the entry and the staircase
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: with the broken steps. Certainly not that pith-white, fascinating room.
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: He would go back for the present to his old
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: arrangement of workroom and separate sleeping quarters. He would go
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: to his old landlady at once, presently, when he had
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: finished his brandy, and see if she could put him
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: up for the night. His glass was empty now. He rose,
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: had it refilled, and sat down again. And if anybody
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: asked his reason for removing again? Oh, he had reason enough,
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: reason enough.' nails that put themselves back into wood again
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: and gashed people's hands, 'steps that broke when you trod
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: on them,' and women who came into a man's place
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: and brushed their hair in the dark were reasons enough.'
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: He was querulous and injured about it all.' He had
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: taken the place for himself, not for invisible women to
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: brush their hair in.' That lawyer fellow in Lincoln's Inn
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: should be told so, too, before many hours were out.'
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: It was outrageous, letting people in for agreements like that.'
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: A cut glass partition divided the compartment where Oleron sat
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: from the space where the white-haired landlady moved. but it
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: stopped seven or eight inches above the level of the counter.
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: There was no partition at the farther bar. Presently Oleron,
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: raising his eyes, saw that faces were watching him through
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: the aperture. The faces disappeared when he looked at them.
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: He moved to a corner where he could not be
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: seen from the other bar, but this brought him into
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: line with the white-haired landlady. She knew him by sight,
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: had doubtless seen him passing and repassing, and presently she
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: made a remark on the weather. Oleron did not know
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: what he replied, but it sufficed to call forth the
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: further remark that the winter had been a bad one
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: for influenza, but that the spring weather seemed to be
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: coming at last. Even this slight contact with the commonplace
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: studied Oleron a little. An idle, nascent wonder whether the
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: landlady brushed her hair every night, and if so, whether
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: it gave out those little electric cracklings, was shut down
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: with a snap, and Oleron was better. With his next
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: glass of brandy he was all for going back to
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: his flat. Not go back? Indeed he would go back.
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: They should very soon see whether he was to be
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: turned out of his place like that. He began to
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: wonder why he was doing the rather unusual thing he
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: was doing at that moment— unusual for him— sitting hatless, drinking brandy,
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: in a public house. Suppose he were to tell the
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: wide-haired landlady all about it. to tell her that a
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: caller had scratched her hand on a nail, and later
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: had the bad luck to put her foot through a
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: rotten stair, and that he himself, in an old house
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: full of squeaks and creaks and whispers, had heard a
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: minute noise and had bolted from it in fright. What
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: would she think of him? That he was man, of course.
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: The real truth of the matter was that he hadn't
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: been doing enough work to occupy him. He had been
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: dreaming his days away.' filling his head with a lot
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: of moonshine about a new Romilly,' as if the old
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: one was not good enough.' And now he was surprised
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: that the devil should enter an empty head.' Yes, he
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: would go back.' He would take a walk in the
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: air first.' He hadn't walked enough lately.' And then he
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: would take himself in hand, 'settle the hash of that
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: sixteenth chapter of Romilly.' Fancy, he had actually been fool
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: enough to think of destroying fifteen chapters.' and thenceforward he
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: would remember that he had obligations to his fellow-men and
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: work to do in the world. There was the matter
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: in a nutshell. He finished his brandy and went out.
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: He had walked for some time before any other bearing
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: of the matter than that on himself occurred to him.
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: At first the fresh air had increased the heady effect
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: of the brandy he had drunk, but afterwards his mind
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: grew clearer than it had been since morning, And the
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: clearer it grew, the less final did his boastful self-assurances become,
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: and the firmer his conviction that, when all explanations had
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: been made, there remained something that could not be explained.
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: His hysteria of an hour before had passed. He grew
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: steadily calmer. But the disquieting conviction remained. A deep fear
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: took possession of him. It was a fear for Elsie.
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: for something in his place was inimical to her safety.
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: Of themselves, her two accidents might not have persuaded him
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: of this, but she herself had said it. I'm not
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: wanted here. And she had declared that there was something
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: wrong with the place. She had seen it before he had.
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: Well and good, One thing stood out clearly, namely that
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: if this was so, she must be kept away for
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: quite another reason than that which had so confounded and
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: humiliated Oleron. Luckily, she had expressed her intention of staying away.
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: She must be held to that intention. He must see
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: to it. And he must see to it all the
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: more that he now saw his first impulse, never to
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: set foot in the place again, was absurd. People did
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: not do that kind of thing. With Elsie made secure,
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: he could not with any respect to himself suffer himself
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: to be turned out by a shadow, not even by
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: a danger merely because it was a danger. He had
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: to live somewhere, and he would live there. He must return.
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 1: He mastered the faint chill of fear that came with
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: the decision, and turned in his walk abruptly. Should fear
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: grow on him again, he would, perhaps, take one more
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: glass of brandy. but by the time he reached the
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: short street that led to the square he was too
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: late for more brandy. The little public house was still lighted,
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: but closed, and one or two men were standing talking
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: on the curb. Olleron noticed that a sudden silence fell
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: on them as he passed, and he noticed further that
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: the long-nosed barret, whom he passed a little lower down,
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: did not return his good night. He turned in at
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: the broken gate, hesitated merely an instant in the alley,
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: and then mounted his stairs again. Only an inch of
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: candle remained in the Sheffield stick, and Oleron did not
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: light another one. Deliberately he forced himself to take it
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: up and to make the tour of his five rooms
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: before retiring. It was as he returned from the kitchen
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: across his little hall that he noticed that a letter
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: lay on the floor, He carried it into his sitting-room,
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: and glanced at the envelope before opening it. It was unstamped,
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: and had been put into the door by hand. Its
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: handwriting was clumsy, and it ran from beginning to end
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: without comma or period. Olleron read the first line, turned
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: to the signature, and then finished the letter. It was
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: from the man Barrett, and it informed Olleron that he, Barrett,
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: would be obliged if Mr. Olleron would make other arrangements
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: for the preparing of his breakfasts and the cleaning out
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: of his place. The sting lay in the tail, that
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: is to say, the postscript. This consisted of a text
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: of scripture. It embodied an allusion that could only be
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 1: to Elsie Bengal. A seldom-seen frown had cut deeply into
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: Olleron's brow. So that was it! Very well, they would
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: see about that on the morrow. For the rest, this
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: seemed merely another reason why Elsie should keep away. Then
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: his suppressed rage broke out. The foul-minded lot! The devil
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: himself could not have given a leer at anything that
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: had ever passed between Paul Oleron and Elsie Van Gogh,
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: yet this nosing rascal must be prying and talking. Oleron
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: crumpled the paper up, held it in the candle-flame, and
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: then ground the ashes under his heel. One useful purpose, however,
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: the letter had served. It had created in Oleron a
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: wrathful blaze that effectually banished the pale shadows. Nevertheless, one
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: other puzzling circumstance was to close the day. As he undressed,
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: he chanced to glance at his bed. The coverlets bore
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: an impress, as if somebody had lain on them.' Oleron
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: could not remember that he himself had lain down during
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: the day.' Offhand he would have said that certainly he
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: had not.' But after all he could not be positive.'
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: His indignation for Elsie, acting possibly with the residue of
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: the brandy in him,' excluded all other considerations, and he
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: put out his candle, lay down,' and passed immediately into
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: a deep and dreamless sleep,' which in the absence of Mrs.
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: Barrett's morning call lasted almost once round the clock.' End
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 1: of chapter 7 Chapter 8 of The Beckoning Fair One
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Beckoning
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: Fair One by Oliver Onions Chapter 8 To the man
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: who pays heed to that voice within him, which warns
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: him that twilight and danger are settling over his soul,
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: terror is apt to appear an absolute thing, against which
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: his heart must be safeguarded in a twinkle, unless there
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: is to take place an alteration in the whole range
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: and scale of his nature. Mercifully, he has never far
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: to look for safeguards, of the immediate and small and
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: common and momentary things of life. of usages and observances
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: and modes and conventions he builds up fortifications against the
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: powers of darkness he is even content that not terror
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: only but joy also should for working purposes be placed
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: in the category of the absolute things and the last
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: treason he will commit will be that breaking down of
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: terms and limits that strikes not at one man but
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: at the welfare of the souls of all In his
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: own person, Oloron began to commit this treason. He began
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: to commit it by admitting the inexplicable and horrible to
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 1: an increasing familiarity. He did it insensibly, unconsciously, by a
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: neglect of the things that he now regarded it as
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: an impertinence in Elsie Van Gogh to have prescribed. Two
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 1: months before, the words, a haunted house, applied to his lovely,
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 1: bemusing dwelling, would have chilled his marrow, now his scale
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 1: of sensation becoming depressed he could ask haunted by what
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: and remain unconscious that horror when it can be proved
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 1: to be relative by so much loses its proper quality
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: He was setting aside the landmarks. Mists and confusion had
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: begun to enwrap him. And he was conscious of nothing
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: so much as of a voracious inquisitiveness. He wanted to know.
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: he was resolved to know nothing but the knowledge would
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 1: satisfy him and craftily he cast about for means whereby
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: he might attain it he might have spared his craft
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: the matter was the easiest imaginable as in time past
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: he had known in his writing moments when his thoughts
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: had seemed to rise of themselves and to embody themselves
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: in words not to be altered afterwards so now the
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: questions he put himself seemed to be answered even in
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: the moment of their asking There was exhilaration in the swift,
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 1: easy processes. He had known no such joy in his
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: own power since the days when his writing had been
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 1: a daily freshness and a delight to him. It was
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 1: almost as if the course he must pursue was being
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 1: dictated to him. And the first thing he must do,
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: of course, was to define the problem. He defined it
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: in terms of mathematics. Granted that he had not the
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: place to himself, granted that the old house had inexpressibly
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 1: caught and engaged his spirit,' Granted that, by virtue of
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: the common denominator of the place,' this unknown co-tenant stood
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: in some relation to himself.' What next?' Clearly the nature
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: of the other numerator must be ascertained.' And how?' Ordinarily
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 1: this would not have seemed simple,' but to Oleron it
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: was now pellucidly clear.' The key, of course, lay in
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: his half-written novel,' or rather in both Romelies, the old
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: and the proposed new one. A little while before, Oleron
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 1: would have thought himself mad to have embraced such an opinion.
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: Now he accepted the dizzying hypothesis without a quiver. He
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 1: began to examine the first and second Romelies. From the
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: moment of his doing so, the thing advanced by leaps
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 1: and bounds. Swiftly he reviewed the history of the Romelie
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: of the fifteen chapters. He remembered clearly now that he
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: had found her insufficient on the very first morning on
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: which he had sat down to work in his new place.
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 1: Other instances of his aversion leapt to confirm his obscure investigation.
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 1: There had come the night when he had hardly forewarned
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 1: to throw the whole thing into the fire, and the
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 1: next morning he had begun the planning of the new Romilly.
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: it had been on that morning that mrs barrett overhearing
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: him humming a brief phrase that the dripping of a
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: tap the night before had suggested had informed him that
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: he was singing some air he had never in his
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: life heard before called the beckoning fair one the beckoning
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: fair one with scarcely a pause in thought he continued
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: The first Romilly having been definitely thrown over, the second
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: had instantly fastened herself upon him, clamouring for birth in
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 1: his brain. He even fancied now, looking back, that there
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: had been something like passion, hate almost, in the supplanting,
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 1: and that more than once a stray thought given to
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: his discarded creation had, it was astonishing how credible Oleron
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: found the almost unthinkable idea, had offended the supplanter. yet
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: that a malignancy almost homicidal should be extended to his
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 1: fiction's poor mortal prototype. In spite of his inuring to
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 1: a scale in which the horrible was now a thing
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: to be fingered and turned this way and that, a
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: good God broke from Oleron. This intrusion of the first
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: Romilly's prototype into his thought again was a factor that
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 1: for the moment brought his inquiry into the nature of
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 1: this problem to a termination. The mere thought of Elsie
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 1: was fatal to anything abstract. For another thing, he could
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 1: not yet think of that letter of Barrett's, nor of
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 1: a little thing that had followed it, without a mounting
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: of colour and a quick contraction of the brow. For
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: wisely or not, he had had that argument out at once.
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 1: Striding across the square on the following morning, he had
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 1: bearded Barrett on his own doorstep. Coming back again a
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 1: few minutes later, he had been strongly of the opinion
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: that he had only made matters worse. the man had
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 1: been vagueness itself he had not been to be either
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: challenged or browbeaten into anything more definite than a muttered
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 1: farrago in which the words certain things mrs barrett respectable
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 1: house if the cap fits proceedings that shall be nameless
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 1: had been constantly repeated not that i make any charge
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: he had concluded charge oleron had cried i have my
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 1: ideas of things as i don't doubt you have yours' Ideas? Mine?'
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: Oleron had cried wrathfully, immediately dropping his voice as heads
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 1: had appeared at windows of the square.' Look you here,
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: my man. You've an unwholesome mind, which probably you can't help,
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 1: but a tongue which you can help, and shall, if
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: there is a breath of this repeated.'' I' ll not be
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 1: talked to on my own doorstep like this by anybody,'
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 1: Barret had blustered.' You shall, and I'm doing it. Don't
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: you forget there's a God above all who has said—'
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 1: You're a low scandalmonger. And so forth, continuing badly what
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: was already badly begun. Oleron had returned wrathfully to his
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: own house, and thenceforward, looking out of his windows, had
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: seen Barrett's face at odd times, lifting blinds or peering
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 1: round curtains, as if he sought to put himself in
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 1: possession of heaven knew what evidence, in case it should
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 1: be required of him. The unfortunate occurrence made certain minor
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: differences in Oleron's domestic arrangements. Barrett's tongue, he was gathered,
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 1: had already been busy. He was looked at askance by
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: the dwellers of the square, and he judged it better,
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 1: until he should be able to obtain other help, to
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 1: make his purchases of provisions a little farther afield rather
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 1: than at the small shops of the immediate neighbourhood. For
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 1: the rest, housekeeping was no new thing to him, and
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 1: he would resume his old bachelor habits. besides he was
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 1: deep in certain rather abstruse investigations in which it was
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: better that he should not be disturbed he was looking
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 1: out of his window one mid-day rather tired not very
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: well and glad that it was not very likely he
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: would have to stir out of doors when he saw
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 1: elsie bengough crossing the square towards his house The weather
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 1: had broken, it was a raw and gusty day, and
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: she had to force her way against the wind that
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: set her ample skirts bellying about her opulent figure, and
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: her veil spinning and streaming behind her. Olleron acted swiftly
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 1: and instinctively. Seizing his hat, he sprang to the door
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 1: and descended the stairs at a run. A sort of
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 1: panic had seized him. She must be prevented from setting
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: foot in the place. As he ran along the alley
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 1: he was conscious that his eyes went up to the eaves,
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: as if something drew them. He did not know that
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: a slate might not accidentally fall. He met her at
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 1: the gate, and spoke with curious volubleness.' This is really
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: too bad, Elsie, just as I'm urgently called away. I'm
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: afraid it can't be helped, though, and you'll have to
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: think me an inhospitable beast.' He poured it out just
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 1: as it came into his head. She asked if he
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 1: was going to town.' Yes, yes, to town,' he replied.'
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: I' ve got to call on— on Chambers.' You know Chambers, don't you?' No,
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 1: I remember you don't.' A big man you once saw
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 1: me with.' I ought to have gone yesterday, and—'' This
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 1: he felt to be a brilliant effort.' And he's going
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: out of town this afternoon.' To Brighton.' I had a
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 1: letter from him this morning.'' He took her arm and
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: led her up the square.' She had to remind him
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 1: that his way to town' lay in the other direction.'
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: of course how stupid of me he said with a
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 1: little loud laugh i'm so used to going the other
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 1: way with you of course it's the other way to
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 1: the bus will you come along with me i am
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 1: so awfully sorry it's happened like this they took the
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 1: street to the bus terminus This time Elsie bore no
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: signs of having gone through interior struggles. If she detected
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: anything unusual in his manner she made no comment, and he,
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: seeing her calm, began to talk less recklessly through silences.
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 1: By the time they reached the bus terminus, nobody, seeing
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 1: the pallid-faced man without an overcoat, and the large, ample-skirted
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: girl at his side, would have supposed that one of
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 1: them was ready to sink on his knees for thankfulness
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 1: that he had, as he believed, saved the other from
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 1: a wildly unthinkable danger. They mounted to the top of
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: the bus, all the one protesting that he should not
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 1: miss his overcoat, that he found the day, if anything,
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 1: rather oppressively hot. They sat down on a front seat.
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 1: Now that this meeting was forced upon him, he had
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 1: something else to say that would make demands upon his tact.
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 1: It had been on his mind for some time, and was, indeed,
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: peculiarly difficult to put. He revolved it for some minutes,
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 1: and then, remembering the success of his story of a
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 1: sudden call to town, cut the knot of his difficulty
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: with another lie.' I' m thinking of going away for a
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 1: little while, Elsie,' he said. She merely said,' Oh?' somewhere
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 1: for a change i need a change i think i
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 1: shall go tomorrow or the day after yes tomorrow i
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 1: think yes she replied i don't quite know how long
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 1: i shall be he continued i shall have to let
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: you know when i am back yes let me know
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 1: she replied in an even tone the tone was for
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 1: her suspiciously even he was a little uneasy you don't
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 1: ask me where i'm going he said with a little
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: cumbrous effort to rally her she was looking straight before
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 1: her past the bus-driver I know, she said. He was startled. How,
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 1: you know? You're not going anywhere, she replied. He found
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 1: not a word to say. It was a minute or
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 1: so before she continued, in the same controlled voice she
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 1: had employed from the start. You're not going anywhere. You
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 1: weren't going out this morning. You only came out because
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: I appeared. Don't behave as if we were strangers, Paul.
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 1: A flush of pink had mounted to his cheeks. He
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: noticed that the wind had given her the pink of
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: early rhubarb. Still he found nothing to say.' Of course
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 1: you ought to go away,' she continued.' I don't know
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 1: whether you look at yourself often in the glass, but
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 1: you're rather noticeable. Several people have turned to look at
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: you this morning. So of course you ought to go away.''
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 1: But you won't, and I know why.' He shivered, coughed
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 1: a little, and then broke silence.' Then if you know,
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 1: there's no use in continuing this discussion,' he said curtly.'
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 1: Not for me, perhaps. But there is for you,' she replied.'
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: Shall I tell you what I know?'' No,' he said
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 1: in a voice slightly raised.' No?' she asked, her round
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 1: eyes earnestly on him.' No.' Again he was getting out
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 1: of patience with her. Again he was conscious of the strain.
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 1: Her devotion and fidelity and love plagued him. She was
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 1: only humiliating both herself and him. It would have been
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 1: bad enough had he ever, by word or deed, given
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 1: her cause for thus fastening herself on him. But there,
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 1: that was the worst of that kind of life for
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 1: a woman.' Women such as she, businesswomen,' in and out
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 1: of offices all the time,' always, whether they realized it
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 1: or not, 'made comradeship a cover for something else.' They
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 1: accepted the unconventional status,' came and went freely, as men did,'
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 1: and were honestly taken by men at their own valuation,'
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 1: and then it turned out to be the other thing
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 1: after all,' and they went and fell in love.' No
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: wonder there was gossip in shops and squares and public houses.'
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 1: In a sense the gossipers were in the right of it. Independent,
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 1: yet not efficient, with some of womanhood's graces foregone, and
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 1: yet with all the woman's hunger and need, half sophisticated,
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 1: yet not wise. Olleron was tired of it all, and
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 1: it was time he told her so.' I suppose,' he
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 1: said tremblingly, looking down between his knees, I suppose the
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: real trouble is in the life women who earn their
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 1: own living are obliged to lead.' He could not tell
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 1: in what sense she took the lame generality. She merely replied,'
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 1: I suppose so.'' It can't be helped,' he continued,' but
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 1: you do sacrifice a good deal.' She agreed, a good deal,
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 1: and then she added after a moment,' What, for instance?'
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: You may or may not be gradually attaining a new status,
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 1: but you're in a false position today. It was very likely,
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 1: she said. She hadn't thought of it much in that light. And,
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 1: he continued desperately, you're bound to suffer. Your most innocent
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 1: acts are misunderstood. Motives you never dreamed of are attributed
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 1: to you, and in the end it comes to. He
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 1: hesitated a moment, and then took the plunge. To the
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 1: sidelong look, and the leer. She took his meaning with
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 1: perfect ease. She merely shivered a little as she pronounced
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 1: the name.' Barrett!' His silence told her the rest. Anything
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 1: further that was to be said must come from her.
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 1: It came as the bus stopped at a stage and
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 1: fresh passengers mounted the stairs.' You' d better get down here
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 1: and go back, Paul,' she said.' I understand perfectly. Perfectly.
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 1: It isn't Barrett. You'd be able to deal with Barrett.''
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 1: It' s merely convenient for you to say it's Barrett.' I
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 1: know what it is, but you said I wasn't to
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 1: tell you that.' Very well.' But before you go, let
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 1: me tell you why I came up this morning.'' In
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 1: a dull tone he asked her why.' Again she looked
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 1: straight before her as she replied.' I came to force
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 1: your hand.' Things couldn't go on as they have been going,
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 1: you know,' and now that's all over.' All over, he
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 1: repeated stupidly. All over. I want you now to consider yourself,
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 1: as far as I'm concerned, perfectly free. I make only
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 1: one reservation. He hardly had the spirit to ask her
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 1: what that was. If I merely need you, she said,
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 1: please don't give that a thought. That's nothing. I shan't
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 1: come near for that. But, she dropped her voice. If
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 1: you're in need of me, Paul, I shall know if
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 1: you are. And you will be. Then I shall come
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 1: at no matter what cost. You understand that? He could
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 1: only groan. So that's understood, she concluded. And I think
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 1: that's all. Now go back. I should advise you to
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 1: walk back, for you're shivering. Goodbye. She gave him a
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 1: cold hand, and he descended. He turned on the edge
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 1: of the curb as the bus started again. For the
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 1: first time in all the years he had known her,
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 1: she parted from him with no smile, and no wave
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 1: of her long arm. End of Part 8 Chapter 9
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 1: of The Beckoning Fair One CHAPTER IX He stood on
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 1: the curb, plunged in misery, looking after her as long
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 1: as she remained in sight, but almost instantly with her
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 1: disappearance he felt the heaviness lift a little from his spirit.
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 1: She had given him his liberty, true. There was a
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 1: sense in which he had never parted with it, but
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 1: now was no time for splitting hairs. He was free
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 1: to act, and all was clear ahead. Swiftly the sense
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 1: of lightness grew on him. It became a positive rejoicing
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 1: in his liberty, and before he was halfway home he
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 1: had decided what must be done next. The vicar of
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 1: the parish in which his dwelling was situated lived within
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 1: ten minutes of the square. To his house Oleron turned
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 1: his steps. It was necessary that he should have all
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 1: the information he could get about this old house, with
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 1: the insurance marks and the sloping chalet boards, and the
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 1: vicar was the person most likely to be able to
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 1: furnish it. This last preliminary out of the way, and— Aha!
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 1: Oron chuckled. Things might be expected to happen. But he
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 1: gained less information than he had hoped for. The house,
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 1: the vicar said, was old, but there needed no vicar
• 1:46:20
  Speaker 1: to tell Oron that. It was reputed, Aloran pricked up
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 1: his ears, to be haunted, but there were few old
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 1: houses about which some such rumour did not circulate among
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 1: the ignorant, and a deplorable lack of faith of the
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 1: modern world, the vicar thought, did not tend to dissipate
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 1: these superstitions. For the rest, his manner was the soothing
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 1: manner of one who prefers not to make statements without
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 1: knowing how they will be taken by his hearer. Aloran
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 1: smiled as he perceived this.' You may leave my nerves
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 1: out of the question,' he said.' How long has the
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 1: place been empty?'' A dozen years, I should say,' the
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 1: vicar replied.' And the last tenant, did you know him,
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 1: or her?' Aloran was conscious of a tingling of his
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 1: nerves as he offered the vicar the alternative of sex.' Him,'
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 1: said the vicar,' a man.' If I remember rightly, his
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 1: name was Madley, an artist.' he was a great recluse
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 1: seldom went out of the place and the vicar hesitated
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 1: and then broke into a little gush of candour and
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 1: since you appear to have come for this information and
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 1: since it is better that the truth should be told
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 1: than that garbled versions should get about i don't mind
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 1: saying that this man madly died there under somewhat unusual
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 1: circumstances It was ascertained at the post-mortem that there was
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 1: not a particle of food in his stomach, although he
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 1: was found to be not without money, and his frame
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 1: was simply worn out. Suicide was spoken of, but you'll
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 1: agree with me that deliberate starvation is, to say the least,
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 1: an uncommon form of suicide. An open verdict was returned. Ah,
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 1: said Oleron, does there happen to be any comprehensive history
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 1: of this parish? No, partial ones only. I myself am
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 1: not guiltless of having made a number of notes on
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 1: its purely ecclesiastical history. its registers and so forth which
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 1: i shall be happy to show you if you would
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 1: care to see them but it is a large parish
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 1: i have only one court and my leisure as you
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 1: will readily understand The extent of the parish and the
• 1:48:33
  Speaker 1: scantiness of the vicar's leisure occupied the remainder of the interview,
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 1: and Olleron thanked the vicar, took his leave, and walked
• 1:48:40
  Speaker 1: slowly home. He walked slowly for a reason, twice turning
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 1: away from the house within a stone's throw of the gate,
• 1:48:48
  Speaker 1: and taking another turn of twenty minutes or so. He
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 1: had a very ticklish piece of work now before him.
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 1: It required the greatest mental concentration. It was nothing less
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 1: than to bring his mind, if he might, into such
• 1:49:02
  Speaker 1: a state of unpreoccupation and receptivity that he should see
• 1:49:06
  Speaker 1: the place as he had seen it on that morning when,
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 1: his removal accomplished, he had sat down to begin the
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 1: sixteenth chapter of the first Romilly. For, could he recapture
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 1: that first impression, he now hoped for far more from it.
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 1: Formerly he had carried no end of mental lumber, Before
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 1: the influence of the place had been able to find
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 1: him out at all, it had the inertia of those
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 1: dreary chapters to overcome. No results had shown. The process
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 1: had been one of slow saturation, charging, filling up to
• 1:49:41
  Speaker 1: a brim. But now he was light, unburdened, rid at
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 1: last both of that Romilly and of her prototype. Now
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 1: for the new unknown, coy, jealous, bewitching, beckoning affair. At
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 1: half-past two of the afternoon he put his key into
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 1: the Yale lock, entered, and closed the door behind him.
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 1: His fantastic attempt was instantly and astonishingly successful. He could
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 1: have shouted with triumph as he entered the room. It
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 1: was as if he had escaped into it. Once more,
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 1: as in the days when his writing had had a
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 1: daily freshness and wonder and promise for him, he was
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 1: conscious of that new ease and mastery and exhilaration and release.
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 1: The air of the place seemed to hold more oxygen,
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 1: as if his own specific gravity had changed. His very
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 1: tread seemed less ponderable. The flowers in the bowls, the
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 1: fair proportions of the meadow-sweet coloured panels and mouldings, the
• 1:50:44
  Speaker 1: polished floor, and the lofty and faintly starred ceiling, fairly
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 1: laughed their welcome. Oloron actually laughed back, and he spoke aloud.' Oh,
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 1: you're pretty, pretty,' he flattered it. Then he lay down
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 1: on his couch. He spent that afternoon as a convalescent
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 1: who expected a dear visitor might have spent it, in
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 1: a delicious vacancy. 'smiling now and then as if in
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 1: his sleep,' and ever lifting drowsy and contented eyes to
• 1:51:13
  Speaker 1: his alluring surroundings.' He lay thus until darkness came,' and
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 1: with darkness the nocturnal noises of the old house.' But
• 1:51:24
  Speaker 1: if he waited for any specific happening, he waited in vain.'
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 1: He waited similarly in vain on the morrow, 'maintaining, though
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 1: with less ease,' that sensitised plate-like condition of his mind.'
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 1: Nothing occurred to give it an impression. Whatever it was
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 1: which he so patently wooed, it seemed to be both
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 1: shy and exacting. Then on the third day he thought
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 1: he understood. A look of gentle drollery and cunning came
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 1: into his eyes, and he chuckled.' Oh- ho, oh-ho! Well, if
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 1: the wind sits in that quarter, we must see what
• 1:52:03
  Speaker 1: else there is to be done. What is there now?' No,
• 1:52:07
  Speaker 1: I won't send for Elsie. We don't need a wheel
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 1: to break the butterfly on. We won't go to those lengths,
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 1: my butterfly. He was standing musing, thumbing his lean jaw,
• 1:52:19
  Speaker 1: looking a slant. Suddenly he crossed to his hall, took
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 1: down his hat, and went out. My lady is coquettish,
• 1:52:27
  Speaker 1: is she? Well, we'll see what a little neglect will do.
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 1: He chuckled as he went down the stairs. He sought
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 1: a railway station, got into a train, and spent the
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 1: rest of the day in the country. Oh yes, Oleron thought,
• 1:52:42
  Speaker 1: he was the man to deal with fair ones who
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 1: beckoned and invited, and then took refuge in shyness and
• 1:52:48
  Speaker 1: hanging back. He did not return until after eleven that night. Now,
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 1: my fair beckoner, he murmured, as he walked along the
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 1: alley and felt in his pocket for his keys. Inside
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 1: his flat he was perfectly composed, perfectly deliberate, exceedingly careful
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 1: not to give himself away. As if to intimate that
• 1:53:11
  Speaker 1: he intended to retire immediately, he lighted only a single candle,
• 1:53:15
  Speaker 1: and as he set out with it on his nightly round,
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 1: he affected to yawn. He went first into his kitchen.
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 1: There was a full moon, and a lozenge of moonlight,
• 1:53:25
  Speaker 1: almost peacock-blue by contrast with his candle-frame, lay on the floor.
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 1: The window was uncurtained, and he could see the reflection
• 1:53:34
  Speaker 1: of the candle and, faintly, that of his own face
• 1:53:37
  Speaker 1: as he moved about. The door of the powder-closet stood
• 1:53:41
  Speaker 1: a little ajar, and he closed it before sitting down
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 1: to remove his boots on the chair with the cushion
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 1: made of the folded harp-bag. From the kitchen he passed
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 1: to the bathroom. There another slant of blue moonlight cut
• 1:53:54
  Speaker 1: the windowsill and lay across the pipes on the wall.
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 1: He visited his seldom-used study, and stood for a moment
• 1:54:01
  Speaker 1: gazing at the silvered roofs across the square. Then, walking
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 1: straight through his sitting-room, his stockinged feet making no noise,
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 1: he entered his bedroom and put the candle on the
• 1:54:12
  Speaker 1: chest of drawers. His face, all this time, wore no
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 1: expression save that of tiredness. He had never been wilier
• 1:54:21
  Speaker 1: nor more alert. His small bedroom fireplace was opposite the
• 1:54:25
  Speaker 1: chest of drawers on which the mirror stood, and his
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 1: bed and the window occupied the remaining sides of the room.
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 1: Oleron drew down his blind, took off his coat, and
• 1:54:36
  Speaker 1: then stooped to get his slippers from under the bed.
• 1:54:40
  Speaker 1: He could have given no reason for the conviction, but
• 1:54:43
  Speaker 1: that the manifestation that for two days had been withheld
• 1:54:46
  Speaker 1: was close at hand, he never for an instant doubted. Nor,
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 1: though he could not form the faintest guess of the
• 1:54:53
  Speaker 1: shape it might take, did he experience fear. Startling or
• 1:54:57
  Speaker 1: surprising it might be, he was prepared for that, but
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 1: that was all. His scale of sensation had become depressed.
• 1:55:06
  Speaker 1: His hand moved this way and that under the bed
• 1:55:09
  Speaker 1: in search of his slippers. But for all his caution
• 1:55:13
  Speaker 1: and method and preparedness, his heart all at once gave
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 1: a leap and a pause that was almost horrid. His
• 1:55:20
  Speaker 1: hand had found the slippers, but he was still on
• 1:55:23
  Speaker 1: his knees. save for this circumstance he would have fallen.
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 1: The bed was a low one, the groping for the
• 1:55:31
  Speaker 1: slippers accounted for the turn of his head to one side,
• 1:55:34
  Speaker 1: and he was careful to keep the attitude until he
• 1:55:37
  Speaker 1: had partly recovered his self-possession. When presently he rose, there
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 1: was a drop of blood on his lower lip, where
• 1:55:45
  Speaker 1: he had caught at it with his teeth, and his
• 1:55:48
  Speaker 1: watch had jerked out of the pocket of his waistcoat,
• 1:55:51
  Speaker 1: and was dangling at the end of its short leather guard. Then,
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 1: before the watch had ceased its little oscillation, he was
• 1:55:59
  Speaker 1: himself again. In the middle of his mantelpiece there stood
• 1:56:03
  Speaker 1: a picture, a portrait of his grandmother. He placed himself
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 1: before this picture, so that he could see in the
• 1:56:10
  Speaker 1: glass of it the steady flame of the candle that
• 1:56:13
  Speaker 1: burned behind him on the chest of drawers. He could
• 1:56:17
  Speaker 1: see also in the picture glass the little glancings of
• 1:56:20
  Speaker 1: light from the bevels and facets of the objects about
• 1:56:23
  Speaker 1: the mirror and candle. but he could see more. These
• 1:56:27
  Speaker 1: twinklings and reflections and re-reflections did not change their position,
• 1:56:32
  Speaker 1: but there was one gleam that had motion. It was
• 1:56:35
  Speaker 1: fainter than the rest, and it moved up and down
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 1: through the air. It was the reflection of the candle
• 1:56:42
  Speaker 1: on Oleron's black vulcanite comb, and each of its downward
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 1: movements was accompanied by a silky and crackling rustle. Ollawan,
• 1:56:52
  Speaker 1: watching what went on in the glass of his grandmother's portrait,
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 1: continued to play his part. He felt for his dangling
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 1: watch and began slowly to wind it up. Then, for
• 1:57:04
  Speaker 1: a moment ceasing to watch, he began to empty his
• 1:57:07
  Speaker 1: trousers' pockets and to place methodically in a little row
• 1:57:10
  Speaker 1: on the mantelpiece the pennies and half-pennies he took from them.
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 1: The sweeping, minutely electric noise filled the whole bedroom, and
• 1:57:19
  Speaker 1: had Oleron altered his point of observation, he could have
• 1:57:22
  Speaker 1: brought the dim gleam of the moving comb so into
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 1: position that it would almost have outlined his grandmother's head.
• 1:57:30
  Speaker 1: Any other head of which it might have been following
• 1:57:32
  Speaker 1: the outline was invisible. Oleron finished the emptying of his pockets, then,
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 1: under cover of another stimulating yawn, not so much summoning
• 1:57:43
  Speaker 1: his resolution as overmastered by an exorbitant curiosity, he swung
• 1:57:47
  Speaker 1: suddenly round. That which was being combed was still not
• 1:57:52
  Speaker 1: to be seen, but the comb did not stop. It
• 1:57:55
  Speaker 1: had altered its angle a little, and had moved a
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 1: little to the left. It was passing in fairly regular sweeps,
• 1:58:02
  Speaker 1: from a point rather more than five feet from the ground,
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 1: in a direction roughly vertical, to another point a few
• 1:58:08
  Speaker 1: inches below the level of the chest of drawers. Oloron
• 1:58:13
  Speaker 1: continued to act, to admiration. He walked to his little
• 1:58:17
  Speaker 1: washstand in the corner, poured out water, and began to
• 1:58:20
  Speaker 1: wash his hands. He removed his waistcoat and continued his
• 1:58:24
  Speaker 1: preparations for bed. The combing did not cease, and he
• 1:58:28
  Speaker 1: stood for a moment in thought. Again his eyes twinkled.
• 1:58:33
  Speaker 1: The next was very cunning. Hmm, I think I'll read
• 1:58:37
  Speaker 1: for a quarter of an hour, he said aloud. He
• 1:58:40
  Speaker 1: passed out of the room. He was away a couple
• 1:58:45
  Speaker 1: of minutes. When he returned again, the room was suddenly quiet.
• 1:58:49
  Speaker 1: He glanced at the chest of drawers. The comb lay still,
• 1:58:53
  Speaker 1: between the collar he had removed and a pair of gloves.
• 1:58:57
  Speaker 1: Without hesitation, Ollawan put out his hand and picked it up.
• 1:59:01
  Speaker 1: It was an ordinary eighteen-penny comb, taken from a card
• 1:59:05
  Speaker 1: in a chemist's shop, of a substance of a definite
• 1:59:08
  Speaker 1: specific gravity, and no more capable of rebellion against the
• 1:59:11
  Speaker 1: laws by which it existed than are the worlds that
• 1:59:14
  Speaker 1: keep their orbits through the void. Ollawan put it down again.
• 1:59:19
  Speaker 1: Then he glanced at the bundle of papers he held
• 1:59:22
  Speaker 1: in his hands. What he had gone to fetch had
• 1:59:25
  Speaker 1: been the fifteen chapters of the original Romilly.' Hmm,' he
• 1:59:30
  Speaker 1: muttered as he threw the manuscript into a chair.' As
• 1:59:34
  Speaker 1: I thought. She's just blindly, ragingly, murderously jealous.' On the
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 1: night after that, and on the following night, and for
• 1:59:45
  Speaker 1: many nights and days, so many that he began to
• 1:59:47
  Speaker 1: be uncertain about the count of them, Oleron, courting, cajoling, neglecting, threatening, beseeching,
• 1:59:55
  Speaker 1: even out with unappeased curiosity, and regardless that his life
• 1:59:59
  Speaker 1: was becoming one consuming passion and desire, continued his search
• 2:00:03
  Speaker 1: for the unknown conumerator of his abode. End of chapter
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 1: 9 CHAPTER X As time went on, It came to
• 2:00:35
  Speaker 1: pass that few except the postman mounted Oleron's stairs, and
• 2:00:39
  Speaker 1: since men who do not write letters receive few, even
• 2:00:43
  Speaker 1: the postman's tread became so infrequent that it was not
• 2:00:45
  Speaker 1: heard more than once or twice a week. There came
• 2:00:49
  Speaker 1: a letter from Oleron's publishers, asking when they might expect
• 2:00:53
  Speaker 1: to receive the manuscript of his new book. He delayed
• 2:00:56
  Speaker 1: for some time to answer it, and finally forgot it.
• 2:01:00
  Speaker 1: A second letter came, which he also failed to answer.
• 2:01:05
  Speaker 1: He received no third. The weather grew bright and warm,
• 2:01:10
  Speaker 1: the privet bushes among the chopper-like notice-boards flowered, and in
• 2:01:14
  Speaker 1: the streets where Oleron did his shopping the baskets of
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 1: flower-women lined the curbs. Oleron purchased flowers daily. His room
• 2:01:22
  Speaker 1: clamoured for flowers, fresh and continually renewed, and Oleron did
• 2:01:27
  Speaker 1: not stint its demands. Nevertheless, the necessity for going out
• 2:01:31
  Speaker 1: to buy them began to irk him more and more,
• 2:01:34
  Speaker 1: and it was with a greater and ever greater sense
• 2:01:37
  Speaker 1: of relief that he returned home again. He began to
• 2:01:41
  Speaker 1: be conscious that again his scale of sensation had suffered
• 2:01:44
  Speaker 1: a subtle change, a change that was not restoration to
• 2:01:48
  Speaker 1: its former capacity, but an extension and enlarging that once
• 2:01:52
  Speaker 1: more included terror. It admitted it in an entirely new form.
• 2:01:58
  Speaker 1: Lux Orco, Tenebrae Jovi. The name of this terror was agoraphobia.
• 2:02:04
  Speaker 1: Oleron had begun to dread air and space, and the
• 2:02:08
  Speaker 1: horror that might pounce upon the unguarded back. Presently he
• 2:02:13
  Speaker 1: so contrived it that his food and flowers were delivered
• 2:02:15
  Speaker 1: daily at his door. He rubbed his hands when he
• 2:02:19
  Speaker 1: had hit upon this expedient. That was better. Now he
• 2:02:22
  Speaker 1: could please himself whether he went out or not. Quickly
• 2:02:26
  Speaker 1: he was confirmed in his choice. It became his pleasure
• 2:02:30
  Speaker 1: to remain immured. But he was not happy, or if
• 2:02:35
  Speaker 1: he was, his happiness took an extraordinary turn. He fretted discontentedly,
• 2:02:41
  Speaker 1: could sometimes have wept for mere weakness and misery. And
• 2:02:45
  Speaker 1: yet he was dimly conscious that he would not have
• 2:02:48
  Speaker 1: exchanged his sadness for all the noisy mirth of the
• 2:02:51
  Speaker 1: world outside. And speaking of noise... Noise, much noise, now
• 2:02:57
  Speaker 1: caused him the acutest discomfort. It was hardly more to
• 2:03:01
  Speaker 1: be endured than that new-born fear that kept him, on
• 2:03:05
  Speaker 1: the increasingly rare occasions when he did go out, sidling
• 2:03:09
  Speaker 1: close to walls and feeling friendly railings with his hand.
• 2:03:13
  Speaker 1: He moved from room to room softly and in slippers,
• 2:03:17
  Speaker 1: and sometimes stood for many seconds, closing a door so
• 2:03:20
  Speaker 1: gently that not a sound broke the stillness that was
• 2:03:23
  Speaker 1: in itself a delight. Sunday now became an intolerable day
• 2:03:28
  Speaker 1: to him, for, since the coming of the fine weather,
• 2:03:32
  Speaker 1: there had begun to assemble in the square under his
• 2:03:34
  Speaker 1: windows each Sunday morning certain members of the sect to
• 2:03:38
  Speaker 1: which the long-nosed barret adhered. These came with a great
• 2:03:42
  Speaker 1: drum and large brass-bellied instruments. Men and women uplifted anguished voices,
• 2:03:49
  Speaker 1: struggling with their God, and Barrett himself, with upraised face
• 2:03:53
  Speaker 1: and closed eyes and working brows, prayed that the sound
• 2:03:57
  Speaker 1: of his voice might penetrate the ears of all unbelievers,
• 2:04:01
  Speaker 1: as it certainly did Oleron's. One day, in the middle
• 2:04:07
  Speaker 1: of one of these rhapsodies, Oleron sprang to his blind
• 2:04:10
  Speaker 1: and pulled it down, and heard as he did so
• 2:04:13
  Speaker 1: his own name made the subject of a fresh torrent
• 2:04:16
  Speaker 1: of outpouring. And sometimes, but not as expecting a reply,
• 2:04:23
  Speaker 1: Oleron stood still and called softly. Once or twice he called, Romilly,
• 2:04:30
  Speaker 1: and then waited, but more often his whispering did not
• 2:04:34
  Speaker 1: take the shape of a name there was one spot
• 2:04:38
  Speaker 1: in particular of his abode that he began to haunt
• 2:04:41
  Speaker 1: with increasing persistency this was just within the opening of
• 2:04:45
  Speaker 1: his bedroom door He had discovered one day that by
• 2:04:50
  Speaker 1: opening every door in his place, always excepting the outer one,
• 2:04:53
  Speaker 1: which he only opened unwillingly, and by placing himself on
• 2:04:57
  Speaker 1: this particular spot, he could actually see to a greater
• 2:05:00
  Speaker 1: or less extent into each of his five rooms without
• 2:05:03
  Speaker 1: changing his position. He could see the whole of his sitting-room,
• 2:05:08
  Speaker 1: all of his bedroom except the part hidden by the
• 2:05:10
  Speaker 1: open door, and glimpses of his kitchen, bathroom, and of
• 2:05:14
  Speaker 1: his rarely used study. He was often in this place, breathless,
• 2:05:19
  Speaker 1: and with his finger on his lip. One day, as
• 2:05:22
  Speaker 1: he stood there, he suddenly found himself wondering whether this Madley,
• 2:05:26
  Speaker 1: of whom the vicar had spoken, had ever discovered the
• 2:05:30
  Speaker 1: strategic importance of the bedroom entry. Light, moreover, now caused
• 2:05:35
  Speaker 1: him greater disquietude than did darkness. Direct sunlight, of which,
• 2:05:41
  Speaker 1: as the sun passed daily round the house, each of
• 2:05:44
  Speaker 1: his wounds now had its share, was like a flame
• 2:05:47
  Speaker 1: in his brain, and even diffused light was a dull
• 2:05:50
  Speaker 1: and numbing ache. He began at successive hours of the day,
• 2:05:54
  Speaker 1: one after another, to lower his crimson blinds. He made
• 2:05:59
  Speaker 1: short and daring excursions in order to do this, but
• 2:06:03
  Speaker 1: he was ever careful to leave his retreat open, in
• 2:06:06
  Speaker 1: case he should have sudden need of it. Presently this
• 2:06:10
  Speaker 1: lowering of the blinds had become a daily methodical exercise.
• 2:06:14
  Speaker 1: and his rooms, when he had been his round, had
• 2:06:18
  Speaker 1: the blood-red half-light of a photographer's darkroom. One day, as
• 2:06:25
  Speaker 1: he drew down the blind of his little study, and
• 2:06:27
  Speaker 1: backed in a good order out of the room again,
• 2:06:30
  Speaker 1: he broke into a soft laugh.' That bilks Mr. Barrett,'
• 2:06:34
  Speaker 1: he said, and the baffling of Barrett continued to afford
• 2:06:38
  Speaker 1: him mirth for an hour. But on another day, soon after,
• 2:06:42
  Speaker 1: he had a fright that left him trembling, also for
• 2:06:45
  Speaker 1: an hour. He had seized the cord to darken the
• 2:06:48
  Speaker 1: window over the seat in which he had found the harp-bag,
• 2:06:52
  Speaker 1: and was standing with his back well protected in the embrasure,
• 2:06:56
  Speaker 1: when he thought he saw the tail of a black-and-white
• 2:06:59
  Speaker 1: check skirt disappear round the corner of the house. He
• 2:07:03
  Speaker 1: could not be sure. He had run to the window
• 2:07:07
  Speaker 1: of the other wall, which was blinded. The skirt must
• 2:07:10
  Speaker 1: have already passed, but he was almost sure that it
• 2:07:14
  Speaker 1: was Elsie. He listened in an agony of suspense for
• 2:07:17
  Speaker 1: her tread on the stairs. But no tread came, and
• 2:07:21
  Speaker 1: after three or four minutes he drew a long breath
• 2:07:24
  Speaker 1: of relief.' By Jove, but that would have compromised me horribly,'
• 2:07:28
  Speaker 1: he muttered. and he continued to mutter from time to time,
• 2:07:33
  Speaker 1: horribly compromising. No woman would stand that, not any kind
• 2:07:37
  Speaker 1: of woman. Oh, compromising in the extreme! Yet he was
• 2:07:42
  Speaker 1: not happy. He could not have assigned the cause of
• 2:07:45
  Speaker 1: the fits of quiet weeping which took him sometimes. They
• 2:07:48
  Speaker 1: came and went, like the fitful illumination of the clouds
• 2:07:52
  Speaker 1: that travelled over the square, and perhaps, after all, if
• 2:07:56
  Speaker 1: he was not happy, he was not unhappy. before he
• 2:08:00
  Speaker 1: could be unhappy something must have been withdrawn and nothing
• 2:08:04
  Speaker 1: had yet been withdrawn from him for nothing had been
• 2:08:08
  Speaker 1: granted He was waiting for that granting, in that flower-laden,
• 2:08:14
  Speaker 1: frightfully enticing apartment of his, with the pith-white walls tinged
• 2:08:18
  Speaker 1: and subdued by the crimson blinds to a blood-like gloom.
• 2:08:23
  Speaker 1: He paid no heed to it that his stock of
• 2:08:25
  Speaker 1: money was running perilously low, not that he had ceased
• 2:08:29
  Speaker 1: to work. Ceased to work? He had not ceased to work.
• 2:08:34
  Speaker 1: They knew very little about it who supposed that Oleron
• 2:08:36
  Speaker 1: had ceased to work. He was in truth only now
• 2:08:40
  Speaker 1: beginning to work. He was preparing such a work, such
• 2:08:44
  Speaker 1: a work, such a mistress was a-making in the gestation
• 2:08:47
  Speaker 1: of his art. Let him but get this period of
• 2:08:50
  Speaker 1: probation and poignant waiting over, and men should see. How
• 2:08:55
  Speaker 1: should men know her, this fair one of Oleron's, until
• 2:09:00
  Speaker 1: Oleron himself knew her? Lovely, radiant creations are not thrown
• 2:09:05
  Speaker 1: off like howdy-doos. The men to whom it is committed
• 2:09:09
  Speaker 1: to father them must weep wretched tears, as Oleron did,
• 2:09:14
  Speaker 1: must swell with vain presumptuous hopes, as Oleron did, must pursue,
• 2:09:20
  Speaker 1: as Oleron pursued, the capricious, fair, mocking, slippery, eager spirit that,
• 2:09:27
  Speaker 1: ever eluding, ever sees to it that the chase does
• 2:09:30
  Speaker 1: not slacken. Let Oleron but hunt this mistress a little longer,
• 2:09:35
  Speaker 1: He would have her sparkling and panting in his arms yet.
• 2:09:40
  Speaker 1: Oh no, they were very far from the truth who
• 2:09:43
  Speaker 1: supposed that Oleron had ceased to work. And if all
• 2:09:47
  Speaker 1: else was falling away from Oleron, gladly he was letting
• 2:09:50
  Speaker 1: it go. So do we all when our fair ones beckon.
• 2:09:55
  Speaker 1: Quite at the beginning we wink and promise ourselves that
• 2:09:58
  Speaker 1: we will put her ladyship through her paces, neglect her
• 2:10:01
  Speaker 1: for a day, turn her own jealous wiles against her,
• 2:10:05
  Speaker 1: flout and ignore her when she comes wheeling. Perhaps there
• 2:10:09
  Speaker 1: lurks within us all the time a heartless sprite who
• 2:10:12
  Speaker 1: is never fooled, but in the end all falls away.
• 2:10:17
  Speaker 1: She beckons, beckons, and all goes. And so Oleron kept
• 2:10:23
  Speaker 1: his strategic post within the frame of his bedroom door,
• 2:10:26
  Speaker 1: and watched, and waited, and smiled, with his finger on
• 2:10:30
  Speaker 1: his lips. It was his dutious service, his worship, his troth-plighting,
• 2:10:36
  Speaker 1: all that he had ever known of love. And when
• 2:10:40
  Speaker 1: he found himself, as he now and then did, hating
• 2:10:43
  Speaker 1: the dead man madly, and wishing that he had never lived,
• 2:10:47
  Speaker 1: he felt that that, too, was an acceptable service. But
• 2:10:53
  Speaker 1: as he thus prepared himself, as it were, for a marriage,
• 2:10:57
  Speaker 1: and moped and chafed more and more that the bride
• 2:11:00
  Speaker 1: made no sign, he made a discovery that he ought
• 2:11:03
  Speaker 1: to have made weeks before. It was through a thought
• 2:11:07
  Speaker 1: of the dead madly that he made it. Since that night,
• 2:11:12
  Speaker 1: when he had thought, in his greenness, that a little
• 2:11:14
  Speaker 1: studied neglect would bring the lovely beckoner to her knees,
• 2:11:17
  Speaker 1: and had made use of her own jealousy to banish her,
• 2:11:21
  Speaker 1: He had not set eyes on those fifteen discarded chapters
• 2:11:24
  Speaker 1: of Romilly. He had thrown them back into the window-seat,
• 2:11:28
  Speaker 1: forgotten their very existence. But his own jealousy of Madly
• 2:11:32
  Speaker 1: put him in mind of hers, of her jilted rival
• 2:11:35
  Speaker 1: of flesh and blood. And he remembered them. Fool that
• 2:11:38
  Speaker 1: he had been! Had he, then, expected his desire to
• 2:11:42
  Speaker 1: manifest herself, while there still existed the evidence of his
• 2:11:46
  Speaker 1: divided allegiance? What, and she with a passion so fierce
• 2:11:50
  Speaker 1: and scented that it had not hesitated at the destruction,
• 2:11:53
  Speaker 1: twice attempted, of her rival? All that he had been.
• 2:11:58
  Speaker 1: But if that was all the pledge and sacrifice she required,
• 2:12:01
  Speaker 1: she should have it. Ah, yes, and quickly. He took
• 2:12:05
  Speaker 1: the manuscript from the window-seat and brought it to the fire.
• 2:12:09
  Speaker 1: He kept his fire always burning now. The warmth brought
• 2:12:13
  Speaker 1: out the last vestige of odour of the flowers with
• 2:12:15
  Speaker 1: which his room was banked. He did not know what
• 2:12:18
  Speaker 1: time it was. Long since he had allowed his clock
• 2:12:22
  Speaker 1: to run down, it had seemed a foolish measure of
• 2:12:25
  Speaker 1: time in regard to the stupendous things that were happening
• 2:12:28
  Speaker 1: to Oleron, but he knew it was late. He took
• 2:12:32
  Speaker 1: the Romilly manuscript and knelt before the fire. But he
• 2:12:36
  Speaker 1: had not finished removing the fastening that held the sheets
• 2:12:39
  Speaker 1: together before he suddenly gave a start, turned his head
• 2:12:43
  Speaker 1: over his shoulder, and listened intently. The sound he had
• 2:12:47
  Speaker 1: heard had not been loud. It had been, indeed, no
• 2:12:51
  Speaker 1: more than a tap, twice or thrice repeated, but it
• 2:12:55
  Speaker 1: had filled Oleron with alarm. His face grew dark as
• 2:12:59
  Speaker 1: it came again. He heard a voice outside on his landing.' Paul! Paul!'
• 2:13:06
  Speaker 1: It was Elsie's voice.' Paul, I know you're in. I
• 2:13:10
  Speaker 1: want to see you.' He cursed her under his breath,
• 2:13:14
  Speaker 1: but kept perfectly still. He did not intend to admit her.' Paul,
• 2:13:20
  Speaker 1: you're in trouble. I believe you're in danger. At least
• 2:13:24
  Speaker 1: come to the door.' Oleron smothered a low laugh. It
• 2:13:29
  Speaker 1: somehow amused him that she, in such danger herself, should
• 2:13:33
  Speaker 1: talk to him of his danger. Well, if she was,
• 2:13:37
  Speaker 1: serve her right. She knew, or said she knew, all
• 2:13:41
  Speaker 1: about it.' Paul! Paul!'' Paul! Paul!' He mimicked her under
• 2:13:47
  Speaker 1: his breath. Oh, Paul, it's horrible. Horrible, was it? thought Oleron.
• 2:13:54
  Speaker 1: Then let her get away. I only want to help you, Paul.
• 2:13:59
  Speaker 1: I didn't promise not to come if you needed me.
• 2:14:02
  Speaker 1: He was impervious to the pitiful sob that interrupted the
• 2:14:05
  Speaker 1: low cry. The devil take the woman. Should he shout
• 2:14:10
  Speaker 1: to her to go away and not come back? No,
• 2:14:13
  Speaker 1: let her call and knock and sob. She had a
• 2:14:16
  Speaker 1: gift for sobbing. She mustn't think her sobs would move him.
• 2:14:20
  Speaker 1: They irritated him. So that he set his teeth and
• 2:14:24
  Speaker 1: shook his fist at her. But that was all. Let
• 2:14:27
  Speaker 1: her sob. Paul! Paul! With his teeth hard set, he
• 2:14:33
  Speaker 1: dropped the first page of Romilly into the fire. Then
• 2:14:37
  Speaker 1: he began to drop the rest in, sheet by sheet.
• 2:14:41
  Speaker 1: For many minutes the calling behind his door continued. Then
• 2:14:44
  Speaker 1: suddenly it ceased. He heard the sound of feet slowly
• 2:14:49
  Speaker 1: descending the stairs. He listened for the noise of a fall,
• 2:14:53
  Speaker 1: or the crash of a piece of the handrail of
• 2:14:54
  Speaker 1: the upper landing. But none of these things came. She
• 2:14:58
  Speaker 1: was spared. Apparently her rival suffered her to crawl abject
• 2:15:03
  Speaker 1: and beaten away. Oleron heard the passing of her steps
• 2:15:07
  Speaker 1: under his window. Then she was gone. He dropped the
• 2:15:11
  Speaker 1: last page into the fire, and then, with a low laugh, rose.
• 2:15:16
  Speaker 1: He looked fondly round his room.' Lucky to get away
• 2:15:21
  Speaker 1: like that,' he remarked.' She wouldn't have got away if
• 2:15:25
  Speaker 1: I'd given her as much as a word or a look.'
• 2:15:27
  Speaker 1: What devils these women are!' But no, I oughtn't to
• 2:15:32
  Speaker 1: say that.' One of them showed forbearance.'' Who showed forbearance?'
• 2:15:37
  Speaker 1: And what was foreborn?' Ah, follow on you.' Contempt, no doubt,
• 2:15:43
  Speaker 1: had been at the bottom of it. But that didn't matter.
• 2:15:46
  Speaker 1: The pestering creature had been allowed to go unharmed. Yes,
• 2:15:50
  Speaker 1: she was lucky. Oleron hoped she knew it. And now, now,
• 2:15:56
  Speaker 1: now for his reward. Oleron crossed the room. All his
• 2:16:01
  Speaker 1: doors were open. His eyes shone as he placed himself
• 2:16:04
  Speaker 1: within that of his bedroom. Fool that he had been.
• 2:16:09
  Speaker 1: Not to think of destroying the manuscript sooner. How, in
• 2:16:13
  Speaker 1: a house full of shadows, should he know his own shadow? How,
• 2:16:18
  Speaker 1: in a house full of noises, distinguish the summons he
• 2:16:21
  Speaker 1: felt to be at hand? Ah, trust him, he would know.
• 2:16:27
  Speaker 1: The place was full of a jugglery of dim lights.
• 2:16:30
  Speaker 1: The blind at his elbow that allowed the first light
• 2:16:33
  Speaker 1: of a street lamp to struggle vaguely through, the glimpse
• 2:16:36
  Speaker 1: of greeny-blue moonlight seen through the distant kitchen door, the
• 2:16:40
  Speaker 1: sulky glow of the fire under the black ashes of
• 2:16:42
  Speaker 1: the burnt manuscript, the glimmering of the tulips and the
• 2:16:46
  Speaker 1: moon-daisies and narcissi in the bowls and jugs and jars.
• 2:16:50
  Speaker 1: These did not so trick and bewilder his eyes that
• 2:16:53
  Speaker 1: he would not know his own. It was he, not she,
• 2:16:57
  Speaker 1: who had been delaying the shadowy bridle. He hung his
• 2:17:01
  Speaker 1: head for a moment in mute acknowledgement. Then he bent
• 2:17:04
  Speaker 1: his eyes on the deceiving, puzzling gloom again. He would
• 2:17:08
  Speaker 1: have called her name had he known it. But now
• 2:17:12
  Speaker 1: he would not ask her to share even a name
• 2:17:14
  Speaker 1: with the other. His own face, within the frame of
• 2:17:18
  Speaker 1: the door, glimmered white as the Narcissi in the darkness.
• 2:17:23
  Speaker 1: A shadow, light as fleece, seemed to take shape in
• 2:17:27
  Speaker 1: the kitchen. The time had been when Olloran would have
• 2:17:30
  Speaker 1: said that a cloud had passed over the unseen moon.
• 2:17:33
  Speaker 1: The low illumination on the blind at his elbow grew dimmer,
• 2:17:38
  Speaker 1: The time had been when Oloron would have concluded that
• 2:17:40
  Speaker 1: the lamplighter going his rounds had turned low the flame
• 2:17:44
  Speaker 1: of the lamp. The fire settled, letting down the black
• 2:17:48
  Speaker 1: and charred papers. A flower fell from a bowl and
• 2:17:52
  Speaker 1: lay indistinct upon the floor. All was still, and then
• 2:17:57
  Speaker 1: a stray draft moved to the old house, passing before
• 2:18:02
  Speaker 1: Oleron's face. Suddenly, inclining his head, he withdrew a little
• 2:18:07
  Speaker 1: from the doorjamb, The wandering draught had caused the door
• 2:18:10
  Speaker 1: to move a little on its hinges. Oleron trembled violently,
• 2:18:16
  Speaker 1: stood for a moment longer, and then, putting his hand
• 2:18:18
  Speaker 1: out to the knob, softly drew the door to, sat
• 2:18:22
  Speaker 1: down on the nearest chair, and waited, as a man
• 2:18:25
  Speaker 1: might await the calling of his name, that should summon
• 2:18:29
  Speaker 1: him to some weighty, high, and privy audience. End of
• 2:18:38
  Speaker 1: part 10 CHAPTER X of THE BECKONING FAIR ONE by
• 2:18:50
  Speaker 1: Oliver Onions one knows not whether there can be human
• 2:19:08
  Speaker 1: compassion for anemia of the soul when the pitch of
• 2:19:12
  Speaker 1: life is dropped and the spirit is so put over
• 2:19:14
  Speaker 1: and reversed that that only is horrible which before was
• 2:19:19
  Speaker 1: sweet and worldly and of the day the human relation
• 2:19:22
  Speaker 1: disappears the sane soul turns appalled away lest not merely
• 2:19:28
  Speaker 1: itself but sanity should suffer we are not gods we
• 2:19:33
  Speaker 1: cannot drive out devils we must see selfishly to it
• 2:19:38
  Speaker 1: that devils do not enter into ourselves and this we
• 2:19:41
  Speaker 1: must do even though love so transfuse us that we
• 2:19:46
  Speaker 1: may well deem our nature to be half divine we
• 2:19:49
  Speaker 1: shall but speak of honour and duty in vain the
• 2:19:53
  Speaker 1: letter dropped within the dark door will lie unregarded or
• 2:19:57
  Speaker 1: if regarded for a brief instant between two unspeakable lapses
• 2:20:01
  Speaker 1: left and forgotten again the telegram will be undelivered nor
• 2:20:07
  Speaker 1: will the whistling messenger wiselier guided than he knows to
• 2:20:10
  Speaker 1: whistle be conscious as he walks away of the drawn
• 2:20:14
  Speaker 1: blind that is pushed aside an inch by a finger
• 2:20:17
  Speaker 1: and then fearfully replaced again no let the miserable wrestle
• 2:20:22
  Speaker 1: with his own shadows let him if indeed he be
• 2:20:25
  Speaker 1: so mad clip and strain and enfold and couch the
• 2:20:29
  Speaker 1: succubus but let him do so in a house into
• 2:20:33
  Speaker 1: which not an air of heaven penetrates, not a bright
• 2:20:36
  Speaker 1: finger of the sun pierces the filthy twilight. The lost
• 2:20:41
  Speaker 1: must remain lost. Humanity has other business to attend to.
• 2:20:47
  Speaker 1: for the handwriting of the two letters that Oleron, stealing
• 2:20:51
  Speaker 1: noiselessly one June day into his kitchen to rid his
• 2:20:54
  Speaker 1: sitting-room of an armful of fetid and decaying flowers, had
• 2:20:58
  Speaker 1: seen on the floor within his door, had had no
• 2:21:01
  Speaker 1: more meaning for him than if it had belonged to
• 2:21:03
  Speaker 1: some dim and far-away dream, and at the beating of
• 2:21:07
  Speaker 1: the telegraph-boy upon the door, within a few feet of
• 2:21:11
  Speaker 1: the bed where he lay, he had gnashed his teeth
• 2:21:14
  Speaker 1: and stopped his ears. He had pictured the lad standing there,
• 2:21:19
  Speaker 1: just beyond his partition, among packets of provisions and bundles
• 2:21:22
  Speaker 1: of dead and dying flowers, for his outer landing was
• 2:21:26
  Speaker 1: littered with bees. Oleron had feared to open his door
• 2:21:30
  Speaker 1: to take them in. After a week the errant lad
• 2:21:34
  Speaker 1: had reported that there must be some mistake about the order,
• 2:21:37
  Speaker 1: and left no more. Inside, in the red twilight, The
• 2:21:42
  Speaker 1: old flowers turned brown and fell and decayed where they lay.
• 2:21:47
  Speaker 1: Gradually his power was draining away. The abomination fastened on
• 2:21:53
  Speaker 1: Oleron's power. The steady sapping sometimes left him for many
• 2:21:58
  Speaker 1: hours of frustration, gazing vacantly up at his red-tinged ceiling,
• 2:22:03
  Speaker 1: idly suffering such fancies as came of themselves to have
• 2:22:06
  Speaker 1: their way with him. even the strongest of his memories,
• 2:22:10
  Speaker 1: had no more than a precarious hold upon his attention.
• 2:22:15
  Speaker 1: Sometimes a flitting half-memory of a novel to be written,
• 2:22:19
  Speaker 1: a novel it was important that he should write, tantalized
• 2:22:23
  Speaker 1: him for a space before vanishing again, and sometimes whole novels, perfect, splendid,
• 2:22:29
  Speaker 1: established to endure, rose magically before him, and sometimes the
• 2:22:35
  Speaker 1: memories were absurdly remote and trivial, of garrets he had inhabited,
• 2:22:39
  Speaker 1: and lodgings that had sheltered him, and so forth. Oleron
• 2:22:44
  Speaker 1: had known a good deal about such things in his time,
• 2:22:47
  Speaker 1: but all that was now past. He had at last
• 2:22:51
  Speaker 1: found a place which he did not intend to leave
• 2:22:54
  Speaker 1: until they fetched him out. a place that some might
• 2:22:57
  Speaker 1: have thought a little on the greensick side, that others
• 2:23:01
  Speaker 1: might have considered to be a little too redolent of
• 2:23:03
  Speaker 1: long dead and morbid things for a living man to
• 2:23:06
  Speaker 1: be mewed up in, but ah, so irresistible, with such
• 2:23:12
  Speaker 1: an authority of its own, with such an associate of
• 2:23:15
  Speaker 1: its own, and a place of such delights when once
• 2:23:19
  Speaker 1: a man had ceased to struggle against its inexorable will,
• 2:23:23
  Speaker 1: a novel, Somebody ought to write a novel about a
• 2:23:27
  Speaker 1: place like that. There must be lots to write about
• 2:23:31
  Speaker 1: in a place like that, if one could but get
• 2:23:33
  Speaker 1: to the bottom of it. It had probably already been painted,
• 2:23:38
  Speaker 1: by a man called Madly who had lived there. But
• 2:23:41
  Speaker 1: Oleron had not known this Madly, had a strong feeling
• 2:23:45
  Speaker 1: that he wouldn't have liked him, would rather he had
• 2:23:48
  Speaker 1: lived somewhere else. Really couldn't stand the fellow, hated him, Madly,
• 2:23:54
  Speaker 1: in fact. Aha, that was a joke. He seriously doubted
• 2:24:00
  Speaker 1: whether the man had led the life he ought. Oleron
• 2:24:04
  Speaker 1: was in two minds sometimes whether he wouldn't tell that
• 2:24:07
  Speaker 1: long-nosed guardian of the public morals across the way about him.
• 2:24:11
  Speaker 1: But probably he knew, and had made his praying hullabaloo's
• 2:24:15
  Speaker 1: for him also. That was his line. Why, Oleron himself
• 2:24:20
  Speaker 1: had had a dust-up with him about something or other.
• 2:24:23
  Speaker 1: Some girl or other. Elsie Bengal, her name was, he remembered.
• 2:24:30
  Speaker 1: Oleron had moments of deep uneasiness about this Elsie Bengal.
• 2:24:34
  Speaker 1: Or rather, he was not so much easy about her
• 2:24:37
  Speaker 1: as restless about the things she did. Chief of these
• 2:24:41
  Speaker 1: was the way in which she persisted in thrusting herself
• 2:24:43
  Speaker 1: into his thoughts, and, whenever he was quick enough, he
• 2:24:48
  Speaker 1: sent her packing the moment she made her appearance there.
• 2:24:51
  Speaker 1: The truth was that she was not merely a bore,
• 2:24:54
  Speaker 1: she had always been that. It had now come to
• 2:24:57
  Speaker 1: the pitch when her very presence in his fancy was
• 2:24:59
  Speaker 1: inimitable to the full enjoyment of certain experiences. She had
• 2:25:04
  Speaker 1: no tact, really ought to have known that people are
• 2:25:07
  Speaker 1: not at home to the thoughts of everybody all the time,
• 2:25:10
  Speaker 1: ought in mere politeness to have allowed him certain seasons
• 2:25:15
  Speaker 1: quite to himself. and was monstrously ignorant of things, if
• 2:25:19
  Speaker 1: she did not know, as she appeared not to know,
• 2:25:22
  Speaker 1: that there were certain special hours when a man's veins
• 2:25:26
  Speaker 1: ran with fire and daring and power, in which, well,
• 2:25:30
  Speaker 1: in which he had a reasonable right to treat folk
• 2:25:32
  Speaker 1: as he had treated that prying barret, to shut them
• 2:25:35
  Speaker 1: out completely. But no, up she popped the very thought
• 2:25:40
  Speaker 1: of her, and ruined all. Bright towering fabrics, by the
• 2:25:45
  Speaker 1: side of which even those perfect magical novels of which
• 2:25:48
  Speaker 1: he dreamed were done in grey, vanished utterly at her intrusion.
• 2:25:53
  Speaker 1: It was as if a fog should suddenly quench some
• 2:25:56
  Speaker 1: fair beaming star, as if at the threshold of some
• 2:25:59
  Speaker 1: golden portal prepared for Oleron a pit should suddenly gape,
• 2:26:04
  Speaker 1: as if bat-like shadow should turn the glowing dawn to
• 2:26:07
  Speaker 1: murk and darkness again. Therefore Oleron strived to stifle,' even
• 2:26:13
  Speaker 1: the nascent thought of her.' Nevertheless, there came an occasion'
• 2:26:19
  Speaker 1: on which this woman, Ben-Gurl,' absolutely refused to be suppressed.'
• 2:26:23
  Speaker 1: Alaron could not have told exactly when this happened.' He
• 2:26:27
  Speaker 1: only knew by the glimmer of the street-lamp on his
• 2:26:29
  Speaker 1: blind' that it was some time during the night,' and
• 2:26:32
  Speaker 1: that for some time she had not presented herself.' He
• 2:26:37
  Speaker 1: had no warning, none of her coming.' She just came,
• 2:26:41
  Speaker 1: was there.'' Strive as he would, he could not shake
• 2:26:44
  Speaker 1: off the thought of her,' nor the image of her face.'
• 2:26:47
  Speaker 1: She haunted him.' But for her to come at that
• 2:26:52
  Speaker 1: moment of all moments, 'really it was past belief.' How
• 2:26:56
  Speaker 1: she could endure it, other one could not conceive.' Actually,
• 2:27:00
  Speaker 1: to look on, as it were, at the triumph of
• 2:27:03
  Speaker 1: a rival,' good God, it was monstrous.' Tact, reticence.' He
• 2:27:09
  Speaker 1: had never credited her with an overwhelming amount of ether.'
• 2:27:12
  Speaker 1: but he had never attributed mere, oh, there was no
• 2:27:15
  Speaker 1: word for it, monstrous, monstrous. Did she intend thenceforward, good God,
• 2:27:22
  Speaker 1: to look on? Oleron felt the blood rush up to
• 2:27:26
  Speaker 1: the roots of his hair with anger against her. Damnation
• 2:27:30
  Speaker 1: take her, he choked. But the next moment his heat
• 2:27:34
  Speaker 1: and resentment had changed to a cold sweat of cowering fear. Panic-stricken,
• 2:27:39
  Speaker 1: he strove to comprehend what he had done, for though
• 2:27:43
  Speaker 1: he knew not what, he knew he had done something,
• 2:27:46
  Speaker 1: something fatal, irreparable, lasting. Anger he had felt, but not
• 2:27:54
  Speaker 1: this blaze of ire that suddenly flooded the twilight of
• 2:27:57
  Speaker 1: his consciousness with a white infernal light. That appalling flash
• 2:28:02
  Speaker 1: was not his. Not his. That open rift of bright
• 2:28:06
  Speaker 1: and searing hell. Not his. Not his. His had been
• 2:28:11
  Speaker 1: the hand of a child preparing a puny blow. But
• 2:28:15
  Speaker 1: what was this other horrific hand that was drawn back
• 2:28:19
  Speaker 1: to strike in the same place? Had he set that
• 2:28:23
  Speaker 1: in motion? Had he provided the spark that had touched
• 2:28:26
  Speaker 1: off the whole accumulated power of that formidable and relentless
• 2:28:30
  Speaker 1: place He did not know, he only knew, that a
• 2:28:34
  Speaker 1: poor igniting particle in himself was blown out, that, oh, impossible,
• 2:28:41
  Speaker 1: a clinging kiss, how else to express it, had changed
• 2:28:45
  Speaker 1: on his very lips to a gnashing and a removal,
• 2:28:49
  Speaker 1: and that, for very pity of the awful odds, he
• 2:28:52
  Speaker 1: must cry out to her against whom he had lately
• 2:28:55
  Speaker 1: raged to guard herself, guard herself.' Look out!' he shrieked aloud.
• 2:29:04
  Speaker 1: The revulsion was instant. As if a cold, slow billow
• 2:29:07
  Speaker 1: had broken over him, he came to, to find that
• 2:29:11
  Speaker 1: he was lying in his bed, that the mist and
• 2:29:13
  Speaker 1: horror that had for so long enwrapped him had departed,
• 2:29:17
  Speaker 1: that he was Paul Oleron, and that he was sick, naked, helpless,
• 2:29:24
  Speaker 1: and utterly abandoned and alone. His faculties, though weak, answered
• 2:29:29
  Speaker 1: at last to his calls upon them. and he knew
• 2:29:32
  Speaker 1: that it must have been a hideous nightmare that had
• 2:29:34
  Speaker 1: left him sweating and shaking thus. Yes, he was himself.
• 2:29:41
  Speaker 1: Paul Oleron, a tired novelist, already past the summit of
• 2:29:45
  Speaker 1: his best work, and slipping downhill again empty-handed from it all.
• 2:29:50
  Speaker 1: He had struck short in his life's aim, he had
• 2:29:53
  Speaker 1: tried too much, had overestimated his strength, and was a failure.
• 2:29:58
  Speaker 1: A failure. A failure. It all came to him in
• 2:30:03
  Speaker 1: a single word, enwrapped and complete. It needed no sequential thought.
• 2:30:10
  Speaker 1: He was a failure. He had missed. And he had
• 2:30:15
  Speaker 1: missed not one happiness, but two. He had missed the
• 2:30:19
  Speaker 1: ease of this world, which men love, and he had
• 2:30:23
  Speaker 1: missed also that other shining prize for which men forego ease,
• 2:30:27
  Speaker 1: the snatching and holding and triumphant bearing up aloft of
• 2:30:31
  Speaker 1: which is the only justification of the mad adventurer who
• 2:30:34
  Speaker 1: hazards the enterprise. And there was no second attempt. Fate
• 2:30:40
  Speaker 1: has no morrow. All one's morrow must be to sit
• 2:30:44
  Speaker 1: down to profitless, ill-done, unrequired work again, and so on
• 2:30:49
  Speaker 1: the morrow after that, and the morrow after that, and
• 2:30:54
  Speaker 1: as many morrows as there might be. He lay there,
• 2:30:59
  Speaker 1: weakly yet sanely, considering it. And since the whole attempt
• 2:31:04
  Speaker 1: had failed, it was hardly worthwhile to consider whether a
• 2:31:08
  Speaker 1: little might not be saved from the general wreck. No
• 2:31:12
  Speaker 1: good would ever come of that half-finished novel. He had
• 2:31:15
  Speaker 1: intended that it should appear in the autumn, was under
• 2:31:18
  Speaker 1: contract that it should appear. No matter. It was better
• 2:31:23
  Speaker 1: to pay forfeit to his publishers than to waste what
• 2:31:25
  Speaker 1: days were left. He was spent. Age was not far off,
• 2:31:30
  Speaker 1: and paths of wisdom and sadness were the properest for
• 2:31:33
  Speaker 1: the remainder of the journey. If only he had chosen
• 2:31:38
  Speaker 1: the wife, the child, the faithful friend at the fireside,
• 2:31:44
  Speaker 1: and let them follow an ignis fatuus that list. In
• 2:31:49
  Speaker 1: the meantime, it began to puzzle him exceedingly why he
• 2:31:52
  Speaker 1: should be so weak. that his room should smell so
• 2:31:56
  Speaker 1: overpoweringly of decaying vegetable matter, and that his hand, chancing
• 2:32:01
  Speaker 1: to stray to his face in the darkness, should encounter
• 2:32:05
  Speaker 1: a beard. Most extraordinary, he began to mutter to himself,
• 2:32:10
  Speaker 1: have I been ill? Am I ill now? And if so,
• 2:32:15
  Speaker 1: why have they left me alone? Extraordinary! He thought he
• 2:32:20
  Speaker 1: heard a sound from the kitchen or bathroom. He rose
• 2:32:23
  Speaker 1: a little on his pillow and listened. Ah, he was
• 2:32:26
  Speaker 1: not alone then. It certainly would have been extraordinary if
• 2:32:29
  Speaker 1: they had left him ill and alone. Alone? Oh no,
• 2:32:33
  Speaker 1: he would be looked after. He wouldn't be left ill
• 2:32:36
  Speaker 1: to shift for himself. If everybody else had forgotten him,
• 2:32:41
  Speaker 1: he could trust Elsie Bengal, the dearest chum he had.
• 2:32:45
  Speaker 1: For that, bless her faithful heart. But suddenly... A short, stifled,
• 2:32:52
  Speaker 1: spluttering cry rang sharply out.' Paul!' It came from the kitchen,
• 2:33:00
  Speaker 1: and in the same moment it flashed upon Oleron he
• 2:33:02
  Speaker 1: knew not how, that two, three, five, he knew not
• 2:33:07
  Speaker 1: how many minutes before, another sound, unmarked at the time,
• 2:33:11
  Speaker 1: but suddenly transfixing his attention now, had striven to reach
• 2:33:15
  Speaker 1: his intelligence. This sound had been the slight touch of
• 2:33:19
  Speaker 1: metal on metal, Just such a sound as Ollowan made
• 2:33:22
  Speaker 1: when he put his key into the lock.' Hello, who's that?'
• 2:33:27
  Speaker 1: he called sharply from his bed. He had no answer.
• 2:33:31
  Speaker 1: He called again.' Hello, who's there? Who is it?' This
• 2:33:37
  Speaker 1: time he was sure he heard noises, soft and heavy,
• 2:33:41
  Speaker 1: in the kitchen.' This is a queer thing altogether,' he muttered.'
• 2:33:45
  Speaker 1: By Jove, I'm as weak as a kitten, too. Hello there!'
• 2:33:51
  Speaker 1: Somebody called, didn't they? Elsie, is that you? Then he
• 2:33:56
  Speaker 1: began to knock with his hand on the wall at
• 2:33:58
  Speaker 1: the side of his bed. Elsie! Elsie! You called, didn't you?
• 2:34:04
  Speaker 1: Please come here, whoever it is. There was a sound
• 2:34:08
  Speaker 1: as of a closing door, and then silence. Olloron began
• 2:34:12
  Speaker 1: to get rather alarmed. It may be a nurse, he muttered.
• 2:34:18
  Speaker 1: Elsie'd have to get me a nurse, of course. She'd
• 2:34:21
  Speaker 1: sit with me as long as she could spare the time,
• 2:34:24
  Speaker 1: brave lass, and she'd get a nurse for the rest.
• 2:34:27
  Speaker 1: But it was awfully like her voice.' Else, or whoever
• 2:34:31
  Speaker 1: it is, I can't make this out at all. I
• 2:34:35
  Speaker 1: must go and see what's the matter.' He put one
• 2:34:39
  Speaker 1: leg out of bed. Feeling its feebleness, he reached with
• 2:34:42
  Speaker 1: his hand for the additional support of the wall. but
• 2:34:46
  Speaker 1: before putting out the other leg he stopped and considered,
• 2:34:49
  Speaker 1: picking at his new-found beard. He was suddenly wondering whether
• 2:34:53
  Speaker 1: he dared go into the kitchen. It was such a
• 2:34:56
  Speaker 1: frightfully long way. No man knew what horror might not
• 2:34:59
  Speaker 1: leap and huddle on his shoulders if he went so far.
• 2:35:03
  Speaker 1: When a man has an overmastering impulse to get back
• 2:35:05
  Speaker 1: into bed, he ought to take heed of the warning
• 2:35:08
  Speaker 1: and obey it. Besides, why should he go? What was
• 2:35:12
  Speaker 1: there to go for?' If it was that Bengo creature again,
• 2:35:16
  Speaker 1: let her look after herself. Oloron was not going to
• 2:35:20
  Speaker 1: have such things cramp themselves on his defenceless back for
• 2:35:22
  Speaker 1: the sake of such a swell sport as she. If
• 2:35:25
  Speaker 1: she was in, let her let herself out again, and
• 2:35:28
  Speaker 1: the sooner the better for her. Oloron simply couldn't be bothered.
• 2:35:33
  Speaker 1: He had his work to do. On the morrow he
• 2:35:37
  Speaker 1: must set about the writing of a novel with a
• 2:35:39
  Speaker 1: heroine so winsome, capricious, adorable, jealous, wicked, beautiful, inflaming, and
• 2:35:46
  Speaker 1: altogether evil, that men should stand amazed. She was coming
• 2:35:51
  Speaker 1: over him now. He knew by the alteration of the
• 2:35:55
  Speaker 1: very air of the room when she was near him,
• 2:35:58
  Speaker 1: and that soft thrill of bliss that had begun to
• 2:36:01
  Speaker 1: stir in him never came unless she was beckoning, beckoning.
• 2:36:08
  Speaker 1: He let go the wall and fell back into bed
• 2:36:11
  Speaker 1: again as, oh, unthinkable, the other half of that kiss
• 2:36:15
  Speaker 1: that Inash had interrupted with place, how else convey it,
• 2:36:19
  Speaker 1: on his lips, robbing him of very breath. End of
• 2:36:27
  Speaker 1: Part 11 Chapter 12 of The Beckoning Fair One CHAPTER XII.
• 2:36:54
  Speaker 1: In the bright June sunlight a crowd filled the square,
• 2:36:58
  Speaker 1: and looked up at the windows of the old house
• 2:37:00
  Speaker 1: with the antique insurance marks in its walls of red brick,
• 2:37:03
  Speaker 1: and the agent's notice-boards hanging like wooden choppers over the paling.
• 2:37:08
  Speaker 1: Two constables stood at the broken gate of the narrow
• 2:37:11
  Speaker 1: entrance alley, keeping folk back. The women kept to the
• 2:37:15
  Speaker 1: outskirts of the throng, moving now and then as if
• 2:37:19
  Speaker 1: to see the drawn red blinds of the old house
• 2:37:21
  Speaker 1: from a new angle, and talking in whispers. The children
• 2:37:25
  Speaker 1: were in the houses, behind closed doors. A long notice
• 2:37:29
  Speaker 1: of the man had a little group about him, and
• 2:37:32
  Speaker 1: he was telling some story over and over again, and
• 2:37:35
  Speaker 1: another man, little and fat and wide-eyed, sought to capture
• 2:37:39
  Speaker 1: the long-nosed man's audience with some relation in which a
• 2:37:43
  Speaker 1: key figured. And it was revealed to me that there'd
• 2:37:47
  Speaker 1: been something that very afternoon, the long-nosed man was saying.
• 2:37:52
  Speaker 1: I was standing there where Constable Saunders is, or rather,
• 2:37:55
  Speaker 1: I was passing about my business, when they came out.
• 2:37:59
  Speaker 1: There was no deceiving me, oh, no deceiving me. I
• 2:38:03
  Speaker 1: saw her face.' What was it like, Mr. Barrett?' the
• 2:38:07
  Speaker 1: man asked.' It was like hers whom our Lord said to,' Woman,
• 2:38:11
  Speaker 1: doth any man accuse thee?' Write as paper, and no mistake.'
• 2:38:16
  Speaker 1: Don' t tell me.'' And so I walked straight across to Mrs. Barrett,'
• 2:38:21
  Speaker 1: and Jane, I said,' This must stop, and stop at once.'
• 2:38:25
  Speaker 1: We are commanded to avoid evil,' I said,' and must
• 2:38:29
  Speaker 1: come to an end now.' Let him get help elsewhere.'
• 2:38:32
  Speaker 1: And she says to me,' John,' she says,' it' s four
• 2:38:36
  Speaker 1: and sixpence a week.' Then was her words. Jane, I says,
• 2:38:41
  Speaker 1: if it was forty-six thousand pounds it should stop, and
• 2:38:44
  Speaker 1: from that day to this she hasn't set foot inside
• 2:38:47
  Speaker 1: that gate. There was a short silence then. Did Mrs.
• 2:38:52
  Speaker 1: Barrett ever see anything like? Somebody vaguely inquired. Barrett turned
• 2:38:59
  Speaker 1: austerely on the speaker. What Mrs. Barrett saw, and Mrs.
• 2:39:03
  Speaker 1: Barrett didn't see, shall not pass these lips, even as
• 2:39:06
  Speaker 1: it is written. Keep thy tongue from speaking evil, he said.
• 2:39:11
  Speaker 1: Another man spoke. He was pretty near canned up in
• 2:39:14
  Speaker 1: the wagon and horses that night, weren't he, Jim? Yes,
• 2:39:19
  Speaker 1: he hadn't half copped it. Not standing treat much, neither.
• 2:39:24
  Speaker 1: He was in the bar, all on his own. So
• 2:39:26
  Speaker 1: he was, we talked about it. The fat, scared-eyed man
• 2:39:30
  Speaker 1: made another attempt.' She got the key off me. She
• 2:39:35
  Speaker 1: had the number of it. She come into my shop
• 2:39:38
  Speaker 1: of a Tuesday evening.' Nobody heeded him.' Shut your heads,'
• 2:39:43
  Speaker 1: a heavy labourer commented gruffly.' She hasn't been found yet.
• 2:39:46
  Speaker 1: Here's the inspector. We shall know more in a bit.'
• 2:39:51
  Speaker 1: Two inspectors had come up and were talking to the
• 2:39:53
  Speaker 1: constables who guarded the gate. The little fat man ran
• 2:39:57
  Speaker 1: eagerly forward, saying that she had brought the key of him.'
• 2:40:00
  Speaker 1: I remember the number, because of its being three ones
• 2:40:05
  Speaker 1: and three threes. One, one, one, three, three, three!' he
• 2:40:09
  Speaker 1: exclaimed excitedly. An inspector put him aside.' Nobody' s been in?'
• 2:40:15
  Speaker 1: he asked of one of the constables.' No, sir.'' Then you, Brackley,
• 2:40:20
  Speaker 1: come with us. You, Smith, keep the gate. There's a
• 2:40:23
  Speaker 1: squad on its way.' The two inspectors and the constable
• 2:40:27
  Speaker 1: passed down the alley and entered the house. They mounted
• 2:40:30
  Speaker 1: the wide carved staircase.' This don't look as if he'd
• 2:40:35
  Speaker 1: been out much lately,' one of the inspectors muttered as
• 2:40:38
  Speaker 1: he kicked aside a litter of dead leaves and paper
• 2:40:40
  Speaker 1: that lay outside Oleron's door.' I don't think we need knock.
• 2:40:45
  Speaker 1: Break a pane, Brackley.' The door had two glazed panels.
• 2:40:51
  Speaker 1: There was a sound of shattered glass. and Brackley put
• 2:40:54
  Speaker 1: his hand through the hole his elbow had made, and
• 2:40:56
  Speaker 1: drew back the latch.' Phew!' choked one of the inspectors
• 2:41:00
  Speaker 1: as they entered.' Let some light and air in, quick!
• 2:41:03
  Speaker 1: It stinks like a hearse!' The assembly out in the
• 2:41:07
  Speaker 1: square saw the red blinds go up, and the windows
• 2:41:10
  Speaker 1: of the old house flung open.' That' s better,' said one
• 2:41:14
  Speaker 1: of the inspectors, putting his head out of a window
• 2:41:17
  Speaker 1: and drawing a deep breath.' That seems to be the
• 2:41:20
  Speaker 1: bedroom in there. Will you go in, Sims, while I
• 2:41:22
  Speaker 1: go over the rest?' They had drawn up the bedroom
• 2:41:26
  Speaker 1: blind also, and the waxy white, emaciated man on the
• 2:41:29
  Speaker 1: bed had made a blinker of his hand against a
• 2:41:32
  Speaker 1: torturing flood of brightness. Nor could he believe that his
• 2:41:37
  Speaker 1: hearing was not playing tricks with him, for there were
• 2:41:40
  Speaker 1: two policemen in his room, bending over him and asking
• 2:41:43
  Speaker 1: where she was. He shook his head.' This woman, Bengo,
• 2:41:49
  Speaker 1: goes by the name of Miss Elsie Bengo. Do you hear?
• 2:41:52
  Speaker 1: Where is she?'' No good, Brackley. Get him up. Be
• 2:41:56
  Speaker 1: careful with him. I'll just shove my head out the window,
• 2:41:59
  Speaker 1: I think.' The other inspector had been through Oleron's study
• 2:42:04
  Speaker 1: and had found nothing, and was now in the kitchen,
• 2:42:07
  Speaker 1: kicking aside an ankle-deep mass of vegetable refuse that cumbered
• 2:42:11
  Speaker 1: the floor. The kitchen window had no blind, and was
• 2:42:14
  Speaker 1: overshadowed by the blank end of the house across the alley.
• 2:42:18
  Speaker 1: The kitchen appeared to be empty. But the inspector, kicking
• 2:42:23
  Speaker 1: aside the dead flowers, noticed that a shuffling track that
• 2:42:27
  Speaker 1: was not of his making had been swept to a
• 2:42:29
  Speaker 1: cupboard in the corner. In the upper part of the
• 2:42:32
  Speaker 1: door of the cupboard was a square panel that looked
• 2:42:35
  Speaker 1: as if it slid on runners. The door itself was closed.
• 2:42:42
  Speaker 1: The inspector advanced, put out his hand to the little knob,
• 2:42:45
  Speaker 1: and slid the hatch along its groove. Then he took
• 2:42:50
  Speaker 1: an involuntary step back again. Framed in the aperture, and
• 2:42:55
  Speaker 1: falling forward a little before it jammed again in its frame,
• 2:42:58
  Speaker 1: was something that resembled a large, lumpy pudding, done up
• 2:43:02
  Speaker 1: in a pudding-bag of faded brownie-red frieze.' Ah,' said the inspector,
• 2:43:10
  Speaker 1: To close the hatch again, he would have had to
• 2:43:12
  Speaker 1: thrust that pudding back with his hand, and somehow he
• 2:43:16
  Speaker 1: did not quite like the idea of touching it. Instead,
• 2:43:19
  Speaker 1: he turned the handle of the cupboard itself. There was
• 2:43:23
  Speaker 1: weight behind it, so much weight that, after opening the
• 2:43:27
  Speaker 1: door three or four inches and peering inside, he had
• 2:43:30
  Speaker 1: to put his shoulder to it in order to close
• 2:43:32
  Speaker 1: it again. In closing it, he left sticking out, a
• 2:43:36
  Speaker 1: few inches from the floor, a triangle of black and
• 2:43:39
  Speaker 1: white check skirt. He went into the small hall.' All right,'
• 2:43:45
  Speaker 1: he called. They had gotten Oleron into his clothes. He
• 2:43:50
  Speaker 1: still used his hands as blinkers, and his brain was
• 2:43:53
  Speaker 1: very confused. A number of things were happening that he
• 2:43:57
  Speaker 1: couldn't understand. He couldn't understand the extraordinary mess of dead
• 2:44:01
  Speaker 1: flowers there seemed to be everywhere. He couldn't understand why
• 2:44:05
  Speaker 1: there should be police officers in his room. He couldn't
• 2:44:08
  Speaker 1: understand why one of these should be sent for a
• 2:44:11
  Speaker 1: four-wheeler and a stretcher. And he couldn't understand what heavy
• 2:44:16
  Speaker 1: article they seemed to be moving about in the kitchen.
• 2:44:20
  Speaker 1: His kitchen.' What' s the matter?' he muttered sleepily. Then he
• 2:44:26
  Speaker 1: heard a murmur in the square, and the stopping of
• 2:44:29
  Speaker 1: a four-wheeler outside. A police officer was at his elbow again,
• 2:44:34
  Speaker 1: and Oleron wondered why, when he whispered something to him,
• 2:44:38
  Speaker 1: he should run off a string of words, something about,
• 2:44:42
  Speaker 1: used in evidence against you. They had lifted him to
• 2:44:46
  Speaker 1: his feet, and were assisting him towards the door. No,
• 2:44:51
  Speaker 1: Oleron couldn't understand it at all. They got him down
• 2:44:55
  Speaker 1: the stairs and along the alley. Oleron was aware of confused,
• 2:44:59
  Speaker 1: angry shoutings. He gathered that a number of people wanted
• 2:45:03
  Speaker 1: to lynch somebody or other. Then his attention became fixed
• 2:45:08
  Speaker 1: on a little, fat, frightened-eyed man who appeared to be
• 2:45:11
  Speaker 1: making a statement that an officer was taking down in
• 2:45:14
  Speaker 1: a notebook.' I' d seen her with him,' They was often together.
• 2:45:19
  Speaker 1: She came into my shop and said it was for him.
• 2:45:22
  Speaker 1: I thought it was all right. 111333 the number was,
• 2:45:27
  Speaker 1: the man was saying. The people seemed to be very angry.
• 2:45:31
  Speaker 1: Many police were keeping them back, but one of the
• 2:45:34
  Speaker 1: inspectors had a voice that Oleron thought quite kind and friendly.
• 2:45:39
  Speaker 1: He was telling somebody to get somebody else into the
• 2:45:41
  Speaker 1: cab before something or other was brought out. and Oleron
• 2:45:45
  Speaker 1: noticed that a four-wheeler was drawn up at the gate.
• 2:45:49
  Speaker 1: It appeared that it was himself who was to be
• 2:45:51
  Speaker 1: put into it, and as they lifted him up he
• 2:45:54
  Speaker 1: saw that the inspector tried to stand between him and
• 2:45:57
  Speaker 1: something that stood behind the cab, but he was not
• 2:46:01
  Speaker 1: quick enough to prevent Oleron seeing that this something was
• 2:46:04
  Speaker 1: a hooded stretcher. The angry voices sounded like a sea,
• 2:46:09
  Speaker 1: Something hard like a stone hit the back of the cab,
• 2:46:13
  Speaker 1: and the inspector followed Oleron in and stood with his
• 2:46:15
  Speaker 1: back to the window nearer the side where the people were.
• 2:46:18
  Speaker 1: The door they had put Oleron in at remained open,
• 2:46:22
  Speaker 1: apparently till the other inspector should come, and through the
• 2:46:25
  Speaker 1: opening Oleron had a glimpse of the hatchet-like to let
• 2:46:29
  Speaker 1: boards among the privetries. One of them said that the
• 2:46:33
  Speaker 1: key was at number six. Suddenly the raging of voices
• 2:46:37
  Speaker 1: was hushed, Along the entrance alley shuffling steps were heard,
• 2:46:41
  Speaker 1: and the other inspector appeared at the cab door. Right away,
• 2:46:46
  Speaker 1: he said to the driver. He entered, fastened the door
• 2:46:50
  Speaker 1: after him, and blocked up the second window with his back.
• 2:46:54
  Speaker 1: Between the two inspectors, Oleron slept peacefully. The cab moved
• 2:47:00
  Speaker 1: down the square. The other vehicle went up the hill.
• 2:47:05
  Speaker 1: The mortuary lay that way. This is the end of
• 2:47:10
  Speaker 1: Chapter 12 of The Beckoning Fair One by Oliver Onions.
• 2:47:15
  Speaker 1: And this is the end of The Beckoning Fair One.
• 2:47:20
  Speaker 1: Recorded by Morgan Scorpion.