VI
The play in which Wynne figured as a hot-potato man was not a success, and there followed a period in which he found no work, and very considerable hardship. Then his fortunes turned a trifle, and to reward himself for all he had endured he took new rooms at the top of a house near Tottenham Court Road, and spent all his money buying furniture and queer odds and ends of brass and Oriental china. It was the first time he had indulged in the luxury of agreeable appointments, and it gave him tremendous pleasure. The furniture he bought was true to its period, though time and the worm had bitten deep beneath the blackened surfaces. He bought in the Caledonian Market or little known streets, and took a fierce pride in bartering for his prizes. These he would bring home upon his head, or, if their size defeated his powers, would push them before him on a greengrocer’s barrow. For pieces of vertu he possessed a sure and infallible eye, and a remarkable sense for disposing them to the best advantage.
On the mantelpiece of the attic sitting-room he achieved successfully what, years before, he had failed to do in his father’s home. A note of colour from a cracked Kin Lung bowl, a fillip of light from a battered copper kettle, a slanting pile of beautifully-bound books, and the thing was done.
There was no struggle after effect, but the effect was there as if by nature—the right things had found their rightful abiding place.
He found writing easier in these surroundings. Hitherto his eye had inevitably fallen upon some hideous object or picture, unthinkingly bought and disastrously disposed in relation to its neighbours—then his thoughts would travel away, lose the thread of their reasoning, or become involved in futile speculation upon other folks’ perverted tastes. But here it was different: here there were no disturbing influences, nothing but a pleasant, restful simplicity.
Mrs. Mommet, the bed-shaker, who, for a very small wage, gave Wynne an equally small measure of time, did not share his high opinions of himself as a decorator.
“I don’t know ’ow you can put up with the place,” she said, shaking her head sadly over the pail of dirty water which was her constant companion. “It gives me the creeps every time I comes into it. That ole table, y’know. Well, it looks as if it was a ’undred years old.”
“It’s a great deal more,” said Wynne.
“There you are, y’see! Why you don’t git a nice cloth and cover it up beats me!”
“Roundheads drank at that table,” said Wynne.
“Fat-’eads, more like—nowhere for your knees or anything. And the walls, too! My ole man does a bit o’ paper-’anging to oblige in ’is spare time. I dessay ’e’d ’ang a piece for you, to oblige.”
“He would oblige me very much by doing nothing of the kind.”
“Thet’s silly—that is. No one can’t like plain walls when they can ’ave ’em floral. Not so much as a picture anywhere! W’y don’t you pin up a few photos?”
“Don’t possess any, and I—”
“Well, if that’s all, I dessay I could give you a few. Liknesses, they’d be—not views. You could ’ave any one of my pore Minnie o’o was took.”
Wynne did not want to offend the woman, but was forced to safeguard his own peace of mind.
“You ought not to give them away in the circumstances,” he said.
Fortunately Mrs. Mommet did not press the offer. She had some views to express in relation to “nice plush curtains,” which Wynne hastily discouraged.
“Oh, well, you must please yourself, I s’pose. Gentlemen never do ’ave any taste, as the sayin’ is. Still, it’s no small wonder you look poorly, and yer face is as white as the under-side of a lemon sole.”
The description was apt. Wynne’s features were certainly of a lifeless hue. The long hours, the poor food, and the never-ending mental activity had sapped a full measure of his youth. No one would have placed his age at twenty-three, yet twenty-three summers were all that he held to his credit. One might have guessed him nearer forty—and a none too hearty forty either. Only his eyes were young—young and greedily active—for ever assessing and assimilating, but this seemed to detract from, rather than add to, his youth.
Yet despite his frailty and general suggestion of weakness, Wynne could, upon occasion, develop startling energy. He used his brain as the driving force which overcame his feebleness, and bade his muscles undertake tasks out of all proportion to their ability. On one occasion he carried an armchair, weighing nearly a hundredweight, for three miles, a task which a strong man might well have failed to accomplish. His power lay in the will to do, and a form of obstinate courage which defied all obstacles.
“I am glad you said soul,” he said, “for I have long believed that to be the only thing that matters.”
Mrs. Mommet shook her head.
“I was talkin’ of fishmonger’s, not parson’s souls,” she replied; “but if you ask me, I should say firce look after the body, and the soul’ll look after itself. Same as the ole sayin’ ’bout the pennies and the poun’s. If you was to feed your body up a bit, ’stead o’ wastin’ money on ole cracked plates, books and whatnot, you’d be doing yerself more good, you would.”
“Depends on the point of view.”
“I know I can’t never do nothin’ if I neglect my bit o’ nourishment.”
“Nor I, but you work with your body and I with my brain. That’s why we stock our larders with different fare. There’s mine yonder.” He tilted his head toward the crowded bookcases.
“Lot o’ nonsense! Ole books!”
“Don’t despise them, please.”
“I don’t; but a book’s a thing for after dinner, not to make yer dinner off of, like you do. Wonder is you ’aven’t more pride in yerself.”
“Pride?” He was quite startled.
“A young feller like wot you are lettin’ ’imself go to pieces like the lilies in the field, or whatever the sayin’ is. ’Ow d’you s’pose you’ll ever take the fancy of a young woman lookin’ like you do? You wouldn’t never do it.”
Wynne smiled. “Is it only the dressed ox which can go to the altar?” he asked.
“I donno nothin’ ’bout dressed oxes, but I do know as any young woman of spirit looks for a man with a bit of blood in ’im. After all, nature’s nature, y’know, with Christian or ’eathen alike, and there’s no gettin’ away from it.”
“You should write a treatise on Eugenics,” said Wynne, and escaped to the solitude of his bedroom.