“Yes, let’s do that.”
Very ordinary affairs assume a delicate outline when approached in a romantic spirit. The idea of eating turnovers on the top of a ’bus does not sound very attractive, and yet to Wynne, as he suggested it, and to Eve as she listened, the promised expedition seemed full of the happiest possibilities. They felt the touch of a spring breeze blowing in their hair, and saw the whitey-green of the new leaves, and the blue sky turn to a lavender in which the stars appeared. Almost they could taste the good baked crust and the sour-sweet apples of the midnight feast.
“D’you know,” said Eve, “I think, of all things in the world, the most glorious are those we mean to do.”
They stopped before an old Queen Anne house, and producing a latchkey Wynne unlocked the door.
“Top floor,” he said, “and rather a climb.”
They mounted the creaky stairs, and he was puffing gustily when they reached the top landing. For a young man he seemed unduly exhausted. Striking a light on his boot, he entered and lit a shaded lamp.
“Take off your hat and I’ll get the fire going. Look! I must have paid the rent, for it is actually laid.”
Eve smiled as he went down on his knees before a tiny basket grate, then let her gaze travel round the room. Inset, in the damp-stained slanting roof, were two gable windows, broad silled and littered with books and papers. Before one of these was a writing table, dilapidated but glorious with age; this, too, was liberally sprinkled with half-written manuscripts, pens, cigarette ends, and the jumble of odds and ends with which a man surrounds himself. A small Jacobean table stood in the middle of the uncarpeted floor, a tarnished copper bowl, battered but still shapely, giving tone to its dark fissured surface. Two age-worn grandfather chairs were drawn up near the fire. In each recess in the walls was a bookcase, piled ceiling-high with books. A couple of Holbein prints, and an unframed Albrecht Dürer completed the decoration. It was a shabby, unkempt room, yet, like its owner, it possessed individuality and charm.
“I like this,” said Eve. “I’m glad I came.”
“You like it. I thought you would—hoped so, too. I’ve never shown it to any one else. It is good though, isn’t it? Try that chair. I carried it back on my head from a ragshop in Holloway Road, and having nearly deprived me of life it gave it back to me in sweet repose. Take off your coat first, won’t you? That’s right. Don’t forget the ’taters though. Thanks! I’ll put ’em on the trivet. Good. Thank God the fire means to burn. D’you know sometimes I’ve almost cried when it wouldn’t. I can’t lay a fire, and I loathe to be defeated.”