He refurnished Mrs.Bundy with a freedom that cost her nothing, and lost himself in pictures of a transfigured second floor.
On this particular occasion the King's Road proved almost unprecedentedly expensive, and indeed this occasion differed from most others in containing the germ of real danger.For once in a way he had a bad conscience--he felt himself tempted to pick his own pocket.He never saw a commodious writing-table, with elbow-room and drawers and a fair expanse of leather stamped neatly at the edge with gilt, without being freshly reminded of Mrs.Bundy's dilapidations.
There were several such tables in the King's Road--they seemed indeed particularly numerous today.Peter Baron glanced at them all through the fronts of the shops, but there was one that detained him in supreme contemplation.There was a fine assurance about it which seemed a guarantee of masterpieces; but when at last he went in and, just to help himself on his way, asked the impossible price, the sum mentioned by the voluble vendor mocked at him even more than he had feared.It was far too expensive, as he hinted, and he was on the point of completing his comedy by a pensive retreat when the shopman bespoke his attention for another article of the same general character, which he described as remarkably cheap for what it was.
It was an old piece, from a sale in the country, and it had been in stock some time; but it had got pushed out of sight in one of the upper rooms--they contained such a wilderness of treasures--and happened to have but just come to light.Peter suffered himself to be conducted into an interminable dusky rear, where he presently found himself bending over one of those square substantial desks of old mahogany, raised, with the aid of front legs, on a sort of retreating pedestal which is fitted with small drawers, contracted conveniences known immemorially to the knowing as davenports.This specimen had visibly seen service, but it had an old-time solidity and to Peter Baron it unexpectedly appealed.
He would have said in advance that such an article was exactly what he didn't want, but as the shopman pushed up a chair for him and he sat down with his elbows on the gentle slope of the large, firm lid, he felt that such a basis for literature would be half the battle.
He raised the lid and looked lovingly into the deep interior; he sat ominously silent while his companion dropped the striking words:
"Now that's an article I personally covet!" Then when the man mentioned the ridiculous price (they were literally giving it away), he reflected on the economy of having a literary altar on which one could really kindle a fire.A davenport was a compromise, but what was all life but a compromise? He could beat down the dealer, and at Mrs.Bundy's he had to write on an insincere card-table.After he had sat for a minute with his nose in the friendly desk he had a queer impression that it might tell him a secret or two--one of the secrets of form, one of the sacrificial mysteries--though no doubt its career had been literary only in the sense of its helping some old lady to write invitations to dull dinners.There was a strange, faint odour in the receptacle, as if fragrant, hallowed things had once been put away there.When he took his head out of it he said to the shopman: "I don't mind meeting you halfway." He had been told by knowing people that that was the right thing.He felt rather vulgar, but the davenport arrived that evening at Jersey Villas.
Harmony, therefore, would have reigned supreme had it not been for the singularly bad taste of No.4.Mrs.Ryves's piano was on the free side of the house and was regarded by Mrs.Bundy as open to no objection but that of their own gentleman, who was so reasonable.As much, however, could not be said of the gentleman of No.4, who had not even Mr.Baron's excuse of being "littery"(he kept a bull-terrier and had five hats--the street could count them), and whom, if you had listened to Mrs.Bundy, you would have supposed to be divided from the obnoxious instrument by walls and corridors, obstacles and intervals, of massive structure and fabulous extent.This gentleman had taken up an attitude which had now passed into the phase of correspondence and compromise; but it was the opinion of the immediate neighbourhood that he had not a leg to stand upon, and on whatever subject the sentiment of Jersey Villas might have been vague, it was not so on the rights and the wrongs of landladies.
Mrs.Ryves's little boy was in the garden as Peter Baron issued from the house, and his mother appeared to have come out for a moment, bareheaded, to see that he was doing no harm.She was discussing with him the responsibility that he might incur by passing a piece of string round one of the iron palings and pretending he was in command of a "geegee"; but it happened that at the sight of the other lodger the child was seized with a finer perception of the drivable.He rushed at Baron with a flourish of the bridle, shouting, "Ou geegee!"in a manner productive of some refined embarrassment to his mother.
Baron met his advance by mounting him on a shoulder and feigning to prance an instant, so that by the time this performance was over--it took but a few seconds--the young man felt introduced to Mrs.Ryves.
Her smile struck him as charming, and such an impression shortens many steps.She said, "Oh, thank you--you mustn't let him worry you"; and then as, having put down the child and raised his hat, he was turning away, she added: "It's very good of you not to complain of my piano.""I particularly enjoy it--you play beautifully," said Peter Baron.
