Here, then, Dyson would shut himself up with his fancies, experimenting
with words, and striving, as his friend the recluse of Bayswater strove,
with the almost invincible problem of style, but always with a fine
confidence, extremely different from the chronic depression of the
realist. He had been almost continuously at work on some scheme that
struck him as well-nigh magical in its possibilities since the night of
his adventure with the ingenious tenant of the first floor in Abingdon
Grove; and as he laid down the pen with a glow of triumph, he reflected
that he had not viewed, the streets for five days in succession. With
all the enthusiasm of his accomplished labor still working in his brain,
he put away his papers, and went out, pacing the pavement at first in
that rare mood of exultation which finds in every stone upon the way the
possibilities of a masterpiece. It was growing late, and the autumn
evening was drawing to a close amidst veils of haze and mist, and in the
stilled air the voices, and the roaring traffic, and incessant feet
seemed, to Dyson like the noise upon the stage when all the house is
silent. In the square, the leaves rippled down as quick as summer rain,
and the street beyond was beginning to flare with the lights in the
butcher's shops and the vivid illumination of the green-grocer. It was a
Saturday night, and the swarming populations of the slums were turning
out in force; the battered women in rusty black had begun to paw the
lumps of cagmag, and others gloated over unwholesome cabbages, and there
was a brisk demand for four-ale. Dyson passed through these night-fires
with some relief; he loved to meditate, but his thoughts were not as De
Quincey's after his dose; he cared not two straws whether onions were
dear or cheap, and would not have exulted if meat had fallen to twopence
a pound. Absorbed in the wilderness of the tale he had been writing,
weighing nicely the points of plot and construction, relishing the
recollection of this and that happy phrase, and dreading failure here
and there, he left the rush and the whistle of the gas-flares behind
him, and began to touch upon pavements more deserted. He had turned, without taking note, to the northward, and was passing
through an ancient fallen street, where now notices of floors and
offices to let hung out, but still about it there was the grace and the
stiffness of the Age of Wigs; a broad roadway, a broad pavement, and on
each side a grave line of houses with long and narrow windows flush with
the walls, all of mellowed brick-work. Dyson walked with quick steps, as
he resolved that short work must be made of a certain episode; but he
was in that happy humor of invention, and another chapter rose in the
inner chamber of his brain, and he dwelt on the circumstances he was to
write down with curious pleasure. It was charming to have the quiet
streets to walk in, and in his thought he made a whole district the
cabinet of his studies, and vowed he would come again. Heedless of his
course, he struck off to the east again, and soon found himself involved
in a squalid network of gray two-storied houses, and then in the waste
void and elements of brick-work, the passages and unmade roads behind
great factory walls, encumbered with the refuse of the neighborhood,
forlorn, ill-lighted, and desperate. A brief turn, and there rose before
him the unexpected, a hill suddenly lifted from the level ground, its
steep ascent marked by the lighted lamps, and eager as an explorer Dyson
found his way to the place, wondering where his crooked paths had
brought him. Here all was again decorous, but hideous in the extreme. The builder, some one lost in the deep gloom of the early 'twenties, had
conceived the idea of twin villas in gray brick, shaped in a manner to
recall the outlines of the Parthenon, each with its classic form
broadly marked with raised bands of stucco. The name of the street was
all strange, and for a further surprise, the top of the hill was crowned
with an irregular plot of grass and fading trees, called a square, and
here again the Parthenon-motive had persisted. Beyond the streets were
curious, wild in their irregularities, here a row of sordid, dingy
dwellings, dirty and disreputable in appearance, and there, without
warning, stood a house genteel and prim with wire blinds and brazen
knocker, as clean and trim as if it had been the doctor's house in some
benighted little country town. These surprises and discoveries began to
exhaust Dyson, and he hailed with delight the blazing windows of a
public-house, and went in with the intention of testing the beverage
provided for the dwellers in this region, as remote as Libya and
Pamphylia and the parts about Mesopotamia. The babble of voices from
within warned him that he was about to assist at the true parliament of
the London workman, and he looked about him for that more retired
entrance called private. When he had settled himself on an exiguous
bench, and had ordered some beer, he began to listen to the jangling
talk in the public bar beyond; it was a senseless argument, alternately
furious and maudlin, with appeals to Bill and Tom, and mediæval
survivals of speech, words that Chaucer wrote belched out with zeal and
relish, and the din of pots jerked down and coppers rapped smartly on
the zinc counter made a thorough bass for it all. Dyson was calmly
smoking his pipe between the sips of beer, when an indefinite looking
figure slid rather than walked into the compartment. The man started
violently when he saw Dyson placidly sitting in the corner, and glanced
keenly about him. He seemed to be on wires, controlled by some electric
machine, for he almost bolted out of the door when the barman asked with
what he could serve him, and his hand shivered as he took the glass. Dyson inspected him with a little curiosity; he was muffled up almost to
the lips, and a soft felt hat was drawn down over his eyes; he looked as
if he shrank from every glance, and a more raucous voice suddenly
uplifted in the public bar seemed to find in him a sympathy that made
him shake and quiver like a jelly. It was pitiable to see any one so
thrilled with nervousness, and Dyson was about to address some trivial
remark of casual inquiry to the man, when another person came into the
compartment, and, laying a hand on his arm, muttered something in an
undertone, and vanished as he came. But Dyson had recognized him as the
smooth-tongued and smooth-shaven Burton, who had displayed so sumptuous
a gift in lying; and yet he thought little of it, for his whole faculty
of observation was absorbed in the lamentable and yet grotesque
spectacle before him. At the first touch of the hand on his arm, the
unfortunate man had wheeled round as if spun on a pivot, and shrank back
with a low, piteous cry, as if some dumb beast were caught in the toils.