The Divine Fire
May Sinclair
CHAPTER XXXVIII Page 2
Things were very serious indeed.
His absence at Harmouth had entailed consequences that he had not foreseen. During those four weeks, owing to the perturbation of his mind and the incessant demands on his time, he had written nothing. True, while he was away his poems had found a publisher; but he had nothing to expect from them; it would be lucky if they paid their expenses. On his return to town he found that his place on _The Planet_ had been filled up. At the most he could only reckon on placing now and then, at infrequent intervals, an article or a poem. The places would be few, for from the crowd of popular magazines he was excluded by the very nature of his genius. To make matters worse, he owed about thirty pounds to Dicky Pilkington. The sum of two guineas, which _The Museion_ owed him for his sonnet, would, if he accepted Mrs. Downey's last offer, keep him for exactly two weeks. And afterwards? Afterwards, of course, he would have to borrow another ten pounds from Dicky, hire some den at a few shillings a week, and try his luck for as many months as his money held out. Then there would be another "afterwards," but that need not concern him now.
The only thing that concerned him was the occult tie between him and Miss Roots. Up to the day fixed for his departure he was drawn by an irresistible fascination to Miss Roots. His manner to her became marked by an extreme gentleness and sympathy. Of course it was impossible to believe that it was Miss Roots who lit the intellectual flame burnt in Lucia. Enough to know that she had sat with her in the library and in the room where she made music; that she had walked with her in the old green garden, and on Harcombe Hill and Muttersmoor. Enough to sit beside Miss Roots and know that all the time her heart was where his was, and that if he were to speak of these things she would kindle and understand. But he did not speak of them; for from the way Miss Roots had referred to Lucia Harden and to Court House, it was evident that she knew nothing of what had happened to them, and he did not feel equal to telling her. Lucia's pain was so great a part of his pain that as yet he could not touch it. But though he never openly approached the subject of Harmouth, he was for ever skirting it, keeping it in sight.
He came very near to it one evening, when, finding himself alone with Miss Roots in the back drawing-room, he asked her how long it was since she had been in Devonshire. It seemed that it was no longer ago than last year. Only last year? It was still warm then, the link between her and the woman whom he loved. He found himself looking at Miss Roots, scanning the lines of her plain face as if it held for him some new and wonderful significance. For him that faced flamed transfigured as in the moment she had first spoken of Lucia. The thin lips which had seemed to him so utterly unattractive had touched Lucia's, and were baptized into her freshness and her charm; her eyes had looked into Lucia's and carried something of their light. In her presence he drifted into a sort of mysticism peculiar to lovers, seeing the hand of a holy destiny in the chance that had seated him beside her. Though her shrewdness might divine his secret he felt that with her it would be safe.
As for his other companions of the dinner-table he was obliged to admit that they displayed an admirable delicacy. After Mrs. Downey's revelation not one of them had asked him what he had been doing those four weeks. Spinks had a theory, which he kept to himself. Old Rickets had been having a high old time. He had eloped with a barmaid or an opera girl. For those four weeks, he had no doubt, Rickets had been gloriously, ruinously, on the loose. Mrs. Downey's speculations had taken the same turn. Mr. Rickman's extraordinary request that all his clean linen should be forwarded to him at once had set her mind working; it suggested a young man living in luxury beyond his means. Mrs. Downey's fancy kindled and blushed by turns as it followed him into a glorious or disreputable unknown. Whatever the adventures of those four weeks she felt that they were responsible for his awful state of impecuniosity. And yet she desired to keep him. "There is something about him," said Mrs. Downey to Miss Roots, and paused searching for the illuminating word; "something that goes to your heart without 'is knowing it."
She had found it, the nameless, ineluctable charm.
In a neighbouring street he had found a room, cheap and passably clean, and (failing a financial miracle worked on his behalf) he would move into it to-morrow. He was going, now that he would have given anything to stay.
In the dining-room after dinner, Spinks with a dejected countenance, sat guarding for the last time the sacred silence of Rickman. They had finished their coffee, when the door that let out the maid with empty cups let in Miss Bishop, Miss Bramble and Miss Walker.
First came Miss Bishop; she advanced in a side-long and embarrassed manner, giggling, and face for once was as red as her hair. She carried a little wooden box which with an unaccustomed shyness she asked him to accept. The sliding lid disclosed a dozen cedar pencils side by side, their points all ready sharpened, also a card the inscription: "Mr. Rickman, best wishes from Ada Bishop." At one corner was a date suggesting that the gift marked an epoch; at the other the letters P.T.O. The reverse displayed this legend, "If you ever want any typing done, I'll always do it for _you_ at 6d. a thou. _Only don't let on._ Yours, A.B." Now Miss Bishop's usual charge was, as he knew, a shilling per thousand.
"Gentlemen," said she, explaining away her modest offering, "always like anything that saves them trouble." At this point, Miss Bishop, torn by a supreme giggle, vanished violently from the scene.
Mr. Rickman smiled sadly, but his heart remained as before. He had not loved Miss Bishop.
Next came Miss Bramble with her gift mysteriously concealed in silver paper. "All brain-workers," said Miss Bramble, "suffered from cold feet." So she had just knitted him a pair of socks--"_bed_-socks" (in a whisper), "that would help to keep him warm." Her poor old eyes were scarlet, not so much from knitting the bed-socks, as from contemplating the terrible possibility of his needing them.
Under Mr. Rickman's waistcoat there was the least little ghost of a quiver. He had not loved Miss Bramble; but Miss Bramble had loved him. She had loved him because he was young, and because he had sometimes repeated to her the little dinner-table jests that she was too deaf to hear.
Last of the three, very grave and demure, came Flossie, and she, like her friend, carried her gift uncovered. She proffered it with her most becoming air of correctness and propriety. It was a cabinet photograph of herself in her best attitude, her best mood and her best blue blouse. It was framed beautifully and appropriately in white silk, embroidered with blue forget-me-nots by Flossie's clever hands. She had sat up half the night to finish it. He took it gently from her and looked at it for what seemed to Flossie an excessively long time. He was trying to think of something particularly pretty and suitable to say. In his absorption he did not notice that he was alone with her, that as Flossie advanced Spinks and Soper had withdrawn.
"I don't know whether you'll care for it," said she. She was standing very close beside him, and her face under the gas-light looked pale and tender.
"Of course I'll care for it." He laid her gift on the table beside the others and stood contemplating them. She saw him smile. He was smiling at the bed-socks.
"Oh, Mr. Rickman, you've been so awfully good to me."
"No, Flossie," he said, "I've not been good to anyone, I'm not very good to myself. All the same, I'm not an utter brute; I shan't forget you."
Flossie's eyes had followed, almost jealously, the movement of his hand in putting down her gift; and they had rested there, fixed on her own portrait, and veiled by their large white lids. She now raised them suddenly, and over their black profundity there moved a curious golden glitter flashed full on his face.
"You didn't remember me, much, last time you went away."
"I didn't remember anybody, Flossie; I had too much to think of."
It struck him that this was the first time she had looked him full in the face; but it did not strike him that it was also the first time that he had found himself alone in a room with her, though they had been together many times out of doors and in crowded theatres and concert halls. Her look conveyed some accusation that he at first failed to understand. And then there came into his mind the promise he had made to her at Easter, to take her to the play, the promise broken without apology or explanation. So she still resented it, did she? Poor little Flossie, she was so plump and pretty, and she had been so dependent on him for the small pleasures of her life.
"You're always thinking," said Flossie, and laughed.
"I'm sorry, Flossie; it's a disgusting habit, I own. I'll make up for it some day. We'll do a lot of theatres and--and things together, when my ship comes in."
"Thank you, Mr. Rickman," said she with a return to old demeanour. "And now I suppose I'd better say good-night?"
She turned. They said good-night. He sprang to open, the door for her. As she went through it, his heart, if it did not go with her, was touched, most palpably, unmistakably touched at seeing her go. He had not loved Flossie; but he might have loved her.
Mr. Soper, who had been waiting all the while on the stairs, walked in through the open door. He closed it secretly.
He laid his hand affectionately on Rickman's shoulder. "Rickman," he said solemnly, "while I 'ave the opportunity, I want to speak to you. If it should 'appen that a fiver would be useful to you, don't you hesitate to come to me."
"Oh, Soper, thanks most awfully. Really, no, I couldn't think of it."
"But I mean it. I really do. So don't you 'esitate; and there needn't be any hurry about repayment. That," said Mr. Soper, "is quite immaterial." Failing to extract from Rickman any distinct promise, he withdrew; but not before he had pressed upon his immediate acceptance a box of his favourites, the Flor di Dindigul.
He thought it was all over, and he was glad to escape from these really very trying interviews to the quiet of his own room. There he found Spinks sitting on his bed waiting for him. Spinks had come to lay before him an offering and a scheme. The offering was no less than two dozen of gents' best all-wool knitted hose, double-toed and heeled. The scheme was for enabling Rickman thenceforward to purchase all manner of retail haberdashery at wholesale prices by the simple method of impersonating Spinks. At least in the long-run it amounted to that, and Rickman had some difficulty in persuading Spinks that his scheme, though in the last degree glorious and romantic, was, from an ethical point of view, not strictly feasible.
"What a rum joker you are, Rickman. I never thought of that. I wonder--" (He mused in an unconscious endeavour to restore the moral balance between him and Rickman). "I wonder who'll put you to bed, old chappy, when you're tight."
"Oh, Gosh," said Spinks, and sighed profoundly. Then, with a slight recovery, "do you mean you won't be able to afford it?"
"You can put it that way, if you like."
In time Spinks left him and Rickman was alone. Just as he was wondering whether or no he would pack his books up before turning in, was a soft rap at his door. He said, "Come in" to the rap; and to himself he said, "Who next?"
It was Mrs. Downey; she glanced round the room, looked at Flossie's photograph with disapproval, and removed, not without severity, Miss Bramble's bed-socks from a chair. She had brought no gift; but she sat down heavily like a woman who has carried a burden about with her all day, and can carry it no farther. Her features were almost obliterated with emotion and glazed with tears that she made no effort to remove.
"Mr. Rickman," she said, "do you reelly wish to go, or do you not?"
He looked up surprised. "My dear Mrs. Downey, I don't; believe me. Did I ever say I did?"
Her face grew brighter and rounder till the very glaze on it made it shine like a great red sun. "Well, we'd all been wondering, and some of us said one thing, and some another, and I didn't know what to think. But if you want to stay perhaps--we can come to some arrangement." It was the consecrated phrase.
"Come, I've been thinking it over. You won't be paying less than five shillings a week for your empty room, perhaps more?"
He would, he said, be paying six shillings.
"There now! And that, with your food, makes sixteen shillings at the very least."
"I should think it did depend upon it." Mrs. Downey's face literally blazed with triumph. She said to herself, "I was right. Mr. Spinks said he'd take it out of his clothes. Miss Bramble said he'd take it out of his fire. _I_ said he'd take it out of his dinner."
"Now," she continued, "if you didn't mind moving into the front attic--it's a good attic--for a time, I could let you 'ave that, _and_ board you, for fifteen shillings a week, or for fourteen, I could, and welcome. As I seldom let that attic, it would be money in the pocket to me."
"Come," she went on, well pleased. "I know all about it. Why, Mr. Blenkinsop, when he first started to write, he lived up there six months at a time. He had his ups, you may say, and his downs. One year in the attic and the next on the second floor, having his meals separate and his own apartments. Then up he'd go again quite cheerful, as regularly as the bills came round." Here Mrs. Downey entered at some length upon the history of the splendour and misery of Mr. Blenkinsop. "And that, I suppose," said Mrs. Downey, "is what it is to be a poet."
"In fact," said Rickman relating the incident afterwards to Miss Roots, "talk to Mrs. Downey of the Attic Bee and she will thoroughly understand the allusion."
After about half an hour's conversation she left him without having received any clear and definite acceptance of her proposal. That did not prevent her from announcing to the drawing-room that Mr. Rickman was not going after all.
At the hour of the last post a letter was pushed under his door. It was from Horace Jewdwine, asking him to dine with him at Hampstead the next evening. Nothing more, nothing less; but the sight of the signature made his brain reel for a second. He stood staring at it. From the adjoining room came sounds made by Spinks, dancing a jig of joy which brought up Mr. Soper raging from the floor below.
Jewdwine? Why, he had made up his mind after the affair of the Harden library, Jewdwine most certainly would have nothing more to do with him.
Jewdwine was another link. And at that thought his heart heaved and became alive again.