The Divine Fire
May Sinclair
CHAPTER XLVII Page 1
The game was over and Flossie had won. She had forced Fate's hand, or rather, Mr Rickman's. Not by any coarse premeditated methods; Flossie was too subtly feminine for that. She had trusted rather to the inspiration of the moment, and when her beautiful womanly emotions gave her the opening she had simply followed it, was all. And could anything have been more correct? She had not "given herself away" once by word or look. With true maidenly modesty she had hidden her own feelings until she was perfectly sure of Mr. Rickman's. There was nothing--nothing to make her feel ashamed when she looked back upon that day; a reflection from which she derived much consolation afterwards.
It gave her courage to fly downstairs to Mrs. Downey's private room where that lady sat doing her accounts, to lean over the back of Mrs. Downey's chair and to whisper into her ear, "I've been dusting Mr. Rickman's books, He caught me at it."
Mrs. Downey could not have shown more excitement if Flossie had told the kitchen boiler had burst. "Flossie! My goodness, whatever did he say?"
"He didn't mind one bit. Only--you won't tell him you told me not to touch them, will you, Mrs. Downey?" She brought her soft blushing cheek close to Mrs. Downey's and the warmth of it told her tale.
And Mrs. Downey promised not to tell, pardoning the subterfuge for love's sake, which excuses all. "Has he gone, Flossie?" she inquired anxiously.
"No. He's not going. He's come back for good."
"There! Didn't I say he would!"
"And what d'you think," said Flossie, sitting down and spreading plump arm on the secretary all over the accounts. "He's done it. He did it up there."
Mrs. Downey stared, and Flossie nodded as much as to say "Fact!"
"You don't mean to say so?"
"Nobody's more surprised than myself."
The rest was kisses and congratulations, wholly magnanimous on Mrs. Downey's part; for the announcement of Flossie's engagement cost her one of the gayest, most desirable, and most remunerative of her brilliant circle. Mr. Spinks (regarded by himself and everybody else as permanent) gave notice and vanished from that hour, carrying with him the hopes of Miss Ada Bishop. Meanwhile Flossie (hitherto regarded from a merely decorative point of view) became a person of considerable importance in the boarding-house. It was not merely that she was an engaged young lady; for, as Miss Bishop pointed out to her with some natural asperity, anybody can be engaged; but she had now the privilege, denied to any other boarder, of going in and out of Mr. Rickman's study. She said that she went in to tidy it; but strange to say, the more Flossie tidied it the more hopeless it became. Mr. Rickman's study was never what you might call a really tidy room; but at any rate there had always been a certain repose about it. And now you could not well imagine a more unrestful place, a place more suggestive of hurry and disorder, of an utter lack of the leisure in which ideas ripen and grow great.
The table had become a troubled sea of primeval manuscript, where Mr. Rickman sat with his head in his hands, brooding over the face of the waters. He had once profanely said God's world was a chaos he had got to work on. Now it was _his_ world that was chaos. A tempestuous chaos, where things to be weltered in the wreck of things that were. Rickman's genius, like Nature, destroyed in order that it might create; yet it seemed to him nowadays the destruction was out of all proportion to the creation. He sighed as he gazed at the piteous fragments that represented six months' labour; fragments that wept blood; the torn and mutilated limbs of living thoughts; with here and there huge torsos of blank verse, lopped and hewn in the omnipotent fury of a god at war with his world; mixed up with undeveloped and ethereal shapes, the embryos of dreams.
And yet it was not altogether the divine rage of the artist that had wrought this havoc. The confusion argued a power at war with itself rather than with its creations; the very vastness of it all suggested a deity tied as to time, but apparently unshackled as to space. That was it. There really wasn't as much time as there used to be. It was in his free evenings and on Sundays that his best thoughts came to him, the beautiful shy thoughts that must be delicately courted. And now his free evenings and his Sundays were given up to the courting of Flossie. And even on a week-day this was what would happen. He would rush home early from Fleet Street and settle down for two hours' work before dinner. Then a little timid knock would be heard at the door, and Flossie would come in bringing him a cup of tea. He couldn't just swill it down like a pig and send the dear little thing away. He _had_ to let her sit and see him drink it, slowly, as if he thoroughly enjoyed it. Or he would come in (as on that blessed evening six months ago) and find Flossie dusting books; standing perhaps on two tottering hassocks and a chair, at an altitude perilous to so plump a person. And Flossie had to be lifted down from the hassocks and punished with hard kisses, and told not to do it again. And Flossie would do it again. So that a great deal of time was lost in this way. And with the touch of those soft little arms about his neck demoralization would set in for the evening.
And then there was Flossie's education to be attended to; and took more time than anything. It meant that, as the November days drew in, he had to read or talk to Flossie as she sat in his armchair with her dear little feet on his fender, and her dear little hands mending his socks and shirts and things. They might have been married for years, only they weren't; that was what made it so exciting. Flossie's hands were always mending or making something (generally something to wear), and it was rather strange that it never occurred to such a busy person that other people might be busy too. He tried to break it to her. He told her (like a brute) that he thought all his things must be mended now, and that perhaps for another week he would be better without any tea. And Flossie (very naturally offended) didn't put her dear little nose in at his door for two weeks. And for all you could get through in that time it was hardly worth while offending her.
But he was very far wrong in supposing that Flossie never thought about his work. She had been thinking a great deal about it lately. One cold bright Sunday morning in November she tapped at his door and walked in dressed for the open air. "Aren't you coming for a walk," she said, "this lovely day?"
"Too busy." To signify his annoyance, or to keep himself from temptation, he bent closer over the article he was writing for _The Museion_. She came and stood beside him, watching him as he worked, still with his air of passionate preoccupation. Presently he found himself drawn against his will into the following conversation.
"How long does it take you to do one of those things?"
"It depends."
"Depends on what?"
"Oh, on the amount of trouble I take over it."
"And do they pay you any more for taking trouble?"
"No, Flossie. I'm sorry to say they frequently pay me less."
"Then why on earth do you do it?"
This question seemed to him so curious that it caused him to look up, beholding for the first time the plump figure clothed entirely in a new suit of brown, and wearing on its head a fascinating hat made of something that resembled fur. He tried to look at it with disapproval, while his mind dealt independently with the amazing question put to him.
He smiled. "I adore it. It makes you look like a dear little brown Beaver, as you are." "The Beaver" was only one of the many names he had for her; it was suggested irresistibly by her plumpness, her singularly practical intelligence, and her secretive ways.
"Then what do you mean by style?" asked the Beaver in a challenging tone that forced him to lay down his pen.
"What do I mean by style?" He explained, moved by the mad lust for mystification which seizes a man in the presence of adorable simplicity. "I don't mean anything in the least resembling a Beaver's coat (there really isn't any style about a Beaver's coat). And if you want me to say it's the clothing of your thoughts, I won't. The less clothing they have the better. It can't be treated as a Beaver treats its coats. You can put it on and off (I was putting it on when you came in and interrupted me); and you can mend it, and brush it up a bit; but you can't measure it, or make it to order, and when it wears out you can't get another where you got the first. Style isn't the clothing, it's the body of your thoughts, my Beaver; and in a slap-up, A 1 style, the style of the masters, _my_ style, you can't tell the body from the soul."
"If you'd said you couldn't tell the body from the skirt it would sound like sense."
"Well?"
"Well, is it fair of you to go on writing them?"
"Fair of _me_? My dear child, why not?"
"Be-_cause_, if I buy stylish things I _have_ to pay for them. And I've been buying them long enough, just to please you."
"I don't follow. But I suppose a Beaver has to reason backwards; because, you know, all its intelligence is in its tail."
"Gracious, Keith! You are a silly."
"I am not alone in my opinion. It's the opinion of some very eminent zoologists." He drew her gently on his knee; raised her veil and looked into her eyes. They were (as he had often had occasion to notice) of so deep and black a black that the iris was indistinguishable from the pupil, and this blackness limited the range of their expression. They could only tell you what Flossie was feeling, never what she was thinking; for thought requires a translucent medium, and the light of Flossie's eyes was all on the surface. On the other hand, the turns and movements of body were always a sufficient indication of the attitude of her mind. At the present moment, sitting on Keith's knee, her pose was not one of pure complacency. But holding her there, that little brown Beaver, his own unyielding virile body deliciously aware of the strange, incredible softness of hers, he wondered whether it were possible for him to feel anything but tender to a creature so strangely and pathetically made. Positively she seemed to melt and grow softer by sheer contact; and presently she smiled a sweet diminutive smile that didn't uncover more than two of her little white teeth.
"Oh, what a shame it is to treat a Beaver so!" said he.
"When are you going to take me for a nice walk?" said she. "Any time before Christmas?"
"Perhaps. But you mustn't build on it."
"I don't see that I can build on anything at this rate."
"I suppose a Beaver can't be happy unless it's always building? That's why some people say it hasn't any intelligence at all. They won't even allow that it can build. They think its architectural talent is all a delusion and a sham; because it builds in season and out of season. Keep it in your study, and it will make a moat round the hearthrug with tobacco pouches and manuscripts and boots--whatever it can lay its hands on. It will even take the ideas out of a man's head, if it can't find anything better. Is any logic in an animal that can do that?" And if Flossie did not understand the drift of these remarks at least she seemed to understand the kisses that punctuated them.
But before very long he obtained more light on the Beaver's logic, and owned that it was singularly sound. They managed to put in a great many nice walks between that Sunday and Christmas. Whenever he could spare time Rickman made a point of meeting Flossie at the end of her day's work. He generally waited at the corner where the long windowless wall of the Bank stretches along Prince's Street, iron and implacable. It was too cold now to sit under the shadow of St. Paul's. Sometimes they would walk home along Holborn, sometimes they would go down Ludgate Hill and thence on to the Embankment. It was certainly better for Flossie to be out of doors than in the dingy drawing-room in Tavistock Place. They could talk freely in the less crowded thorough-fares; and it was surprising the things they still found to say to each other all about nothing. Every trace of Flossie's depression had vanished; she walked with a brisk step, she chatted gaily, she laughed the happiest laughter at the poorest jokes. All was going well; and why, oh why could he not let well alone?
They were walking on the Embankment one day, and she, for such a correct little person, was mad with mirth, when he broke out. "Flossie, you little lunatic! You might be going to marry a stock-broker instead of a journalist."
"I'm going to marry a very rich man--for me."
"For you, darling? A devilish poor one, I'm afraid."
"Oh don't! We've said enough about that."
"Yes, but I haven't told you everything. Do you know, I might have been fairly well off by now, if I'd only chosen."
Now there was no need whatever for him to make that revelation. He was driven to it by vanity. He wanted to make an impression. He wanted Flossie to see him in all his moral beauty.
"How was that?" she asked with interest.
"I can't tell you much about it. It was something to do with business. I got an offer of a thumping big partnership three years ago--and I refused it."
He had made an impression. Flossie turned on him a look of wonder, a look uncertain and inscrutable. "did you do that for?"
"That's not quite the same thing, is it?"
"Not always. It happened to be in this case."
"Why, what sort of business was it?"
"It wasn't scavenging, and it wasn't burglary--exactly. It was--" he hesitated--"only the second-hand book-trade."
"They make too much for my taste sometimes. Besides--"
"Besides what?" They had turned into an embrasure of the parapet to discuss this question. They stood close together looking over the river.
"It isn't my trade. I'm only a blooming journalist."