The Divine Fire
May Sinclair
CHAPTER XLVII Page 2
"You don't make so very much out of that, do you? Is that the reason why we have to wait?"
"You _like_ writing, don't you?"
"Yes, Flossie; I shouldn't be much good at it, if I didn't."
"I see." She was looking eastwards away from him, and her expression had changed; but it was still inscrutable. And yet by the turning of her head, he saw her mind moving towards a conclusion; but it was impossible to say whether she reached it by the slow process of induction, or by woman's rapid intuition. Anyhow she had reached it. Presently she spoke again. "Could you still get thing, that partnership any time--if you tried?"
"Any time. But I'm not going to try."
She turned round abruptly with an air of almost fierce determination. "Well, if _I_ get an offer of a good place, _I_ shan't refuse it. I shall leave the Bank." She spoke as if so desperate a step would be followed by the instantaneous collapse of that institution.
He was surprised to find how uneasy this threat always made him. The proverbial safety of the Bank had impressed him in more ways than one. And Flossie's post there had other obvious advantages. It brought her into contact with women of a better class than her own, with small refinements, and conventions which were not conspicuous at Mrs. Downey's.
"Let me implore you not to do that. Heaven knows, I hate you having to earn your own living at all, but I'd rather you did it that way than any other."
"Why, what difference would it make to you, I should like to know?"
"It makes all the difference if I know you're doing easy work, not slaving yourself to death as some girls do. It _is_ an easy berth. And--and I like the look of those girls I saw you to-day. They were nice. I'd rather think of you working with them than sitting in some horrible office like a man. Promise me you won't go looking out for anything else."
"All right. I promise."
"No, but--on your honour?"
"Honour bright. There! Anything for a quiet life."
They turned on to the street again. Rickman looked at his watch. "Look here, we're both late for dinner--supposing we go and dine someand do a theatre after, eh?"
"Oh no--we mustn't." All the same Flossie's eyes brightened, for she dearly loved the play.
"Why not?"
"Because I don't think perhaps you ought to."
"You mean I can't afford it?"
"Oh, I fancy even a journalist's income will run to that."
It did run to that and to a hansom afterwards, though Flossie protested, dragging at his arm.
"I'd ratwalk," said she, "indeed I would."
"Nonsense. Come, bundle in."
Now Flossie had never thought of him as a poor man before to-night; but somehow the idea of the good income he might have had and hadn't made him appear poor by comparison. She lay back in the hansom meditating. "If you could only write a play like that, Keith, what a lot of money you'd make."
"Shouldn't I? But then, you see, I couldn't write a play like that."
"Rubbish. I don't believe that author--what d'you call him?--is so very much cleverer than you."
"Thanks." He bowed ironically.
"Well, I mean it. And look how they clapped him--why, they made as much fuss about him as any of the actors. I say, wouldn't you like to hear them calling 'Author! Author!'? And then clapping!"
"H'm!"
"Oh, wouldn't you love it just; you needn't pretend! Look there, I declare I've split my glove." (That meant, as Flossie had calculated, a new pair that _she_ should not have to pay for.)
"If _you_ clapped me I would, Flossie. I should need all the consolation I could get if I'd written as bad a play."
"Well, if that was a bad play, I'd like to see a good one."
"I'll take you to a good one some day."
"Soon?"
"Well, I'm afraid not very soon." He smiled; for the play he thought of taking her to was not yet written; would never be written if many of his evenings were like this. But to Flossie, meditating, his words bore only one interpretation--that Keith was really very much worse off than she had taken him to be.
As they lingered on the doorstep in Tavistock Place, a young man approached them in a deprecating manner from the other side of the street, and took off his hat to Flossie.
"Hallo, Spinks!" said Rickman.
"That you, Razors?" said Spinks.
"It is. What are you doing here?"
"Oh nothing. I was in the neighbourhood, and I thought I'd have a look at the old place."
"Come in, will you? (If they don't come, Flossie, I shall _have_ to use my latch-key.")
"Not to-night, thanks, it's a bit too late. I'd better be going." But he did not go.
"Oh, very comfortable, very comfortable indeed." Yet his voice had a melancholy sound, and under the gas-light his face (a face not specially designed for pathos) looked limp and utterly dejected.
"I think, Keith," said Flossie, "you'd better ring again." Ringing was a concession to propriety that Flossie insisted on and he approved. He rang again; and Mrs. Downey in a beautiful wrapper herself opened the door. At the sight of Spinks she gave a joyful exclamation and invited him into the hall. They left him there.
"What's up?" asked Rickman as they parted on his landing.
"Who with? Sidney? I can't tell you--really."
"I wonder why he left."
"I can't tell you that, either." They said good-night at the foot of the stairs, and she kissed him laughing. And the two men heard it echoing in their dreams, that mysterious laughter of woman, which is as the ripple over the face of the deep.