Mrs. Downey's boarding-house was the light of Tavistock Place,
Bloomsbury. In the brown monotony of the street it stood out splendid,
conspicuous. Its door and half its front were painted a beautiful, a
remarkable pea-green, while its door knob and door-knocker were of
polished brass. Mrs. Downey's boarding-house knew nothing of
concealment or disguise. Every evening, at the hour of seven, through
its ground-floor window it offered to the world a scene of stupefying
brilliance. The blinds were up, the curtains half-drawn, revealing the
allurements of the interior.
From both sides of the street, the entire length of the dinner-table
was visible. Above it, a handsome gilt gaselier spread out its
branches, and on this gaselier as many as three gas-jets burned
furiously at once. In the intense illumination the faces of the
boarders could be distinctly seen. They sat, as it were, transfigured,
in a nebulous whorl or glory of yellow light. It fell on the high
collars, the quite remarkably high collars of the young gentlemen, and
on those gay, those positively hilarious blouses which the young
ladies at Mrs. Downey's wear. Beside the water-bottles and tumblers of
red glass it lay like a rosy shadow on the cloth. It gave back their
green again to the aspidistras that, rising from a ruche of pink
paper, formed the central ornament of the table. It made a luminous
body of Mrs. Downey's face. The graver values were not sacrificed to
this joyous expenditure of gas-light, for the wall-paper (the design
was in chocolate, on a ground of ochre) sustained the note of
fundamental melancholy. At the back of the apartment, immediately
behind Mrs. Downey, an immense mahogany sideboard shone wine-dark in a
gorgeous gloom. On the sideboard stood a Family Bible, and on the
Family Bible a tea-urn, a tea-urn that might have been silver. There
was design in this arrangement; but for the Bible the tea-urn would
have been obliterated by Mrs. Downey; thus elevated, it closed, it
crowned the vista with a beauty that was final, monumental and
supreme.
You had only to glance through those windows to see that Mrs. Downey's
combined the splendid publicity of an hotel with the refinements of a
well-appointed home. That it offered, together with a luxurious table,
the society of youthful persons of both sexes. And if everything
around Mrs. Downey was on a liberal scale, so was Mrs. Downey herself.
She was expansive in her person, prodigal in sympathy, exuberant in
dress. If she had one eye to the main chance, the other smiled at you
in pure benignity. On her round face was a festal flush, flooding and
effacing the little care-worn lines and wrinkles which appeared on it
by day. It wore the colour of the hour which, evening after evening,
renewed for her the great drama and spectacle of the Dinner.
Her table was disposed with a view to scenic effect. It was not by
accident that Mrs. Downey herself was seated at the obscure or
sideboard end, and that she gathered round her there the older and
less attractive members of her circle. This arrangement was flattering
to them, for it constituted an order of precedence and they were in
the seats of honour. It had also the further advantage of giving
prominence to the young people whose brilliant appearance of an
evening was as good as an advertisement for Mrs. Downey's.
First then, at the top of the table, sat two elderly ladies,
dishevelled birds of passage, guests of a day and a night. Next, on
Mrs. Downey's right, came old Miss Bramble, with old Mr. Partridge
opposite on the left. The young gentleman at the extreme bottom or
public end of the table was Mr. Spinks. He was almost blatantly
visible from the street. At Mr. Spinks's side sat Miss Ada Bishop,
the young lady in the fascinating pink blouse; and opposite him, Miss
Flossie Walker, in the still more fascinating blue. To the left of
Miss Bishop in the very centre of the table was a middle-aged
commercial gentleman, Mr. Soper (not specially conspicuous); and
facing him and on Miss Walker's right came Miss Roots, who might be
any age you please between thirty and forty. Between them at the
present moment, there was an empty chair.
Miss Roots was the link between the melancholy decadence above the
aspidistras and the glorious and triumphant youth below. As far as
could be inferred with any certainty she had leanings to the side of
youth. Her presence was no restraint upon its glad and frolicsome
humour. It felt that it could trust her. She had never been known to
betray any of the secrets that passed at the risk of their lives from
Miss Bishop's side of the table to Miss Walker's. There was reason to
suppose that Miss Roots was aware of the surreptitious manufacture of
bread pellets by Mr. Spinks (Mr. Spinks being the spirit of youth
incarnate); but when one of these missiles struck Miss Roots full in
the throat, when it should have just delicately grazed the top of Miss
Flossie's frizzled hair, Miss Roots not only ignored the incident at
the time, but never made the faintest allusion to it afterwards.
Therefore Mr. Spinks voted Miss Roots to be a brick, and a trump, and
what he called a real lady.
Very curious and interesting was the behaviour of these people among
themselves. It was an eternal game of chivy or hide-and-seek, each
person being by turn the hunter and the hunted. Mrs. Downey tried to
talk to the birds of passage; but the birds of passage would talk to
nobody but each other. Miss Bramble took not the slightest notice of
Mr. Partridge. Mr. Partridge did everything he could to make himself
agreeable to Miss Bramble; but she was always looking away over the
aspidistras, towards the young end of the table, with a little air of
strained attention, at once alien and alert. Mr. Spinks spent himself
in perpetual endeavours to stimulate a sense of humour in Miss Walker,
who hadn't quite enough of it, with very violent effects on Miss
Bishop, who had it in excess; while Mr. Soper was incessantly trying
to catch the eye of Miss Roots around the aspidistras, an enterprise
in which he was but rarely successful; Miss Walker finally making no
attempt to bridge over the space between her chair and Miss Roots.
That empty seat was reserved for Mr. Rickman, who was generally late.
On his arrival the blinds would be pulled down in deference to his
wish for a more perfect privacy. Meanwhile they remained up, so that
wandering persons in hansoms, lonely persons having furnished
apartments, persons living expensively in hotels or miserably in other
boarding-houses, might look in, and long to be received into Mrs.
Downey's, to enjoy the luxury, the comfort, the society.
The society--Yes; as Mrs. Downey surveyed her table and its guests,
her imagination ignored the base commercial tie; she felt herself to
be a social power, having called into existence an assembly so
various, so brilliant, and so gay. One thing only interfered with Mrs.
Downey's happiness, Mr. Rickman's habit of being late. Such a habit
would not have mattered so much in any of the other boarders, because,
remarkable as they were collectively, individually, Mrs. Downey seldom
thought of them unless they happened to be there, whereas with Mr.
Rickman, now, whether he was there or not, she could think of nothing
else.
And to-night Mr. Rickman was later than ever.
"I'm really beginning to be afraid," said Mrs. Downey, "that he can't
be coming."
The middle-aged gentleman, Mr. Soper, was heard muttering something to
the effect that he thought they could bear up if he didn't come.
Whereupon Mrs. Downey begged Mr. Soper's pardon in a manner which was
a challenge to him to repeat his last remark. Therefore he repeated
it.
"I say, I 'ope we can manage to bear up."
"Speak for yourself, Mr. Soper." (This from Mr. Spinks who adored
Rickman.)
"Well, really, I can't think how it is you and he don't seem to hit it
off together. A young fellow that can make himself so pleasant when he
likes."
"Ah-h! When he likes. And when he doesn't like? When he comes into the
room like a young lord with his head in the air, and plumps himself
down straight in front of you, and looks at you as if you were a
sorter ea'wig or a centerpede? Call that pleasant?"
Mr. Spinks chuckled behind his table napkin. "He means a centre piece.
Wouldn't he make a handsome one!"
Mr. Soper combined a certain stateliness of carriage with a restless
insignificance of feature.
"We all know," said Mrs. Downey, "that Mr. Rickman is a very reserved
gentleman. He has his own thoughts."
"Thoughts? I've got my thoughts. But they don't make me disagreeable
to everybody."
Mr. Spinks craned forward as far as the height of his collar permitted
him. "I wouldn't be too cock-sure if I were you, Mr. Soper."
The young end of the table heaved and quivered with primeval mirth.
Even Flossie Walker was moved to a faint smile. For Mr. Soper, though
outwardly taciturn and morose, was possessed inwardly by a perfect
fury of sociability, an immortal and insatiable craving to converse.
It was an instinct which, if gratified, would have undermined the
whole fabric of the Dinner, being essentially egoistic, destructive
and malign. Mr. Soper resented the rapidity with which Rickman had
been accepted by the boarding-house; he himself, after two years'
residence, only maintaining a precarious popularity by little
offerings of bon-bons to the ladies. Hence the bitterness of his
present mood.
"There are thoughts _and_ thoughts," said Mrs. Downey severely, for
the commercial gentleman had touched her in a very sensitive place.
"And when Mr. Rickman is in wot I call 'is vein, there's nobody like
him for making a dinner go off."
Here Mr. Soper achieved a sardonic, a really sardonic smile. "Oh, of
course, if you're eludin' to the young gentleman's appetite--"
But this was insufferable, it was wounding Mrs. Downey in the
tenderest spot of all. The rose of her face became a peony.
"I'm doing no such thing. If any gentleman wishes to pay me a
compliment--" her gay smile took for granted that no gentleman could
be so barbarous as not to feel that wish--"let him show an appetite.
As for the ladies, I wish they had an appetite to show. Mr. Partridge,
let me give you a little more canary pudding. It's as light as light.
No? Oh--come, Mr. Partridge."
Mr. Partridge's gesture of refusal was so vast, so expressive, that it
amounted to a solemn personal revelation which implied, not so much
that Mr. Partridge rejected canary pudding as that he renounced
pleasure, of which canary pudding was but the symbol and the sign.
"Mr. Spinks then? He'll let me give him another slice, _I_ know."
"You bet. Tell you wot it is, Mrs. Downey, the canary that pudding was
made of, must have been an uncommonly fine bird."
There was a swift step on the pavement, the determined click of a
latch-key, and the clang of a closing door.
"Why, here _is_ Mr. Rickman," said Mrs. Downey, betraying the
preoccupation of her soul.
Rickman's entrance produced a certain vibration down both sides of the
table, a movement unanimous, yet discordant, as if the nerves of this
social body that was "Mrs. Downey's" were being played upon every way
at once. Each boarder seemed to be preparing for an experience that,
whether agreeable or otherwise, would be disturbing to the last
degree. The birds of passage raised their heads with a faint flutter.
Miss Walker contemplated a chromo-lithograph with a dreamy air. Mr.
Soper strove vainly to fix himself in an attitude of dignified
detachment.
The boarding-house was about to suffer the tremendous invasion of a
foreign element. For a moment it was united.
Mrs. Downey's face revealed a grave anxiety. She was evidently asking
herself: "Was he, or was he not, in his vein?"
A glance at the object of his adoration decided the question for Mr.
Spinks. Rickman was, thank goodness, _not_ in his vein, in which state
he was incomprehensible to anybody but Miss Roots. He was in that
comparatively commonplace condition which rendered him accessible to
Mr. Spinks.
"Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce my friend, the lyte Mr.
Ryzors. Jemima, show the deceased gentleman to his chair. Miss
Walker, Mr. Ryzors. He is really 'appy to myke your acquaintance, Miss
Walker, though at first sight he may not appear so. Wot you might be
apt to mistyke for coldness is merely 'is intense reserve."
"Oh, dry up, Spinks."
No, Mr. Rickman was certainly not in his vein this evening. He made no
apology whatever for his lateness. He ignored the commercial
gentleman's "Good-evening, Rickman." As he slipped into his place
between Miss Walker and Miss Roots he forgot his usual "Busy to-day at
the Museum, Miss Roots?"--a question that recognized her as a fellow
worker in the fields of literature, thus lightening the obscurity that
hid her labours there.
And for Miss Flossie's timid greeting (the lifting of her upper lip
that just showed two dear little white teeth) he gave back a reluctant
and embarrassed smile. He used to like sitting by Flossie because she
was so pretty and so plump. He used to be sorry for her, because she
worked so hard, and, though plump, was so pathetically anaemic and so
shy. Critically considered, her body, in spite of its plumpness, was a
little too small for her head, and her features were a little too
small for her face, but then they were so very correct, as correct as
her demeanour and the way she did her hair. She had clusters and curls
and loops and coils of hair, black as her eyes, which were so black
that he couldn't tell the iris from the pupil. Not that Flossie had
ever let him try. And now he had forgotten whether they were black or
blue, forgotten everything about them and her. Flossie might be as
correct as Flossie pleased, she simply didn't matter.
When she saw him smile she turned up her eyes to the chromo-lithograph
again. The little clerk brought with her from the City an air of
incorruptible propriety, assumed for purposes of self-protection, and
at variance with her style of hair-dressing and the blueness and
gaiety of her blouse. With all that it implied and took for granted,
it used to strike him as pathetic. But now, he didn't find Flossie in
the least pathetic.
He was waiting for the question which was bound to come.
It came from Spinks, and in a form more horrible than any that he had
imagined.
"I say, Rickets, wot did you want all those shirts for down in
Devonshire?"
Instead of replying Rickets blew his nose, making his
pocket-handkerchief conceal as much of his face as possible. At that
moment he caught Miss Bishop staring at him, and if there was one
thing that Mr. Rickman disliked more than another it was being stared
at. Particularly by Miss Bishop. Miss Bishop had red hair, a loose
vivacious mouth, and her stare was grossly interrogative.
Flossie sent out a little winged look at him like a soft dark
butterfly. It skimmed and hovered about him, and flitted, too ethereal
to alight.
Miss Bishop however had no scruples, and put it to him point blank.
"Devonshire?" said Miss Bishop, "what were you doing down there?" She
planted her elbows on the table and propped her chin on her
finger-tips; her stare thus tilted was partly covered by her eyelids.
"If you really want," said Mr. Spinks, "to see that gentleman
opposite, you'll have to take a telescope." The adoring youth
conceived that it had been given to him alone of the boarders to
penetrate the mind of Rickman, that he was the guardian of his mood,
whose mission it was to protect him from the impertinent approaches of
the rest.
"A telescope? Wot d'you mean?"
"Don't you think he's got a sort of a far-away look? Especially about
the mouth and nose?"
Whether it was from being stared at or for some other reason, but by
this time Mr. Rickman had certainly become a little distant. He was
not getting on well with anybody or anything, not even with Mrs.
Downey's excellent dinner, nor yet with the claret, an extra ordered
for his private drinking, always to Mrs. Downey's secret trepidation.
She gave a half-timid, half-tender look at him and signalled to her
ladies to withdraw. She herself remained behind, superintending the
removal of the feast; keeping a motherly eye, too, on the poor boy and
his claret. Ever since that one dreadful Sunday morning when she had
found him asleep in full evening dress upon his bedroom floor, Mrs.
Downey was always expecting to see him drop under the table. He had
never done it yet, but there was no knowing when he mightn't.
Whatever the extent of Mr. Rickman's alleged intemperance, his was not
the vice of the solitary drinker, and to-night the claret was nearly
all drunk by Spinks and Soper. It had the effect of waking in the
commercial gentleman the demon of sociability that slept.
What Mr. Soper wanted to know was whether Rickman could recommend
'Armouth as a holiday resort? Could he tell him of any first-class
commercial hotel or boarding-house down there? To which Rickman
replied that he really couldn't tell him anything at all.
"Perhaps," said Mrs. Downey, peering over the edge of the table-cloth
she was helping to fold. "Perhaps he has his reasons."
The claret had made Mr. Soper not only sociable but jocose. "Reasons?
That's a new name for 'em. If he don't want more than one at a time, I
wish he'd introduce the rest of 'em to me."
"I daresay he would be very happy, if he thought you would understand
them, Mr. Soper."
"Understand 'em? Why, I don't suppose they talk Greek."
"Ryzors," said Spinks indignantly, "could give 'em points if they did.
He speaks the language."
Mr. Soper replied that in that case perhaps Mr. Rickman would oblige
him with the Greek for "crumby bits."
At the moment Mr. Rickman did not look like obliging Mr. Soper with
anything. The provocation was certainly immense. Mr. Soper's voice
inspired him with a fury of disgust. The muscles of his mouth
twitched; the blood rushed visibly to his forehead; he stood looming
over the table like a young pink thunder-god.
Mrs. Downey and Mr. Partridge retreated in some alarm. Mr. Soper,
however, was one of those people who are not roused but merely
disconcerted by the spectacle of passion. Mr. Soper said he supposed
he could "make a 'armless remark." And still thirsting for
companionship he pursued Mrs. Downey to the drawing-room. As he went,
he fingered his little box of bon-bons as if it had been a talisman or
charm.
Rickman poured himself out some claret which he drank slowly, with
closed eyelids, leaning back in his chair. "For God's sake, Spinks,"
he muttered; "don't speak to me."
"All right, old chappy, I won't." But he whispered, "I wouldn't go off
just yet, Ryzors, if I were you" (by "going off," Mr. Spinks meant
departure in a train of thought). "He'll be back in another minute."
He was back already, sociable, elated, smoking a cigar. Upstairs with
the ladies he and his bon-bons had met with unprecedented success.
Rickman opened his eyes.
"Ever try," said Mr. Soper, "a Flor di Dindigul? 'Ave one. You'll find
the flavour very delicate and mild." He held it out, that Flor di
Dindigul, as an olive branch to the tempestuous young man.
It was not accepted. It was not even seen.
Rickman rose to his feet. To his irritated vision the opposite wall
seemed to heave and bulge forward, its chocolate design to become
distended and to burst, spreading itself in blotches on the yellow
ochre. On the face of the hideous welter swam the face of Mr. Soper,
as it were bodiless and alone.
He drew in his breath with a slight shudder, pushed his chair back
from the table, and strode out of the room.
Spinks looked after him sorrowfully.
"Wy couldn't you leave him alone, Soper? You might see he didn't want
to talk."
"How could I see wot he wanted? One minute 'e's as chatty and
sociable--and the next he's up like three dozen of bottled stout.
_It's wot I sy._ You can't dee-pend on 'im with any certainty."
That opinion was secretly shared by Miss Flossie Walker.