Rickman, it seemed, was doomed to inspire that sense of agonizing
uncertainty.
It was the second evening after his return. The Dinner was not going
off well. Miss Walker was depressed, Mr. Spinks was not in his
accustomed spirits, and Mrs. Downey had been going about with red eyes
all day. Mr. Rickman had confided to her the deplorable state of his
finances. And Mrs. Downey had said to herself she had known from the
first that he would not be permanent.
He didn't want to be permanent. He desired to vanish, to disappear
from the boarding-house and the boarders, and from Poppy Grace on the
balcony next door; to get away from every face and every voice that he
had known before he knew Lucia Harden's. Being convinced that he would
never see her again, he wanted to be alone with his vivid and piercing
memory of her. At first it was the pain that pierced. She had taken
out her little two-edged sword and stabbed him. It wouldn't have
mattered, he said, if the sword had been a true little sword, but it
wasn't; it had snapt and left a nasty bit of steel inside him. Her
last phrase was the touch that finished him. But the very sting of it
created a healthy reaction. By his revolt against that solitary
instance of her cruelty he had recovered his right to dwell upon her
kindness. He dwelt upon it until at times he entered again into
possession of the tender, beautiful, dominating dream. So intense was
his hallucination, that as he walked alone in any southerly direction
he still felt Muttersmoor on his right hand and Harcombe on his left,
and he had waked in the morning to the sound of the sea beating upon
Harmouth beach.
But these feelings visited him more rarely in the boarding-house than
elsewhere. That was why he wanted to get away from it. The illusion
was destroyed by these irrelevant persons of the dinner-table. Not
that he noticed them much; but when he did it was to discover in them
some quality that he had not observed before. He found imbecility in
the manners of Spinks, coarseness and violence in the figures of Mrs.
Downey and Miss Bishop, insipidity in the whole person of Miss Flossie
Walker. And now, as he looked round the table, he wondered how it was
he ever came there. After living for four weeks with Lucia Harden or
the thought of her, he had a positive difficulty in recognizing even
Spinks and Flossie as people he had once intimately known. Miss Roots
alone, for some inscrutable reason, seemed familiar, in keeping with
that divine experience to which the actual hour did violence. It was
almost as if she understood.
A shrewdly sympathetic glance went out from a pair of hazel eyes set
in a plain, clever, strenuous face. Miss Roots was glad, she said, to
see him back again. He turned to her with the question that had never
failed to flatter and delight. Was Miss Roots doing anything specially
interesting now? But there was no interest in his tone.
Miss Roots looked up with a smile that would have been gay if it had
not been so weary. Yes, she was collecting material for a book on
Antimachus of Colophon. No, not her own book.
(At the mention of Antimachus of Colophon, Mr. Soper folded his arms
and frowned with implacable resentment. Mr. Soper was convinced that
these subjects were introduced on purpose to exclude him from the
conversation.)
Miss Roots, like Mr. Rickman, lived apart from the murmur of the
boarding-house. She had raised a barrier of books in a bedroom six
feet by nine, behind which she worked obscurely. She had never been
known to converse until Mr. Rickman came. A sort of fluctuating
friendship had sprung up between Mr. Rickman and Miss Roots. He had an
odd feeling, half pity, half liking, for this humble servant of
literature, doomed to its labour, ignorant of its delight. And yet
Miss Roots had a heart which went out to the mad-cap journalist, wild
with youth and the joy of letters. And now these things were coming
back to her. The sources of intellectual desire had been drying up
with the blood in her cheeks; but when Rickman came they began to flow
again. When Rickman talked as only he could talk, Miss Roots felt a
faint fervour, a reminiscent thrill. She preened her poor little
thoughts as if for pairing time, when soul fluttered to soul across
the dinner-table. She knew that, intellectually speaking, she had been
assigned to Rickman; for Mrs. Downey held that just as Mr. Rickman was
the first to rouse Miss Roots to conversation, so Miss Roots alone had
the power of drawing him out to the best advantage.
"Indeed?" said Rickman in a voice devoid of all intelligence.
Now if anything could have drawn Mr. Rickman out it was Antimachus of
Colophon. Four weeks ago he would have been more interested in
Antimachus than Miss Roots herself, he would have talked about him by
the hour together. So that when he said nothing but "Indeed?" she
perceived that something was the matter with him. But she also
perceived that he was anxious to be talked to, therefore she talked
on.
Miss Roots was right; though his mind was unable to take in a word she
said to him, he listened, soothed by the singular refinement of her
voice. It was a quality he had not noticed in it four weeks ago.
Suddenly a word flashed out, dividing the evening with a line of
light.
"So you've been staying in Harmouth?"
He started noticeably, and looked at her as if he had not heard. Miss
Roots seemed unaware of having said anything specially luminous; she
repeated her question with a smile.
"Why?" he asked. "Have you been there?"
"I've not only been there, I was born there."
He looked at her. Miss Roots had always been, to say the least of it,
prosaic, and now it was as if poetry had dropped from her lips, as if
she had said, "I too was born in Arcadia."
"I suppose," she said, "you saw that beautiful old house by the
river?"
"Which beautiful old house by the river?"
"Court House. You see it from the bridge. You must have noticed it."
"Oh, yes, I know the one you mean."
"Did you happen to see or hear anything of the lady who lives in it?
Miss Lucia Harden?"
"I--I must have seen her, but I can't exactly say. Do you know her?"
His words seemed to be torn from him in pieces, shaken by the violent
beating of his heart.
"Know her?" said Miss Roots. "I lived five years with her. I taught
her."
He looked at her again in wonder, in wonder and a sort of tenderness.
For a second his heart had come to life again and leapt like a lunatic
to his lips. Happily his wits were there before it. He stroked his
upper lip, as if brushing away some wild phrase that sat there.
"Then I'm sure," he said, contriving a smile, "that Miss Harden is an
exceedingly well educated lady."
Miss Roots' hazel eyes looked up at him intelligently; but as they met
that unnatural smile of gallantry there was a queer compression of her
shrewd and strenuous face. She changed the subject. He wondered if by
any chance she knew; if she corresponded with Miss Harden; if Miss
Harden had mentioned him in the days before her troubles came; if Miss
Roots were trying to test him, to draw him out as she had never drawn
him out before. No, it was not in the least likely that Miss Harden
should have mentioned him; if she had, Miss Roots would have said so.
She would never have set a trap for him; she was a kind and
straightforward little lady. Her queer look meant nothing, it was only
her way of dealing with a compliment.
The sweat on his forehead witnessed to the hot labour of his thought.
He wondered whether anybody had observed it.
Mr. Soper had, and drew his own conclusions.
"'E's been at it again," said Mr. Soper, with significance. But nobody
took any notice of him; and upstairs in the drawing-room that night
his bon-bons failed to charm.
"I suppose you're pleased," said he, approaching his hostess, "now
you've got Mr. Rickman back again?"
A deeper flush than the Dinner could account for was Mrs. Downey's
sole reply.
"'is manners 'aven't improved since 'is residence in the country. I
met 'im in the City to-day--wy, we were on the same slab of
pavement--and 'e went past and took no more notice of me than if I'd
been the Peabody statue."
"Depend upon it, he was full of something."
"Full of unsociability and conceit. And wot is 'e? Wot is 'e? 'Is
father keeps a bookshop."
"A very fine bookshop, too," said Miss Roots. It was the first time
that she had ever spoken of her own accord to Mr. Soper.
"He may have come out lately, but you should have seen the way 'e
began, in a dirty little second 'and shop in the City. A place," said
Mr. Soper, "I wouldn't 'ave put my nose into if I was paid. Crammed
full of narsty, mangy, 'Olloway Street rubbish."
"Look here now," said Mr. Spinks, now scarlet with fury, "you needn't
throw his business in his face, for he's chucked it."
"I don't think any the better of him for that."
"Don't you? Well, he won't worry himself into fits about your
opinion."
"'Ad he got a new berth then, when he flung up the old one?"
Now one thing Mrs. Downey, with all her indulgence, did not permit,
and that was any public allusion to her boarders' affairs. She might
not refuse to discuss them privately with Miss Bramble or Miss Roots,
but that was a very different thing. Therefore she maintained a
dignified silence.
"Well, then, I should like to know 'ow he's going to pay 'is way."
Before the grossness of this insinuation Mrs. Downey abandoned her
policy of silence.
"Some day," said Mrs. Downey, "Mr. Rickman will be in a very different
position to wot he is now. You mark my words." (And nobody marked them
but little Flossie Walker.)
Two tears rolled down Mrs. Downey's face and mingled with the tartan
of her blouse. A murmur of sympathy went round the room, and Mr. Soper
perceived that the rest of the company were sitting in an atmosphere
of emotion from which he was shut out.
"I beg of you, Mr. Soper, that you will let Mr. Rickman be, for once
this evening. Living together as we do, we all ought," said Mrs.
Downey, "to respect each other's feelings."
"Ah--feelings. Wot sort of respect does your young gentleman ever show
to mine? Takes me up one day and cuts me dead the next."
"He wouldn't have dreamed of such a thing if he hadn't been worried in
his mind. Mr. Rickman, Mr. Soper, is in trouble."
Mr. Soper was softened. "Is he? Well, really, I'm very sorry to hear
it, very sorry, I'm sure."
"My fear is," said Mrs. Downey, controlling her voice with difficulty,
"that he may be leaving us."
"If he does, Mrs. Downey, nobody will regret it more than I do."
"Well, I hope it won't come to that."
Mrs. Downey did not consider it politic to add that she was prepared
to make any sacrifice to prevent it. It was as well that Mr. Soper
should realize the consequences of an inability to pay your way. She
was not prepared to make any sacrifice for the sake of keeping _him_.
"But what," said Mrs. Downey to herself, "will the Dinner be without
Mr. Rickman?"
The Dinner was, in her imagination, a function, a literary symposium.
At the present moment, if you were to believe Mrs. Downey, no
dinner-table in London could show such a gathering of remarkable
people. But to none of these remarkable people did Mrs. Downey feel as
she felt to Mr. Rickman, who was the most remarkable of them all. By
her own statement she had enjoyed exceptional opportunities for
studying the ways of genius. There was a room at Mrs. Downey's which
she exhibited with pride as "Mr. Blenkinsop's room." Mr. Blenkinsop
was a poet, and Mr. Rickman had succeeded him. If Mrs. Downey did not
immediately recognize Mr. Rickman as a genius it was because he was so
utterly unlike Mr. Blenkinsop. But she had felt from the first that,
as she expressed it, "there was something about him," though what it
was she couldn't really say. Only from the first she had had that
feeling in her heart--"He will not be permanent." The joy she had in
his youth and mystery was drenched with the pathos of mutability. Mrs.
Downey rebelled against mutability's decree. "Perhaps," she said, "we
might come to some arrangement."
All night long in her bedroom on the ground-floor, Mrs. Downey lay
awake considering what arrangement could be come to. This was but a
discreet way of stating her previous determination to make any
sacrifice if only she could keep him. The sacrifice which Mrs. Downey
(towards the small hours of the morning) found herself contemplating
amounted to no less than four shillings a week. Occupying his present
bed-sitting room he should remain for twenty-one shillings a week
instead of twenty-five.
Unfortunately, at breakfast the next morning their evil genius
prompted Mr. Spinks and Mr. Soper to display enormous appetites, and
Mrs. Downey, to her everlasting shame, was herself tempted of the
devil. A fall of four shillings a week, serious enough in itself, was
not to be contemplated with gentlemen eating their heads off in that
fashion. It would have to be made up in some way, to be taken out of
somebody or something. She would--yes, she would take it out of them
all round by taking it out of the Dinner. And yet when it came to the
point, Mrs. Downey's soul recoiled from the immorality of this
suggestion. There rose before her, as in a vision, the Dinner of the
future, solid in essentials but docked of its splendour, its character
and its pride. No; that must not be. What the Dinner was now it must
remain as long as there were eight boarders to eat it. If Mrs. Downey
made any sacrifice she must make it pure.
"On the condition," said Mrs. Downey by way of putting a business-like
face on it, "on the condition of his permanence."
But it seemed that twenty-one shillings were more than Mr. Rickman
could afford to pay.
Mrs. Downey spent another restless night, and again towards the small
hours of the morning she decided on a plan. After breakfast she
watched Mr. Soper out of the dining-room, closed the door behind him
with offensive and elaborate precaution, and approached Mr. Rickman
secretly. If he would promise not to tell the other gentlemen, she
would let him have the third floor back for eighteen shillings.
Mr. Rickman stood by the door like one in great haste to be gone. He
could not afford eighteen shillings either. He would stay where he was
on the old terms for a fortnight, at the end of which time, he said
firmly, he would be obliged to go. Mr. Rickman's blue eyes were dark
and profound with the pathos of recent illness and suffering, so that
he appeared to be touched by Mrs. Downey's kindness. But he wasn't
touched by it; no, not the least bit in the world. His heart inside
him was like a great lump of dried leather. Mrs. Downey looked at him,
sighed, and said no more. Things were more serious with him than she
had supposed.
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 that 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 when 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.
And so for those last days the Dinner became a high funereal ceremony,
increasing in valedictory splendour that proclaimed unmistakably, "Mr.
Rickman is going."
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 her 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 with the
inscription: "Mr. Rickman, with 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.
"You are all much too good to me, you know."
"Oh, Mr. Rickman, you've been so awfully good to me."
He looked round a little anxiously and perceived that they were
alone.
"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 that 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 her 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.
By this time Rickman's heart was exceedingly uncomfortable inside him.
He had hated Soper.
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."
"Don't fret, Spinky. I'm almost afraid that I shall never be tight
again in this world."
"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,
there 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.
He shook his head.
"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."
"Well--it depends upon the food."
"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 that 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.