Meanwhile, of a Sunday evening, Miss Poppy Grace wondered why
Ricky-ticky never by any chance appeared upon his balcony. At last,
coming home about ten o'clock from one of his walks to Hampstead, he
found Poppy leaning out over _her_ balcony most unmistakably on the
look-out.
"Come in and have some supper," said she.
"No thanks, I fancy it's a little late."
"Better late than never, when it's supper with _me_. Catch!" And
Poppy, in defiance of all propriety, tossed her latch-key over the
balcony. And somehow that latch-key had to be returned. He did not use
it, but rang, with the intention of handing it to the servant; an
intention divined and frustrated by Poppy, who opened the door to him
herself.
"Don't go away," she said, "I've got something to tell you."
"Not now, I think--"
Her eyes were hideous to him in their great rings of paint and bistre.
"Why ever not? It'll only tyke a minute. Come in; there's nobody up
there that matters."
And because he had no desire to be brutal or uncivil, he went up into
the room he knew so well. It being summer, the folding doors were
thrown wide open, and in the room beyond they came upon a large lady
in a dirty tea-gown, eating lobster. For Poppy, now that she saw
respectability departing from her, held out to it a pathetic little
hand, and the tea-gown, pending an engagement as heavy matron on the
provincial stage, was glad enough to play Propriety in Miss Grace's
drawing-room. To-night Poppy made short work of Propriety. She waited
with admirable patience while the large lady (whom she addressed
affectionately as Tiny) followed up the last thin trail of mayonnaise;
but when Tiny showed a disposition to toy with the intricacies of an
empty claw, Poppy protested.
"Hurry up and clear out, there's a dear. I want to give Rickets his
supper, and we haven't got a minute to spare."
And Tiny, who seemed to know her business, hurried up and cleared out.
But Rickets didn't want any supper, and Poppy was visibly abstracted
and depressed. She mingled whipped cream with minute fragments of
lobster, and finally fell to torturing a sandwich with a spoon; and
all with an immense affectation of not having a minute to spare.
"Well, Ryzors," she said at last (and her accent jarred him horribly),
"this is very strynge behyviour."
"Which?"
"Which? Do you know you haven't been near me for two months?"
He laughed uneasily. "I couldn't be near you when I was away."
"Never said you could. But what did you go away for?"
"Business."
"Too busy to write, I suppose?"
"Much too busy."
She rose, and with one hand on his shoulder steered him into the front
room.
"Sit down," she said. "And don't look so sulky. I want to talk to you
sensibly."
He sat down where he had sat that night two months ago, on the Polar
bear skin. She sat down too, with a sweeping side-long movement of her
hips that drew her thin skirts close about her. She contemplated the
effect a little dubiously, then with shy nervous fingers loosened and
shook out the folds. He leaned back, withdrawn as far as possible into
the corner of the divan. The associations of the place were
unspeakably loathsome to him.
"Look here, dear"--(In Poppy's world the term of endearment went for
nothing; it was simply the stamp upon the current coin of comradeship.
If only that had been the beginning and the end between them!)
"I haven't a minute--but, I'm going to ask you something" (though
Poppy hadn't a minute she was applying herself very leisurely to the
making of cigarettes). "Don't go and get huffy at what I'm going to
say. Do you happen to owe Dicky anything?"
"Why?"
"Tell you why afterwards. _Do_ you owe him anything?"
"Oh, well--a certain amount--Why?"
"Why? Because I think he owes _you_ something. And that's a grudge. It
isn't my business, but if I were you, Rickets, I'd pay him orf and
have done with him."
"Oh, that's all right. I'm safe enough."
"You? It's just you who isn't. Dicky's not a bad sort, in his way. All
the same, he'd sell you up as soon as look at you. Unless--" (for a
moment her bright eyes clouded, charged with the melancholy meanings
of the world) "Unless you happened to be an orf'ly pretty woman." She
laid her right leg across her left knee and struck a vesta on the heel
of her shoe.
"Then, of course, he'd sooner look at me."
Poppy puffed at her cigarette and threw the vesta into the grate with
a dexterous jerk of her white forearm. "Look at you first. Sell you
up--after." Then Poppy burst into song--
"Oh, he is such a nice little boy,
When there's nothing you do to annoy;
But he's apt to stand aloof
If you arsk him for the oof,
And it's then that he looks coy.
Oh, he'll show the cloven hoof,
If you put him to the proof.
When you want him to hand you the boodle
He's _not_ such a nice little boy.
"Yes, dickee, _I_ see you!"
The canary, persuaded by Poppy's song that it was broad daylight, was
awake and splashing in his bath. Again in Poppy's mind (how
unnecessarily) he stood for the respectabilities and proprieties; he
was an understudy for Tiny of the dirty tea-gown.
"Going?"
"Yes. I must go."
"Wait." She rose and held him by the collar of his coat, a lapel in
each small hand. He grasped her wrists by an instinctive movement of
self-preservation, and gently slackened her hold. She gave his coat a
little shake. "What's the matter with you, Rickets? You're such a
howling swell."
Her eyes twinkled in the old way, and he smiled in spite of himself.
"Say, I'm a little nuisance, Rickets, _say_ I'm a little nuisance."
"You are a little nuisance.
"A d----d little nuisance."
"A d----d little nuisance."
"Ah, now you feel better, don't you? Poor Ricky-ticky, don't you be
afraid. It's only a _little_ nuisance. It'll never be a big one. It's
done growing. That is, I won't rag you any more, if you'll tell me one
thing--oh, what a whopper of a sigh!--Promise me you'll pay Dicky
off."
"All right. I'll pay him."
"To-morrow?"
"To-morrow, then. Don't, Poppy. I--I've got a sore throat." For Poppy,
standing on tip-toe, had made an effort to embrace him.
"I sy, if you blush like that, Rickets, you'll have a fit. Poor dear!
_Did_ I crumple his nice little stylish collar!"
He endured while she smoothed out an imaginary wrinkle, her head very
much on one side. "You see, Razors, we've been such chums. Whatever
happens, I want to be all right and straight with you."
"What should happen?"
"Oh, anything." Again there was that troubling of the bright shallows
of her eyes. "You remember larst time you were here?" (his shudder
told her that he remembered well). "I _did_ try to send you away,
didn't I?"
"As far as I can remember, you did."
"What did you think I did it for?"
"I suppose, because you wanted me to go."
"Stupid! I did it because I wanted you to _stay_." She looked into his
eyes and the light went out of her own; among its paint and powder her
audacity lay dead. It was as if she saw on his face the shadow of
Lucia Harden, and knew that her hour had come.
She met it laughing. "Good-night, Ricky-ticky."
As he took her hand he muttered something about being "fearfully
sorry."
"Sorry?" Poppy conjured up a poor flickering ghost of her inimitable
wink. "The champagne was bad, dear. Don't you worry."
When he had left her, she flung herself face downwards on the divan.
"Oh, dicky, will you hold your horrid little tongue?" But as she
sobbed aloud, the canary, symbol of invincible Propriety, rocked on
his perch and shook over her his piercing and exultant song.
Rickman was sorry for her, but the sight and touch of her were hateful
to him. He took her advice however. He had had good luck with some
articles, and he called on Pilkington the next afternoon and paid him
his thirty pounds with the interest. Dicky was in a good humour and
inclined to be communicative. He congratulated him on his present
berth, and informed him that Rickman's was "going it." The old man had
just raised four thousand on the Harden library, the only security
that he, Dicky, would accept.
"I suppose," said Rickman simply, "you'd no idea of its value when you
let him buy it?"
Dicky stared through his eye-glass with his blue eyes immense and
clear.
"My dear fellow, do you take me for a d----d fool?"
So that had been Dicky's little game? Trust Dicky.
And yet for the time being, held in the opposing grip of two firm
cupidities, it was safe, the great Harden library, once the joy of
scholars, loved with such high intellectual passion, and now the
centre of so many hot schemes and rivalries and lusts. Now that the
work of sacrilege was complete, housed at last in the Gin Palace of
Art, it stood, useless in its desecrated beauty, cumbering the shelves
whence no sale would remove it until either Rickman's or Pilkington
let go. So far the Hardens were avenged.