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, that 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
her that 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 her
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 that 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 that 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 that
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.
"Well, Flossie, if you really care anything about style--"
"Style?" She stroked down the front of her jacket with a delicious
movement of her little hands. "Don't you like it?"
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."
That remark was (for the Beaver) really so witty that he leaned back
in his chair and laughed at it. But the Beaver was in no laughing
humour. "Look here," she said, "you _say_ that if you write those
stylish things that take up such a lot of time, they only pay you less
for them."
"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 her 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 there 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. "What did you do that for?"
"I did it because it was right. I didn't like the business."
"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."
"I know--they make a lot of money that way."
"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."
"You don't make so very much out of that, do you? Is that the reason
why we have to wait?"
"I'm afraid so. But I hope I shall be something more than a journalist
some day."
"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 that 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 with 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 somewhere
and 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?"
"Well--"
"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 rather walk," said she, "indeed I would."
"Nonsense. Come, bundle in."
"Please--please let me walk." He helped her in and closed the apron
sharply. He was annoyed. That was the second time she had insisted on
his poverty. He thought she had a little too much the air of preparing
herself to be a poor man's wife. Of course it was pretty of her; but
he thought it would have been prettier still if she had let it alone.
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.
"I hope," said Flossie politely, "you're comfortable where you are
now?"
"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.