Poppy placed her minute figure defiantly between Rickman and her rival of the open door. She had exhausted her emotions in those wild cries, and was prepared to enjoy the moment which produced in her the hallucination of self-conscious virtue.
The woman, voluble and fierce, began to describe Miss Grace"s character in powerful but somewhat exaggerated language, appealing to the new-comers to vindicate her accuracy. Poppy seated herself on the bed and held a pocket-handkerchief to her virtuous nose. It was the dumb and dignified rebuke of Propriety in an ermine tippet, to Vice made manifest in the infamy of rags. The Beaver retreated in terror on to the landing, where she stood clutching the little basket of jellies and things which she had brought, as if she feared that it might be torn from her in the violence of the scene. Spinks, convulsed with anguish by the sight of his friend lying there unconscious, could only offer an inarticulate expostulation. It was the signal for the woman to burst into pa.s.sionate self-defence.
"I ain"t took nothing "cept wot the boss "e myde me. "Go fer a doctor?" ses "e. "No you don"t. I don"t "ave no ----y doctor messing round "ere an" cartin" "im orf to the "orspital afore "e"s paid "is rent." Ses "e "I"m--"
The entrance of Maddox and Rankin checked the hideous flow. They were followed by the porters of the hospital and the nurse in charge. Her presence commanded instantaneous calm.
"There are far too many people in this room," said she. Her expelling glance fell first on Poppy, throned on the bed, then on the convulsive Spinks. She turned more gently to Rankin, in whose mouth she saw remonstrance, and to Maddox, in whose eyes she read despair. "It will really be better for him to take him to the hospital."
"No," cried Spinks, darting in again from the landing, "take him to my house, 45, Dalmeny Av--" but the Beaver plucked him by the sleeve; for she thought of Muriel Maud.
"No, no, take him to mine, 87, Suss.e.x Square," said Rankin, and he insisted. But in the end he suffered himself to be overruled; for he thought darkly of his wife.
"I"d give half my popularity if I could save him," he said to Maddox.
"Half your popularity won"t save him, nor yet the whole of it," said Maddox savagely. In that moment they hated themselves and each other for the wrong they had done him. Their hearts smote them as they thought of the brutalities of Sunday night.
The woman still held her ground in the centre of the room where she stood scowling at the nurse as she busied herself about the bed.
"I"d a seen to "im ef "e"d a let me," she reiterated.
Maddox dealt with her. He flicked a sovereign on to the table. "Look here," said he, "suppose you take that and go out quietly."
There was a momentary glitter in her eyes, but her fingers hesitated.
"I didn" fink "e "ad no frien"s wen I come in." It was her way of intimating that what she had done she had not done for money.
"All right, take it."
She drew out a filthy grey flannel bag from the bosom of her gown and slipped the gold into it. And still she hesitated. She could not understand why so large a sum was offered for such slight services as she had rendered. It must have been for--Another thought stirred in her brute brain.
They were raising Rickman in his bed before taking him away. His shoulders were supported on the nurse"s arm, his head dropped on her breast. The posture revealed all the weakness of his slender body. The woman turned. And as she looked at the helpless figure she was visited by a dim sense of something strange and beautiful and pure, something (his helplessness perhaps) that was outraged by her presence, and called for vindication.
""E never "ad no truck with me," she said. It struck Maddox that the denial had a sublimity and pathos of its own. She dropped the bag into her lean bosom and went out.
And the porters wrapped him in his blankets, and laid him on a stretcher, and carried him out; past Maddox and Rankin who turned their heads away; past Flossie who shrank a little from the blankets, but cried softly to see him go; and past the woman standing on her threshold. And in that manner he pa.s.sed Horace Jewdwine coming up the stair too late. And all that Jewdwine could do was to stand back and let him pa.s.s.
It was Jewdwine"s fear that made him uncover, as in the presence of the dead.
CHAPTER LXXIII
When Rankin, Maddox and Jewdwine stood alone in the garret whence they had seen Rickman carried away from them, remorse drove all hope of his recovery from their hearts. They learnt some of the truth about him from the woman in the next room, a keen observer of human nature.
Jewdwine and Rankin, when they too had paid her for her services, were glad to escape from the intolerable scene. Maddox stayed behind, collecting what he could only think of as Rickman"s literary remains.
He found in the table drawer three unpublished articles, a few poems, and the First Act of the second and unfinished tragedy, saved by its obscure position at the back of the drawer. The woman owned to having lit the fire with the rest. Maddox cursed and groaned as he thought of that destruction. He knew that many poems which followed _Saturnalia_ had remained unpublished. Had they too been taken to light the fire?
He turned the garret upside down in search of the missing ma.n.u.scripts.
At last in a cupboard, he came upon a leather bag. It was locked and he could find no key, but he wrenched it open with the poker. It contained many ma.n.u.scripts; among them the Nine and Twenty Sonnets, and the testament concerning them. He read the Sonnets, but not the other doc.u.ment which was in a sealed envelope. He found also a bundle of d.i.c.ky Pilkington"s receipts and his last letter threatening foreclosure. And when he had packed up the books (Lucia"s books) and redeemed Rickman"s clothes from the p.a.w.n-shop, he took all these things away with him for safety.
There was little he could do for Rickman, but he promised himself the pleasure of settling d.i.c.ky"s claim. But even that satisfaction was denied him. For d.i.c.ky had just renewed his bill for a nominal three months. Nominal only. d.i.c.ky had in view a magnificent renunciation, and he flatly refused to treat with Maddox or anybody else. He was completely satisfied with this conclusion; it meant that Rickman, for all his style and pluck, had lost the game and that he, Pilkington, had done the handsome thing, as he could do it when the fancy took him. For d.i.c.ky"s heart had been touched by the tale that Poppy told him, and it melted altogether when he went and saw for himself poor Ricky lying in his cot in the North-Western Hospital. He had a great deal of nice feeling about him after all, had d.i.c.ky.
Terrible days followed Rickman"s removal to the hospital; days when his friends seemed justified in their sad conviction; days when the doctors gave up hope; days when he would relapse after some brief recovery; days when he kept them all in agonizing suspense.
But Rickman did not die. As they said, it was not in him to take that exquisitely mean revenge. It was not in him to truckle to the tradition that ordains that unfortunate young poets shall starve in garrets and die in hospitals. He had always been an upsetter of conventions, and a law unto himself. So there came a day, about the middle of March, when he astonished them all by appearing among them suddenly in Maddox"s rooms, less haggard than he had been that night when he sat starving at Rankin"s dinner-table.
And as he came back to them, to Jewdwine, to Maddox and to Rankin, they each could say no more to him than they had said five years ago.
"What a fool you were, Rickman. Why didn"t you come to _me_?" But when the others had left, Maddox put his hands on Rickman"s shoulders and they looked each other in the face.
"I say, Ricky, what did you do it for?"
But that was more than Rickman could explain, even to Maddox.
They had all contended which should receive him when he came out of hospital; but it was settled that for the present he should remain with Maddox in his rooms. There d.i.c.ky, absolutely prepared to do the handsome thing, called upon him at an early date. d.i.c.ky had promised himself some exquisite sensations in the moment of magnanimity; but the moment never came. Rickman remained firm in his determination that every shilling of the debt should be paid and paid by him; it was more than covered by the money Maddox advanced for his literary remains.
d.i.c.ky had to own that the plucky little fellow had won his game, but he added, "You couldn"t have done it, Razors, if I hadn"t given you points."
The great thing was that he had done it, and that the Harden library was his, was Lucia"s. It only remained to tell her, and to hand it over to her. He had long ago provided for this difficult affair. He wrote, as he had planned to write, with a judicious hardness, brevity and restraint. He told her that he desired to see her on some business connected with the Harden library, in which he was endeavouring to carry out as far as possible his father"s last wishes. He asked to be allowed to call on her some afternoon in the following week. He thanked her for her letter without further reference, and he remained--"sincerely"? No, "faithfully" hers.
He told Maddox that he thought of going down to Devonshire to recruit.
CHAPTER LXXIV
Lucia was suffering from the disagreeable strain of a divided mind. To begin with she was not altogether pleased with Mr. Rickman. He had taken no notice of the friendly little letter she had written about the Elegy, her evident intention being to give him pleasure. She had written it on impulse, carried away by her ardent admiration. That was another of those pa.s.sionate indiscreet things, which were followed by torments of her pride. And the torments had followed. His two months"
silence had reproved her ardour, had intimated to her that he was in no mood to enter in at the door which she had closed to him three years ago. She took it that he had regarded her poor little olive branch as an audacity. And now that he _had_ written there was not a word about the subject of her letter. He had only written because business compelled him, and his tone was not only cold, but positively austere.
But, she reflected, business after all did not compel him to come down and see her. Having reached this point she became aware that her heart was beating most uncomfortably at the bare idea of seeing him. For the first time this antic.i.p.ation inspired her with anxiety and fear. Until their last meeting in Tavistock Place there had been in all their intercourse something intangible and rare, something that, though on her part it had lacked the warmth of love, she had acknowledged to be finer than any friendship. That beautiful intangible quality had perished in the stress of their final meeting. And even if it came to life again it could never be the same, or so she thought. She had perceived how much its permanence had depended on external barriers, on the social gulf, and on the dividing presence of another woman. She could not separate him from his genius; and his genius had long ago overleapt the social gulf. And now, without poor Flossie, without the safeguard of his engagement, she felt herself insecure and shelterless. More than ever since he had overleapt that barrier too.
But though Lucia had found out all these things, she had not yet found out why it was that she had been so glad to hear that Keith Rickman was going to be married, nor why she had been so pa.s.sionately eager to keep him to his engagement. In any case she could not have borne to be the cause of unhappiness to another woman; and that motive was so natural that it served for all.
As things had turned out, if he had married, that, she had understood, would have been such a closing of the door as would have shut him out for ever. And now that he was knocking at the door again, now that there was no reason why, once opened, it should not remain open, she began to be afraid of what might enter in with him. She made up her mind that she would not let him in. So she sat down and wrote a cold little note to say that she was afraid she would not be able to see him next week. Could he not explain the business in writing? She took that letter to the post herself. And as each step brought her nearer to the inevitable act, the conviction grew on her that this conduct of hers was cowardly, and unworthy both of him and of herself. A refusal to see him was a confession of fear, and fear a.s.sumed the existence of the very thing his letter had ignored. It was absurd too, if he had come to see that his feeling for her was (as she persisted in believing it to be) a piece of poetic folly, an illusion of the literary imagination. She turned back and tore up that cold little note, and wrote another that said she would be very glad to see him any day next week, except Friday. There was no reason why she should have excepted Friday; but it sounded more business-like somehow.
She did not take Kitty into her confidence, and in this she failed to perceive the significance of her own secrecy. She told herself that there was no need to ask Kitty"s advice, because she knew perfectly well already what Kitty"s advice would be.
He came on Tuesday. Monday was too early for his self-respect, Wednesday too late for his impatience. He had looked to find everything altered in and about Court House; and he saw, almost with surprise, the same April flowers growing in the green garden, and the same beech-tree dreaming on the lawn. He recognized the black rifts in its trunk and the shining sweep of its branches overhead. The door was opened by Robert, and Robert remembered him. There was a shade more gravity in the affectionate welcome, but then Robert was nine years older. He was shown into the drawing-room, and it, too, was much as he had left it nine years ago.
Kitty Palliser was there; she rose to meet him with her irrepressible friendliness, undiminished by nine years. There was nothing cold and business-like about Kitty.
"Will you tell Miss Harden?" said she to the detached, retreating Robert. Then she held out her hand. "I am very glad to see you." But a wave of compa.s.sion rather than of gladness swept over her face as she looked at him. She made him sit down, and gave him tea. There was a marked gentleness in all her movements, unlike the hilarious lady she used to be.
The minutes went by and Lucia did not appear. He could not attend to what Kitty was saying. His eyes were fixed on the door that looked as if it were never going to open. Kitty seemed to bear tenderly with his abstraction. Once he glanced round the room, recognizing familiar objects. He had expected, after d.i.c.ky"s descent on Court House, to find nothing recognizable in it. Kitty was telling him how an uncle of hers had lent them the house for a year, how he had bought it furnished, and how, but for the dismantled library and portrait gallery, it was pretty much as it had been in Miss Harden"s time. So unchanged was it and its atmosphere that Rickman felt himself in the presence of a destiny no less unchanging and familiar. He had come on business as he had done nine years ago; and he felt that the events of that time must in some way repeat themselves, that when he was alone with Lucia he would say to her such things as he had said before, that there would be differences, misunderstandings, as before, and that his second coming would end in misery and separation like the first. It seemed to him that Kitty, kind Kitty, had the same perception and foreboding. Thus he interpreted her very evident compa.s.sion. She meant to console him.
"Robert remembers you," said she.