"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 n.o.body 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, n.o.body 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 appet.i.tes, 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 d.i.c.ky 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 d.i.c.ky, 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 pa.s.sably 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 embarra.s.sed 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 att.i.tude, 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."