"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.
CHAPTER x.x.xIX
In the act of death, as in everything else that he had ever done, Sir Frederick Harden had hit on the most inappropriate, the most inconvenient moment--the moment, that is to say, when Horace Jewdwine had been appointed editor of _The Museion_, when every minute of his day was taken up with forming his staff and thoroughly reorganizing the business of his paper. It was, besides, the long-desired moment, for which all his years at Oxford had been a training and a consecration; it was that supreme, that nuptial moment in which an ambitious man embraces for the first time his Opportunity.
The news of Lucia"s trouble found him, as it were, in the ardours and preoccupations of the honeymoon.
It was characteristic of Jewdwine that in this courting of Opportunity there had been no violent pursuit, no dishevelment, no seizing by the hair. He had hung back, rather; he had waited, till he had given himself value, till Opportunity had come to him, with delicate and ceremonious approach. Still, his head had swum a little at her coming, so that in the contemplation of his golden bride he had for the time being lost sight of Lucia.
As for marrying his cousin, that was a question with which for the present he felt he really could not deal. No doubt it would crop up again later on to worry him.
Meanwhile he gave to Lucia every minute that he could spare from the allurements of his golden bride. For more than a fortnight her affairs had been weighing on him like a nightmare. But only like a nightmare, a thing that troubled him chiefly in the watches of the night, leaving his waking thoughts free to go about the business of the day, a thing against which he felt that it was impossible to contend. For Lucia"s affairs had the vagueness, the confusion of a nightmare. Details no doubt there were; but they had disappeared in the immensity of the general effect. Being powerless to deal with them himself, he had sent down his own solicitor to a.s.sist in disentangling them. But as the full meaning of the disaster sank into him he realized with the cold pang of disappointment that their marriage must now be indefinitely postponed.
To be sure, what had as yet pa.s.sed between them hardly amounted to an understanding. All Jewdwine"s understandings had been with himself.
But the very fact that he was not prepared to act on such an understanding made him feel as responsible as if it actually existed.
Being conscious of something rather more than cousinly tenderness in the past, he really could not be sure that he was not already irretrievably committed. Not that Lucia"s manner had ever taken anything of the sort for granted. He had nothing to fear from her. But he had much (he told himself) to fear from his own conscience and his honour.
All this was the result of deliberate reflection. In the beginning of the trouble, at the first news of his uncle"s death, his sympathy with Lucia had been free from any sordid anxiety for the future which he then conceived to be inseparably bound up with his own. Rickman"s letter was the first intimation that anything had gone wrong. It was a shock none the less severe because it was not altogether a surprise.
It was just like his uncle Frederick to raise money on the Harden Library. The shock lay in Rickman"s a.s.sumption that he, Jewdwine, was prepared, instantly, at ten days" notice, to redeem it. It was what he would have liked to have done; what, if he had been a rich man, he infallibly would have done; what even now, with his limited resources, he might do if it were not for the risk. Rickman had a.s.sured him that there was no risk, had implied almost that it was an opportunity, a splendid investment for his money. He could see for himself that it was his chance of doing _the_ beautiful thing for Lucia. Looking back upon it all afterwards, long afterwards, he found consolation in the thought that his first, or nearly his first, impulse had been generous.