"I was just going, Miss Grace. But--if you want me to stay a little longer, I"ll stay."
"You"d better _go_," said Miss Grace.
Her eyes followed him sullenly as he went; so did Pilkington"s.
"Well," she said, "I suppose that"s what you wanted?"
"Yes, but there"s no good overdoing the thing, you know. This," said Pilkington, "is a d.a.m.ned sight too expensive game for him to play."
"He"s all right. It wasn"t his fault. I let him drink too much champagne."
"What did you do that for? Couldn"t you see he"d had enough already?"
"How was I to know? He"s nicer when he"s drunk than other people are when they"re sober."
He looked at her critically. "I know all about him. What I"d like to know is what you see in him."
Poppy returned his look with interest. Coa.r.s.eness in d.i.c.ky Pilkington"s eyes sat brilliant and unashamed.
"Would you? So would I. P"raps it"s wot I don"t see in him."
Now subtlety was the last thing d.i.c.ky expected from Poppy, and it aroused suspicion.
Whatever Poppy"s instructions were she had evidently exceeded them.
Poppy read his thoughts with accuracy.
"I only did what you told me. If you don"t like it, you can finish the job yourself. I"m tired," said Poppy, wearily coiling up her hair.
She was no longer in spirits.
CHAPTER XII
A tiny jet of gas made a glimmer in the fan-light of Mrs. Downey"s boarding-house next door. Mrs. Downey kept it burning there for Mr.
Rickman.
Guided by this beacon, he reached his door, escaping many dangers. For the curbstone was a rocking precipice, and the street below it a grey and shimmering stream, that rolled, and flowed, and rolled, and never rested. The houses, too, were so drunk as to be dangerous. They bowed over him, swaying hideously from their foundations. They seemed to be attracted, just as he was, by that abominable slimy flow and glister of the asphalt. Another wriggle of the latch-key, and they would be over on the top of him.
He approached his bedroom candle with infinite precaution. He had tried to effect a noiseless entry, but every match, as it spurted and went out, was a little fiendish spit-fire tongue betraying him. From behind a bedroom door, ajar at the dark end of the pa.s.sage, the voice of Mrs. Downey gently reminded him not to forget to turn the gas out.
There was a bright clear s.p.a.ce in his brain which Pilkington"s champagne had not penetrated, so intolerably clear and bright that it hurt him to look at it. In that s.p.a.ce three figures reeled and whirled; three, yet one and the same; Poppy of the coster-dance, Poppy of the lunatic ballet, and Poppy of the Arabian night. Beyond the bright s.p.a.ce and the figures there was a dark place that was somehow curtained off. Something had happened there, he could not see what.
And in trying to see he forgot to turn the gas out. He turned it up instead.
He left it blazing away at the rate of a penny an hour, a witness against him in the face of morning. But he did not forget to sit down at the bottom of the stairs and take his boots off, lest he should wake Flossie Walker, the little clerk, who worked so hard, and had to be up so early. He left them on the stairs, where Flossie tripped over them in the morning.
On the first landing a young man in a frowsy sleeping suit stood waiting for him. A fresh, sober, and thoroughly wide-awake young man.
"Gurra bed, Spinks," said Mr. Rickman severely to the young man.
"All right, old man." Mr. Spinks lowered his voice to a discreet whisper. "I say--do you want me to help you find your legs?"
"Wish you"d fin" any par" of me that is n" legs," said Mr. Rickman.
And he went on to explain and to demonstrate to Mr. Spinks the resemblance (amounting to ident.i.ty) between himself and the Manx arms.
"Three legs, rampant, on the bend, proper. Amazin", isn"t it?"
"It _is_ amazin"."
Feigning surprise and interest, Mr. Spinks relieved him of his candle; and under that escort Mr. Rickman managed to attain to the second floor.
Mr. Rickman"s room was bared to the glimmer of a lamp in the street below. He plunged and stumbled through a litter of books. The glimmer fell on the books, on many books; books that covered three walls from floor to ceiling; books ranged above and beside the little camp-bed in the corner; books piled on the table and under it. The glimmer fell, too, on the mantel-piece, reflected from the gla.s.s above it, right on to the white statuette of the Venus of Milo that supported a photograph of a dancing Poppy--Poppy, who laughed in the face of the G.o.ddess with insatiable impudence, and flung to the immortal forehead the flick of her shameless foot. White and austere gleamed the Venus (if Venus she be, for some say she is a Wingless Victory, and Rickman, when sober, inclined to that opinion). White and austere gleamed the little camp-bed in the corner. He ignored Mr. Spinks" discreet suggestion. He wasn"t going to undress to please Spinks or anybody.
He"d see Spinks in another world first. He wasn"t going to bed like a potman; he was going to sit up like a poet and write. That"s what he was going to do. This was his study.
With shaking hands he lit the lamp on his study table; the wick sputtered, and the light in his head jigged horribly with the jigging of the flame. It was as if he was being stabbed with little knives of light.
He plunged his head into a basin of cold water, threw open his window and leaned out into the pure regenerating night. Spinks sat down on a chair and watched him, his fresh, handsome face clouded with anxiety.
He adored Rickman sober; but for Rickman drunk he had a curious yearning affection. If anything, he preferred him in that state. It seemed to bring him nearer to him. Spinks had never been drunk in his life, but that was his feeling.
Rickman laid his arms upon the window sill and his head upon his arms.
""The blessed damozel leaned out,"" he said (the idea in his mind being that _he_ was a blessed damozel).
""From the gold bar of heaven.""
("Never knew they had "em up there," murmured Spinks.)
""Her eyes were deeper than the depth of waters stilled at even"--Oh--my--G.o.d!"
A great sigh shook him, and went shuddering into the night like the pa.s.sing of a lost soul. He got up and staggered to the table, and grasped it by the edge, nearly upsetting the lamp. The flare in his brain had died down as the lamp burnt steadily. Under its shade a round of light fell on his Euripides, open at the page he had been reading the night before.
[Greek: ELENe]
He saw it very black, with the edges a little wavering, a little blurred, as if it had been burnt by fire into the whiteness of the page. Below, the smaller type of a chorus reeled and shook through all its lines. Set up by an intoxicated compositor.
Under the Euripides was the piled up ma.n.u.script of Rickman"s great neo-cla.s.sic drama, _Helen in Leuce_. He implored Spinks to read it.
(Spinks was a draper"s a.s.sistant and uncultured.) He thrust the ma.n.u.script into his hands.
"There," he said, "rea" that. Tha"s the sor" o" thing I write when I"m drunk. Couldn" do it now t" save my life. Temp"rance been _my_ ruin."
He threw himself on his bed.
"It"s all righ". At nine o"clock to-morrow morning, no--at a quar"er pas" nine, I mean three quar"ers pas" nine, I shall be drunk. Not disgustingly and rid.i.c.klelously, as you are, Spinky, at this minute, but soo-p-p-perbubbly, loominously, divinely drunk! You don" know what I could do if I was only drunk."
"Oh, come, I shouldn"t complain, if I was you. You"ll do pretty well as you are, I think."
With an almost maternal tenderness and tact Mr. Spinks contrived to separate the poet from his poem. He then undressed him. That is to say, by alternate feats of strength, dexterity and cunning, he succeeded in disengaging him from the looser portion of his clothing.