He had only got ten months to raise the money in. It would probably
take him that time to find regular work, if he found it. There was not
an editor in London to whom the initials S.K.R. conveyed the unique
significance they did to Jewdwine, to Maddox and to Rankin. He now
thought with regret of the introductions he had refused in the
insolence of his youth. To Hanson for instance. Hanson was a good
sort, and he might have come in very handy now. A few other names
passed before him, men whom it would be useless for him to approach.
There was old Mackinnon, though, who was a good sort, too. He had
long ago forgotten that ancient jest which compared his head with the
dome of the Museum. He had been the most frequent entertainer of
adventitious prose. Mackinnon might be good for something. He had half
a mind to look him up. The thought of Mackinnon made him feel almost
cheerful again.

Before he went to bed he put ten pounds into a tobacco-jar on an
inaccessible shelf, keeping one pound three and eightpence for the
expenses of the coming week. The next morning he looked Mackinnon up.

Now Mackinnon's head was so far unlike the dome of the Museum that it
was by no means impervious to light; and where Mackinnon's interests
were concerned it was positively limpid in its transparency. So that
Mackinnon was not slow to perceive the advantages of an alliance with
impecunious brilliance. The brilliance he was already familiar with,
the impecuniosity he inferred from the more than usual offhandedness
of Rickman's manner. The war had hit Mackinnon also; the affairs of
the _Literary Observer_ were not so flourishing as Mackinnon could
have wished, and he was meditating some reductions in his staff. He
reflected that young men in Rickman's mood and Rickman's circumstances
were sometimes willing to do the work of two journalists for a lower
salary than he had been paying to one. And when he further learnt that
Rickman had left _Metropolis_, he felt that besides these solid
advantages a subtler satisfaction would be his. Jewdwine, corruptible
or incorruptible, had not endeared himself to other editors, and even
the sober Mackinnon was unable to resist the temptation of annexing
the great man's great man. But the dome-like head, impenetrable in
this, betrayed none of the thoughts that were going on inside it, and
in the bargaining that followed it was concealed from Rickman that his
connection with _Metropolis_ had in any way increased his market
value. He made the best terms he could; and the end of the interview
found him retained on Mackinnon's staff as leader, writer and dramatic
critic at a salary of two pounds ten a week. Mackinnon had offered two
pounds, Rickman had held out for three, and they split the difference.
As the poet left the room Mackinnon turned to his desk with a smile of
satisfaction that seemed to illuminate the dome. He had effected a
considerable saving by that little transaction.

And for the poet it did not prove so bad a bargain after all. He had
now a more ample leisure; and for the first time in his journalistic
career he knew what it was to be left mercifully, beneficently alone.
He had cut himself off from all his friends; and though at times his
heart suffered, his genius profited by the isolation. It was not until
he had escaped from Jewdwine that he realized what that special
deliverance meant for him. He could not well have encountered a more
subtle and dangerous influence than that of the author of the
_Prolegomena to Æsthetics_. Jewdwine had been hostile to his genius
from the beginning, though he had cared for it, too, in his imperious
way. He would have tamed the young, ungovernably ardent thing and
wedded it to his own beautiful and passionless idea; an achievement
which would have reflected some glory on Jewdwine as the matchmaker.
But he had left off caring when he found that he had less to gain from
Rickman's genius than from his talent, and had turned his attention to
the protection and encouragement of the more profitable power. As that
talent ran riot in the columns of _Metropolis_ Rickman himself was
unaware how relentlessly it drew on the vitality that sustained his
genius. It was Jewdwine's excuse that the vitality seemed
inexhaustible.

Jewdwine, as he had once said, dreaded the divine fire. He would
ultimately have subdued the flame by a persistent demand for
brilliance of another kind. Even Maddox (who adored his Rickman) had
not seen that his Rickman, his young divinity, must change and grow.
He admired his immortal adolescence; he would have him young and
lyrical for ever. He had discovered everything in him but the dramatic
poet he was yet to be. Thus, through the very fervour of his
superstition, Maddox had proved hostile, too. But in Mackinnon Rickman
found no malign disturbing influence, no influence of any kind at all.
No thought of capturing his genius or exploiting his talent had ever
entered into the dome-like head. Mackinnon, his mortal nature appeased
by his victory over Jewdwine and further gratified by the
consciousness of having secured a good man cheap, made no exorbitant
claims on his contributor. Let Rickman write what he would, Mackinnon
knew he had got his money's worth.

Rickman squared himself nobly for the next round with fortune. And
Dicky, in his attitude of enthusiastic but not uninterested spectator,
cheered him on, secretly exultant. Dicky was now serenely sure of his
odds. It was war-time; and Rickman could not hold out long after such
an injury to his income.

But Rickman, unconquered, made matters even by reducing his
expenditure. It was winter, and the severity of the weather would have
ruined him in coal alone had he not abandoned the superstition of a
fire. With an oil-stove there was always some slight danger of
asphyxia, but Rickman loved the piquancy of danger. By many such
ingenious substitutions he effected so prodigious a saving that
three-fifths or more of his salary went into the tobacco-jar and
thence into Dicky Pilkington's pocket. He rejoiced to see it go, so
completely had he subdued the lust of spending, so ardently embraced
the life of poverty; if it were poverty to live on a pound a week. Was
it not rather wanton, iniquitous extravagance to have allowed himself
three times that amount? But for that his position at this moment
would have been such that three months on the _Literary Observer_
would have cleared him. As he stood, the remainder of his debt loomed
monstrous under the shadow of next November.

And it was this moment (when he should have been turning his talent
into ready-money by unremitting journalism), that he chose for
finishing his tragedy. If he could be said to have chosen it; for it
was rather the Tragic Muse that had claimed him for her own. She knew
her hour, the first young hour of his deliverance, when he had ceased
from hungering and thirsting after life, and from the violence and
stress of living, and was no more tormented by scruple and by passion;
when the flaming orgy of his individuality no longer confused the
pageant of the world. He had been judging by himself when he
propounded the startling theory that lyric poets must grow into
dramatic poets if they grow at all. It was now, when his youth no
longer sang aloud in him, that he heard the living voices of the men
and women whom he made. Their flesh and blood no longer struggled
violently for birth, no longer tortured the delicate tissue of the
dream. His dreams themselves were brought forth incarnate, he being no
longer at variance with himself as in the days of neo-classic drama.

And so now, when he contemplated his poverty, he saw in it the
dream-crowned head and austere countenance of an archangel destiny. In
the absence of all visible and material comfort the invisible powers
assumed their magnificent dominion. He gave his evenings to Mackinnon
and his mornings, his fresh divine mornings, to the Tragic Muse, thus
setting a blessed purifying interval of sleep between his talent and
his genius. But through it all, while he slept and while he worked,
and while he scribbled with a tenth part of his brain, mechanically
filling in his columns of the _Literary Observer_, he felt that his
genius, conscious of its hour, possessed him utterly. Not even for
Lucia's sake could he resist the god who was so tyrannous and strong.
In his heart he called on her to forgive him for writing unsaleable
tragedies when he ought to have been making money for her. His heart
kept on accusing him. "You would write tragedies if she were
starving," it said. And the god, indignant at the interruption,
answered it, "You wouldn't, you fool, you know you wouldn't. And she
isn't starving. It's you who'll starve, if anybody does; so fire
away." And he fired away; for hope, still invincible, told him that he
could afford to do it, that he had in a drawer fifty pounds' worth of
unpublished articles, works of the baser power, and that, war or no
war, he could surely sell them. He could sell his furniture also; and
if the worst came to the worst, he could sell his books (his own
books, not Lucia's). Meanwhile he must get on with his tragedy. He
could easily finish it in six weeks, and expiate the crime by months
of journalism.

He did finish it in six weeks; and when the Spring came he began
another; for the hand of the god was heavy upon him. This he knew was
madness, though a madness divine and irresistible. In view of its
continuance he called upon Mackinnon and inquired whether at any time,
if the occasion should arise, he could count upon an advance of
salary. Mackinnon, solid, impenetrable, but benignant, replied that
very possibly it might be so. This Rickman interpreted as a distinct
encouragement to dally with the Tragic Muse. It was followed by a
request from Mackinnon that Rickman on his part should oblige him with
a few columns in advance. This he did. He was now, though he was
blissfully unaware of it, the last man on the paper. In six months
from the time of his joining its staff the _Literary Observer_ ceased
from observing, and Mackinnon retired suddenly into private life.

Dicky, who had watched with joy the decline of the _Literary
Observer_, chuckled openly at its fall. He was sorry for old Razors,
though. It was hard luck on him. Old Razors, in Dicky's opinion, was
about done for now.

It might have seemed so to Rickman but that the experience had sobered
him. He rose from the embraces of the Tragic Muse. Yet dizzy with the
august rapture, he resisted and defied the god. He thrust his tragedy
from him into the hindmost obscurity of his table-drawer. Then he
betook himself, in a mood more imperative than solicitous, to Hanson.
Hanson who had labelled him Decadent, and lumped him with Letheby. It
was no matter now. Whatever Hanson thought of his genius, there could
be but one opinion of his talent.

Hanson was genial and complimentary. He, like Mackinnon, knew his
business too well to let Savage Keith Rickman slip through his
fingers. Like Mackinnon he was pleased with the idea of securing a
deserter from the insufferable Jewdwine. But the _Courier_ was full up
with war news and entirely contented with its staff. Hanson was only
good for occasional contributions.

Rickman again overhauled his complicated accounts. By what seemed to
him a series of miracles he had saved seventy-five pounds somehow
during those six months with Mackinnon; but how he was going to raise
a hundred in four months he did not know. That was what he meant to
try for, though. It was July; and he loved more than ever the green
peace of Torrington Square, and the room associated with the first
austere delights of poverty and the presence of the Tragic Muse. But
he could forego even peace for four months. After much search in the
secret places of Bloomsbury, he found an empty attic in Howland
Street. The house was clean, decent, and quiet for a wonder. Thither
he removed himself and his belongings. He had parted with all but the
absolutely essential, among which he reckoned all Lucia's books and a
few of his own. He had stripped himself for this last round with
Fortune. He would come out of it all right if he wrote nothing but
articles, lived on ten shillings a week and sold the articles; which,
meant that in the weeks when no articles were sold he must live on
less. It meant, too, that he must make his own bed, sweep his own
room, and cook his own meals when they were cooked at all; that to
have clean linen he must pay the price of many meals, as he counted
meals.

The attic was not a nice place in July and August. Though the house
was quiet, there flowed through it, in an incessant, suffocating,
sickly stream, the untamed smells and noises of the street. For the
sake of peace he took to working through the night and going to bed in
the day-time; an eccentricity which caused him to be regarded with
some suspicion by his neighbours. In spite of their apparent decency
he had judged it expedient to keep his door locked, a lack of
confidence that wounded them. The lodger in the garret next to his
went so far as to signify by laughter her opinion of his unfriendly
secrecy. Her own door was never shut except when he shut it. This
interference with her liberty she once violently resented, delivering
herself of a jet of oratory that bore with far-fetched fancy on his
parentage and profession. For her threshold was her vantage ground.
Upon it she stood and waited, listening for the footsteps of her luck.

It was a marvel to him how under these conditions he could turn out
the amount of work he did. For some nights were as noisy as the day.
There was no sort of repose about his next-door neighbour. At times
she coughed all night, at times she sang. Or again, by sounds of
sobbing he gathered that the poor wretch was not prospering in her
trade. Still, there were long and blessed intervals of peace when she
roamed farther afield; intervals which might or might not be prolonged
by alcoholic stupor after her return. It may have been owing to these
influences that he began to notice a decided deterioration in his
prose. Hanson had returned his last article. He had worked poor
Hanson's geniality for all it was worth, and he felt that in common
prudence he must withdraw from the _Courier_ for a season. Meanwhile
his best prose, the articles he had by him, remained unpublished. In
war-time there was no market for such wares.

It was now October, and he had paid off but fifteen pounds of the
hundred he still owed. The lease of the little house at Ealing was out
at Michaelmas; he had the five pounds provided every quarter by the
furniture. He sold his furniture and the last of his books, but when
Dicky's bill fell due in November he was still fifty pounds to the
bad. The fact that he had already paid three thousand and thirty-five
would not prevent the sale and dispersal of part, and perhaps the most
valuable part, of the Harden Library. In that event he would get the
money, not the books, and it was the books, all the books, he wanted.
He had persuaded himself that the actual redemption of the whole was
the only legitimate means by which he could now approach Lucia Harden.
The mere repayment of the money was a coarser and more difficult
method. And now at the last moment the end, all but achieved, was as
far from him as ever, supposing Dicky should refuse to renew his bill.

But Dicky did not refuse. He gave him another two months. No longer
term could be conceded; but, yes, he would give him another two
months. "Just for the almighty fun of the thing. If there's one thing
I like to see," said Dicky, "it's pluck." Dicky was more than ever
sure of his game. He argued rightly that Rickman would never have sold
his books if he could have sold his articles or borrowed from a
friend; that, as he had nothing else to sell or offer as security, his
end was certain. But it was so glorious to see the little fellow
fighting his luck. Dicky was willing to prolong the excitement for
another two months.

For two months he fought it furiously.

He spent many hours of many days in trying to find work; a difficult
thing when a man has cut himself loose from all his friends. Strangers
were not likely to consider his superior claims when the kind of work
for which he was now applying could be done by anybody as well or
better. He counted himself uncommonly happy if he got a stray book to
review or a job at the Museum, or if Vaughan held out the promise of
giving him some translation by-and-by.

The conditions under which he worked were now appalling. It was hard
to say whether the attic was more terrible in summer, or in the winter
that forced him to the intimate and abominable companionship of his
oil-stove. Nor was that all. A new horror was added to his existence.
He was aware that he had become an object of peculiar interest to the
woman in the next room, that she waited for him and stealthily watched
his going out and his coming in. As he passed on the landing two eyes,
dull or feverish, marked him through the chink of the door that never
closed. By some hideous instinct of her kind she divined the days when
he was in luck. By another instinct she divined also his nature. His
mystic apathy held her brute soul in awe; and she no longer revenged
herself by furious and vindictive song. So he stayed on, for he owed
rent, and removals were expensive.

He found also that there were limits to the advantages of too
eccentric an asceticism in diet. No doubt the strange meals he
prepared for himself on his oil-stove had proved stimulating by their
very strangeness; but when the first shock and surprise of them had
worn off he no longer obtained that agreeable result. Perhaps there
was something cloying in so much milk and cocoa; he fancied he gained
by diluting these rich foods with water. It certainly seemed to him
that his veins were lighter and carried a swifter and more delicate
current to his brain, that his thoughts now flowed with a remarkable
fineness and lucidity. And then all of a sudden the charm stopped
working. What food he ate ceased to nourish him. He grew drowsy by
day, and had bad dreams at night. He had not yet reached the
reconciling stage of nausea, but was forever tormented by a strong and
healthy craving for a square meal. There was a poor devil on the floor
below him whose state in comparison with his own was affluence. That
man had a square meal every Sunday. Even she, the lady of the
ever-open door, was better off than he; there was always, or nearly
always, a market for her wares.

His sufferings would have been unendurable if any will but his own had
imposed them on him in the beginning. Not that he could continue to
regard his poverty as a destiny in any way angelic. It was because
hitherto he had not known the real thing, because he had seen it from
very far away, that it had worn for him that divine benignant aspect.
Now it was very near him; a sordid insufferable companion that dogged
his elbow in the street, that sat with him by his fireless hearth,
that lay beside him all night, a loathsome bedfellow, telling him a
shameful, hopeless tale, and driving the blessed sleep away from him.
There were times when he envied his neighbour her nirvana of gin and
water; times when the gross steam of the stew prepared for the man
below awoke in him acute, intolerable emotion; times when the
spiritual will that dominated him, so far from being purified by
abstinence, seemed merged in the will of the body made conspicuous and
clamorous by hunger.

There were ways in which he might have satisfied it. He could have
obtained a square meal any day from Mrs. Downey or the Spinkses; but
now that the value of a square meal had increased so monstrously in
imagination, his delicacy shrank from approaching his friends with
conscious designs upon their hospitality. Spinks was always asking him
to dine at his house in Camden Town; but he had refused because he
would have had abominable suspicions of his own motives in accepting.
Trust Flossie to find him out too. And latterly he had hidden himself
from the eye of Spinks. There were moments now when he might have been
tempted to borrow fifty pounds from Spinks and end it; but he could
not bring himself to borrow from Flossie's husband. The last time he
had dined with them he thought she had looked at him as if she were
afraid he was going to borrow money. He knew it so well, that gleam of
the black eyes, half subtle and half savage. For Flossie had realized
her dream, and her little hand clung passionately to the purse that
provided for Muriel Maud. He couldn't borrow from Spinky. From
Jewdwine? Never. From Hanson? Hardly. From Vaughan? Possibly. Vaughan
was considering the expediency of publishing his tragedy, and might be
induced to advance him a little on account. Such possibilities visited
him in the watches of the night, but dawn revealed their obvious
futility. And yet he knew all the time he had only to go to Maddox
for the money, and he would get it. To Maddox or to Rankin, Rankin
whose books stood open on every bookstall, whose face in its beautiful
photogravure portrait smiled so impenetrably, guarding the secret of
success. But he could not go to them without giving them the
explanation he was determined not to give. He knew what they thought
of him; therefore he would not go to them. If they had known him
better they would have come to him.

He was reminded of them now by seeing in _The Planet_ an obituary
notice of young Paterson. Paterson had been dying slowly all the year,
and December finished him. Though Rickman had been expecting the news
for months, the death accomplished affected him profoundly. And at the
thought of the young poet whom he had seemed to have so greatly
wronged, at the touch of grief and pity and divine regret, his own
genius, defied and resisted, descended on him again out of heaven. It
was as if the spirit of young Paterson, appeased and reconciled, had
bequeathed to him its own immortal adolescence. He finished the poem
in four nights, sitting in his great coat, with his legs wrapped in
his blankets, and for the last two nights drinking gin and water to
keep the blood beating in his head. In the morning he felt as if it
were filled with some light and crackling and infinitely brittle
substance, the ashes of a brain that had kindled, flamed, and burned
itself away. It was the last onslaught of the god, the last mad
flaring of the divine fire.

For now he could write no longer. His whole being revolted against the
labour of capturing ideas, of setting words in their right order. The
least effort produced some horrible sensation. Now it was of a
plunging heart that suddenly reversed engines while his brain shivered
with the shock; now of a little white wave that swamped his brain with
one pulse of oblivion; now it was a sudden giving way of the floor of
consciousness, through which his thoughts dropped downwards headlong
into the abyss. He had great agony and distress in following their
flight. At night as he lay in bed, watching the feeble, automatic
procession of ideas, he noticed that they arrived in an order that was
not the order of sanity, that if he took note of the language they
clothed themselves in, he found he was listening as it were to the
gabble of idiocy or aphasia. At such moments he trembled for his
reason.

At first these horrors would vanish in the brief brilliance that
followed the act of eating; but before long, in the next stage of
exhaustion, food induced nothing but a drunken drowsiness. He had once
said as an excuse for refusing wine that he could get drunk on
anything else as well. In these days he got dead drunk on oatmeal
porridge, while he produced a perishing ecstasy on bread and milk. But
of genuine intoxication the pennyworth of gin and water that sustained
the immortal Elegy was his last excess.

He sent the poem to Hanson. Hanson made no sign. But about the middle
of January Rankin of all people broke the silence that had bound them
for a year and a half. Rankin did not know his address, even Hanson
had forgotten it. The letter had been forwarded by one of Hanson's
clerks.

     "My dear Rickman," it said, "where are you? And what are you
     doing? I dined with Hanson the other night, and he showed me your
     Elegy. It's too long for _The Courier_, and he's sending it back
     to you with a string of compliments. If you have no other
     designs, can you let us have it for _The Planet_? For Paterson's
     sake it ought to appear at once. My dear fellow, I should like to
     tell you what I think of it, but I will only state my profound
     conviction that you have given poor Paterson the fame he should
     have had and couldn't get, anymore than we could get it for him;
     and I, as his friend, thank you for this magnificent tribute to
     his genius. Will you do me the honour of dining with me on Sunday
     if you have nothing better to do? There are many things I should
     like to talk over with you, and my wife is anxious to make your
     acquaintance.

     "Sincerely yours,

     "Herbert Rankin.

     "PS.--Maddox is out of town at present, but you'll meet him if
     you come on Sunday. By the way, I saw your friend Jewdwine the
     other day. He explained at my request a certain matter which I
     own with great regret should never have required explanation."

So Jewdwine had explained. And why had not Rankin asked for the
explanation sooner? Why had he had to ask for it at all? Still, it was
decent of him to admit that he ought not to have required it.

He supposed that he must accept Rankin's invitation to dine. Except
for his hunger, which made the prospect of dining so unique and great
a thing, he had no reason for refusing. Rankin had reckoned on a
scruple, and removed the ground of it. He knew that there was no
approaching Rickman as long as there remained the shadow of an
assumption that the explanation should have come from him.

The invitation had arrived just in time, before Rickman had sent the
last saleable remnants of his wardrobe to the place where his
dress-suit had gone before. He would have to apologize to Mrs. Rankin
for its absence, but his serge suit was still presentable, for he had
preserved it with much care, and there was one clean unfrayed shirt in
his drawer.

But when Sunday came, the first febrile excitement of anticipation was
succeeded by the apathy of an immense fatigue, and at the back of it
all a loathsome sense of the positive indecency of his going. It was
hunger that was driving him, the importunate hunger of many months,
apparent in his lean face and shrunken figure. And after all could any
dinner be worth the pain of dressing for it? When at the last moment
he discovered a loose button on his trousers, he felt that there was
no motive, no power on earth that could urge him to the task of
securing it. And when it broke from its thread and fell, and hid
itself under the skirting board in a sort of malignant frenzy, he took
its behaviour as a sign that he would do well to forego that dinner at
Rankin's. He had hardly acquiesced in this decision when reason
reasserted itself and told him that everything depended on that dinner
and that the dinner depended on the button; therefore that in all
God's universe there was nothing so important, so essential to him as
that button. He went down on his knees and dislodged the button with a
penknife, after an agonizing search. He sat feebly on the edge of his
bed, and with many sad, weak blasphemies bowed himself to a miserable,
ignominious struggle. All malign and adverse fortunes seemed to be
concentrated in the rolling, slippery, ungovernable thing.

The final victory was his, such a victory as amounted to a resurgence
of the spiritual will.




CHAPTER LXX


All things seemed to work together to create an evening of
misunderstanding rather than of reconciliation. To begin with he
arrived at the Rankins' half an hour after the time appointed. Rankin
lived in Sussex Square, which seemed to him an interminably long way
off. The adventure with the trouser button, and a certain dizziness
which precluded all swift and decided movement, would have been enough
to make him late, even if he had not miscalculated the distance
between Hyde Park and Bloomsbury.

He had also miscalculated the distance between Rankin the junior
journalist and Rankin the celebrity. Rankin had achieved celebrity in
a way he had not meant. There was a time when even Jewdwine was
outdone by the young men of _The Planet_ in honest contempt for the
taste and judgement of the many; when it had been Rankin's task to
pursue with indefatigable pleasantry the figures of popular renown.
And now he was popular himself. The British public had given to him
its fatal love.

At first he looked on himself as a man irretrievably disgraced.
However proudly he might bear himself in the company of strangers, he
approached his colleagues with the air of a man made absurd by
unsolicited attentions, persecuted and compromised to the last degree.
The bosses of his ruddy face displayed all the quiverings and tortures
and suffusions of a smiling shame. He was, however, compensated for
the loss of personal dignity by a very substantial income. Not that at
first he would admit the compensation. "Ricky," he would say in the
voice of a man bowed and broken on the wheel of life, "you needn't
envy me my thousands. They are the measure of my abasement." Yet he
continued to abase himself. Nothing was more amazing than his
versatility. The public could hardly keep up with the flight of
Rankin's incarnations. Drawing-room comedy, pathetic pastoral,
fantastic adventure, slum idyll and medieval romance, it was all one
to Rankin. An infallible instinct told him which _genre_ should be
chosen at any given moment; a secret tocsin sounded far-off the hour
of his success. And still the spirit of Rankin held itself aloof; and
underneath his many disguises he remained a junior journalist. But
latterly (since his marriage with a rich City merchant's daughter) an
insidious seriousness had overtaken him; he began first to tolerate,
then to respect, then to revere the sources of his affluence. The old
ironic spirit was there to chastise him whenever he caught himself
doing it; but that spirit made discord with the elegant respectability
which was now the atmosphere of his home.

Rankin's drawing-room (where he was now waiting for Rickman) was
furnished with the utmost correctness in the purest Chippendale,
upholstered in silver and grey and lemon and rose brocade; it had grey
curtains, rose-lined, with a design of true lovers' knots in silver;
straight draperies of delicate immaculate white muslin veiled the
window-panes; for the feet an interminable stretch of grey velvet
carpet whose pattern lay on it like a soft shadow. Globes of electric
light drooped clustering under voluminously fluted shades. Rankin
himself looked grossly out of keeping with the scene. It was (and they
both knew it) simply the correct setting for his wife, who dominated
it, a young splendour of rose-pink and rose-white and jewelled laces
and gold.

Rickman, after many weeks' imprisonment between four dirty yellow
ochre walls, was bewildered with the space, the colours, the perfumes,
the illumination. He was suffering from a curious and, it seemed to
him, insane illusion, the illusion of distance, the magnifying of the
spaces he had got to traverse, and as he entered Mrs. Rankin's
drawing-room the way from the threshold to the hearthrug stretched
before him as interminably as the way from Howland Street to Sussex
Square. But of any other distance he was blissfully unaware. Beside
his vision of Lucia Harden Mrs. Herbert Rankin was an entirely
insignificant person.

Now Rankin was a little afraid of the elegant lady his wife. He had
had to apologise to her many times for the curious people he brought
to the house, and he was anxious that Rickman should make a good
impression. He was also hungry, as hungry as a man can be who has
three square meals every day of his life. Therefore he was annoyed
with Rickman for being late.

But his annoyance vanished at the first sight of him. His handshake
was significant of atonement and immutable affection. He introduced
him almost fearlessly to his wife. He had been at some pains to
impress upon her that she was about to entertain a much greater man
than her husband, and that it would be very charming of her if she
behaved accordingly. At this she pouted prettily, as became a bride,
and he pointed out that as Keith Rickman was a poet his greatness was
incommensurable with that of her husband, it left him undisturbed upon
his eminence as the supreme master of prose. So that Mrs. Rankin
smiled dimly and deferentially as an elegant hostess must smile upon a
poet who has kept her waiting. There were two other ladies there
(Rankin's mother and sister from the provinces); their greeting
conveyed a rustling and excited consciousness of the guest's
distinction.

As Rankin's family retreated, Maddox heaved himself forward and
grasped Rickman's hand without a word.

Rickman had no very clear idea of what happened in the brief pause
before dinner. His first sensation was one of confused beatitude and
warmth, of being received into an enfolding atmosphere of
friendliness. He was sure it was friendliness that made Maddox pluck
him by the arm and draw him down beside him on the sofa; and he was
too tired to wonder why Maddy should think it necessary to whisper
into his collar, "Steady, you'll be all right if you sit still, old
man." The strange voices of the women confused him further, and
standing made him giddy: he was glad to sit still in his corner
obliterated by Maddy's colossal shoulders. It was friendliness, he
knew, that made Rankin dispense with ceremony and pilot him through
those never-ending spaces to the dining-room. And it must have been an
exaggeration of the same feeling that made him (regardless of his
wife's uplifted eyebrows) insist on placing the guest of the evening
between Maddox and himself. It was later on, about the time when the
wine went round, that Rickman became aware of a change, of a subtle
undefined hostility in the air. He wondered whether the Rankins were
annoyed with him because of his inability to take a brilliant part in
the conversation or to finish any one thing that he took upon his
plate. But for the life of him he couldn't help it. He was too tired
to talk, and he had reached that stage of hunger when the desire to
eat no longer brought with it the power of eating, when the
masterpieces of Rankin's _chef_ excited only terror and repugnance. He
ate sparingly as starving men must eat, and he drank more sparingly
than he ate; for he feared the probable effect of unwonted stimulants.
So that his glass appeared ever to be full.

The hostility was more Mrs. Herbert Rankin's attitude than that of her
husband, but he noticed a melancholy change in Rankin. His geniality
had vanished, or lingered only in the curl of his moustache. He was
less amusing than of old. His conversation was no longer that of the
light-hearted junior journalist flinging himself recklessly into the
tide of talk; but whatever topic was started he turned it to himself.
He was exceedingly indignant on the subject of the war, which he
regarded more as a personal grievance than as a national calamity. No
doubt it was his eminence that constituted him the centre of so vast a
range.

"The worst of it is," said he, "whichever side beats it's destruction
to royalties. I lost a clean thousand on Spion Kop and I can tell you
I didn't recover much on Mafeking, though I worked Tommy Atkins for
all he was worth. This year my sales have dropped from fifty to thirty
thousand. I can't stand many more of these reverses."

He paused, dubious, between two _entrées_.

"If it's had that effect on _me_," said the great man, "Heaven only
knows what it's done to other people. How about you, Rickman?"

"Oh, I'm all right, thanks." The war had ruined him, but his ruin was
not the point of view from which he had yet seriously regarded it. He
was frankly disgusted with his old friend's tone.

"If it goes on much longer, I shall be obliged," said Rankin
solemnly, "to go out to the seat of war."

Rickman felt a momentary glow. He was exhilarated by the idea of
Rankin at the seat of war. He said he could see Rankin sitting on it.

Rankin laughed, for he was not wholly dead to the humour of his own
celebrity; but there was a faint silken rustle at the head of the
table, subtle and hostile, like the stirring of a snake. Mrs. Herbert
Rankin bent her fine flat brows towards the poet, with a look ominous
and intent. The look was lost upon Rickman and he wondered why Maddox
pressed his foot.

"Have you written anything on the war, Mr. Rickman?" she asked.

"No; I haven't written anything on the war."

She looked at him almost contemptuously as at a fool who had neglected
an opportunity.

"What do you generally write on, then?"

Rickman looked up with a piteous smile. He was beginning to feel very
miserable and weary, and he longed to get up and go. It seemed to him
that there was no end to that dinner; no end to the pitiless ingenuity
of Rankin's _chef_. And he always had hated being stared at.

"I don't--generally--write--on anything," he said.

"Your last poem is an exception to your rule, then?"

"It is. I wrote most of _that_ on gin and water," said Rickman
desperately.

Rankin had tugged all the geniality out of his moustache, and his face
was full of anxiety and gloom. Maddox tried hard not to snigger. He
was not fond of Mrs. Herbert Rankin.

And Rankin's _chef_ continued to send forth his swift and fair
creations.

Rickman felt his forehead grow cold and damp. He leaned back and wiped
it with his handkerchief. A glance passed between Maddox and Rankin.
But old Mrs. Rankin looked at him and the motherhood stirred in her
heart.

"Won't you change places with me? I expect you're feeling that fire
too much at your back."

Maddox plucked his sleeve. "Better stay where you are," he whispered.

Rickman rose instantly to his feet. The horrible conviction was
growing on him that he was going to faint, to faint or to be
ignominiously ill. That came sometimes of starving, by some irony of
Nature.

"Don't Maddy--I think perhaps--"

Surely he was going to faint.

Maddox jumped up and held him as he staggered from the room.

Rankin looked at his wife and his wife looked at Rankin. "He may be a
very great poet," said she, "but I hope you'll never ask him to dine
here again."

"Never. I can promise you," said Rankin.

The mother had a kinder voice. "I think the poor fellow was feeling
ill from that fire."

"Well he might, too," said Rankin with all the bitterness that became
the husband of elegant respectability.

"Go and make him lie down and be sure and keep his head lower than his
feet," said Rankin's mother.

"I shouldn't be surprised if Ricky's head were considerably lower than
his feet already," said Rankin. And when he said it the bosses of his
face grew genial again as the old coarse junior journalistic humour
possessed itself of the situation. And he went out sniggering and
cursing by turns under his moustache.

Rankin's mother was right. Rickman was feeling very ill indeed.
Without knowing how he got there he found himself lying on a bed in
Rankin's dressing-room. Maddox and Rankin were with him. Maddox had
taken off his boots and loosened his collar for him, and was now
standing over him contemplating the effect.

"That's all very well," said Maddox, "but how the dickens am I to get
him home? Especially as we don't know his address."

"Ask him."

"I'm afraid our Ricky-ticky's hardly in a state to give very reliable
information."

"Sixty-five Howland Street," said Rickman faintly, and the two smiled.

"It was Torrington Square, but I forget the number."

"Sixty-five Howland Street," repeated Rickman with an effort to be
distinct.

Maddox shook his head. Rickman had sunk low enough, but it was
incredible to them that he should have sunk as low as Howland Street.
His insistence on that address they regarded as a pleasantry peculiar
to his state. "It's perfectly hopeless," said Maddox. "I don't see
anything for it, Rankin, but to let him stay where he is."

At that Rickman roused himself from his stupor. "If you'd only stop
jawing and give me some brandy, I could go."

"Oh my Aunt!" said Rankin, dallying with his despair.

"It isn't half a bad idea. Try it."

They tried it. Maddox raised the poet's head and Rankin poured the
brandy into him. Rankin's hand was gentle, but there was a sternness
about Maddox and his ministrations. And as the brandy brought the
blood back to his brain, Rickman sat up on Rankin's bed, murmuring
apologies that would have drawn pity from the nether mill-stone. But
there was no sign of the tenderness that had warmed him when he came.
He could see that they were anxious to get him out of the house. Since
they had been so keen on reconciliation whence this change to
hostility and disapproval? Oh, of course, he remembered; he had been
ill (outrageously ill) in Rankin's dressing-room. Perhaps it wasn't
very nice of him; still he didn't do it for his own amusement, and
Rankin might have been as ill as he liked in _his_ dressing-room, if
he had had one. Even admitting that the nature of his calamity was
such as to place him beyond the pale of human sympathy, he thought
that Rankin might have borne himself with a somewhat better grace. And
why Maddox should have taken that preposterous tone--

Maddox explained himself as they left Sussex Square.

Rickman did not at first take in the explanation. He was thinking how
he could best circumvent Maddox's obvious intention of hailing a
hansom and putting him into it. He didn't want to confess that he
hadn't a shilling in his pocket. Coppers anybody may be short of, and
presently he meant to borrow twopence for a bus. Later on he would
have to ask for a loan of fifty pounds; for you can borrow pounds and
you can borrow pennies, but not shillings. Not at any rate if you are
starving.

"If I were you, Ricky," Maddox was saying. "I should go straight to
bed when you get home. You'll be all right in the morning."

"I'm all right now. I can't think what bowled me over."

"Ricky, the prevarication is unworthy of you. Without humbug, I think
you might keep off it a bit before you dine with people. It doesn't
matter about us, you know, but it's hardly the sort of thing Mrs.
Rankin's been accustomed to."

"Mrs. Rankin?"

"Well yes, I said Mrs. Rankin; but it's not about her I care--it's
about you. Of course you'll tell me to mind my own business, but I
wish--I wish to goodness you'd give it up--altogether. You did once,
why not again? Believe me the game isn't worth the candle." And he
said to himself, noting the sharp lines of his friend's haggard
figure, "It's killing him."

"I see," said Rickman slowly. In an instant he saw it all; the
monstrous and abominable suspicion that had rested upon him all the
evening. It explained everything. He saw, too, how every movement of
his own had lent itself to the intolerable inference. It was so
complete, so satisfactory, so comprehensive, that he could not wonder
that they had found no escape from it. He could find none himself.
There was no way by which he could establish the fact of his sobriety;
for it is the very nature of such accusations to feed upon defence.
Denial, whether humorous or indignant, would but condemn him more. The
very plausibility of the imputation acted on him as a despotic
suggestion. He began to feel that he must have been drunk at Rankin's;
that he was drunk now while he was talking to Maddox. And to have told
the truth, to have said, "Maddy, I'm starving. I haven't had a square
meal for four months," would have sounded too like a beggar's whine.
Whatever he let out later on, it would be mean to spring all that on
Maddox now, covering him with confusion and remorse.

He laughed softly, aware that his very laugh would be used as
evidence against him. "I see. So you all thought I'd been drinking?"

"Well--if you'll forgive my saying so--"

"Oh, I forgive you. It was a very natural supposition."

"I think you'll have to apologise to the Rankins."

"I think the Rankins'll have to apologise to me."

With every foolish word he was more hopelessly immersed.

He insisted on parting with Maddox at the Marble Arch. After all, he
had not borrowed that fifty pounds nor yet that twopence. Luckily
Rankin's brandy enabled him to walk back with less difficulty than he
came. It had also warmed him, so that he did not find out all at once
that he had left his overcoat at Rankin's. He could not go back for
it. He could never present himself at that house again.

It was a frosty night with a bitter wind rising in the east and
blowing up Oxford Street. His attic under the icicled tiles was dark
and narrow as the grave. And on the other side of the thin wall a
Hunger, more infernal and malignant than his own, waited stealthily
for its prey.




CHAPTER LXXI


It was five o'clock, and Dicky Pilkington was at his ease stretched
before the fire in a low chair in the drawing-room of the flat he now
habitually shared with Poppy Grace. It was beatitude to lie there with
his legs nicely toasting, to have his tea (which he did not drink)
poured out for him by the most popular little variety actress in
London, and to know that she had found in him her master. This
evening, his intellect in play under many genial influences, Dicky was
once more raising the pæan of Finance. Under some piquant provocation,
too; for Poppy had just informed him, that she "didn't fancy his
business."

"Now, look here," said Dicky, "you call yourself an artist. Well--this
business of mine isn't a business, it's an art. Think of the delicacy
we 'ave to use. To know to a hairsbreadth how far you can go with a
man, to know when to give him his head with the snaffle and when to
draw him in with the curb. It's a feelin' your way all along. Why, I
knew a fellow, a broker--an uncommonly clever chap he was, too--ruined
just for want of a little tact. He was too precipitate, began hauling
his man up just when he ought to have let him go. He'd no imagination,
that fellow. (Don't you go eating too much cake, Popsie, or you'll
make your little nose red.) I don't know any other profession gives
you such a grip of life and such a feelin' of power. You've got some
young devil plungin' about, kickin' up his heels all over the shop,
say. He thinks he's got the whole place to break his neck in; and you
know the exact minute by your watch that you can bring him in
grovellin' on your office floor. It's the iron 'and in the velvet
glove," said Dicky.

"I know what you're driving at, and I call it a beastly shame."

"No, it isn't. I shouldn't wonder if old Rickets paid up all right,
after all."

"And if he doesn't?"

"If he doesn't--Well--"

"I say, though, think wot a lot he's paid you. Can't you let him go?"

Dicky shook his head and smiled softly as at some interior vision.

"You'll ruin him for a dirty fifty pounds?"

"I won't ruin him. And it isn't for the money, it's for the game. I
like," said Dicky, "to see a man play in first-class style. But I
don't blame him if he hasn't got style so long as he's got pluck. In
fact, I don't know that of the two I wouldn't rather have pluck. I've
seen a good many men play this game, but I've never seen any one who
came up to old Razors for pluck _and_ style. It's a treat to see him.
Do you suppose I'm going to cut in now and spoil it all by giving him
points? That would take all the gilt off the gingerbread. And do you
suppose he'd let me? Not he; he's spreading the gilt on thick, and
he'd see me d----d first."

Dicky smoked, with half-closed eyes fixed on the fire, in speechless
admiration. He felt that he was encouraging the display of high
heroism by watching it. He singled out a beautiful writhing flame,
spat at it, and continued: "No, I'll take good care that Rickets
doesn't starve. But I'm going to stand by and see him finish fair. If
you like, Popsie, you can back him to win. I don't care if he _doe'_
win. It would be worth it for what I've got out of him."

By what he had got out of him Dicky meant, not three thousand seven
hundred and odd pounds, but a spectacle beyond all comparison exciting
and sublime. For that he was prepared to abandon any further advantage
that might be wrung from the Harden library by a successful
manipulation of the sales.

Poppy did not back Rickman to win; but she determined to call on him
at his rooms, and leave a little note with a cheque and a request that
he would pay Dicky and have done with him. "You'd better owe it to me
than to him, old chappy"; thus she wrote in the kindness and
impropriety of her heart. But Rickman never got that little note.




CHAPTER LXXII


Of all the consequences of that terrible dinner at Rankin's there was
none that Rickman resented more than the loss of his overcoat. As he
lay between his blankets he still felt all the lashings of the east
wind around his shivering body. He was awake all that night, and the
morning found him feverish with terror of the illness that might
overtake him before he attained his end. He stayed in bed all day to
prevent it, and because of his weakness, and for warmth.

But the next day there came a mild and merciful thaw, a tenderness of
Heaven that was felt even under the tiles in Howland Street. And the
morning of that day brought a thing that in all his dreams he had not
yet dreamed of, a letter from Lucia.

He read it kneeling on the floor of his garret, supporting himself by
the edge of the table. It was only a few lines in praise of the Elegy
(which had appeared in _The Planet_ the week before) and a postscript
that told him she would be staying at Court House with Miss Palliser
till the summer.

He knelt there a long time with his head bowed upon his arms. His
brains failed him when he tried to write an answer, and he put the
letter into his breast-pocket, where it lay like a loving hand against
his heart. And yet there was not a word of love in it.

The old indomitable hope rose in his heart again and he forced himself
to eat and drink, that he might have strength for the things he had to
do. That night he did not sleep, but lay wrapt in his beatific
passion. His longing was so intense that it created a vision of the
thing it longed for. It seemed to him that he heard Lucia's soft
footfall about his bed, that she came and sat beside his pillow, that
she bowed her head upon his breast, and that her long hair drifted
over him. For the beating of his own heart gave him the sense of a
presence beside him all night long, as he lay with his right arm flung
across his own starved body, guarding her letter, the letter that had
not a word of love in it.

In the morning he discovered that another letter had lain on his table
under Lucia's. It was from Dicky Pilkington, reminding him that it
wanted but seven days to the thirtieth. Dicky said nothing about any
willingness to renew the bill. What did it matter? Dicky would renew
it, Dicky must renew it; he felt that there was force in him to compel
Dicky to renew it. He went out and bought a paper with the price of a
meal of milk (he couldn't pawn his good clothes; their assistance was
too valuable in interviews with possible employers). He found the
advertisement of an Exeter bookseller in want of a foreman and expert
cataloguer at a salary of ninety pounds. He answered it by return. In
the list of his credentials he mentioned that he had catalogued the
Harden library (a feat, as he knew, sufficient to constitute him a
celebrity in the eyes of the Exeter man). He added that if the
bookseller felt inclined to consider his application he would be
obliged by a wire, as he had several other situations in view.

The bookseller wired engaging him for six months. The same day came a
cheque for ten pounds from _The Planet_, the honorarium for the Elegy.
He sent the ten pounds to Dicky at once (by way of showing what he
could do) with a curt note informing him of his appointment and
requesting a renewal for three months, by which time his salary would
cover the remainder still owing.

Feeling that no further intellectual efforts were now required of him
he went out to feed on the fresh air. As he crossed the landing an
odour of hot pottage came to meet him. Through the ever-open door he
caught a glimpse of a woman's form throned, as it were, above clouds
of curling steam. A voice went out, hoarse with a supreme emotion.

"Come in, you there, and 'ave a snack, wontcher?" it said.

"No, thank you," he answered.

"Garn then. I'll snack yer for a ----y fool!"

And from the peaceableness of the reply he gathered that this time the
lady was not soliciting patronage but conferring it.

He was no longer hungry, no longer weighed upon by his exhausted body.
A great restlessness had seized it, a desire to walk, to walk on and
on without stopping. The young day had lured him into the Regent's
Park. So gentle was the weather that, but for bare branches and
blanched sky, it might have been a day in Spring. As he walked he
experienced sensations of indescribable delicacy and lightness, he saw
ahead of him pellucid golden vistas of metaphysical splendour, he
skimmed over fields of elastic air with the ease and ecstasy of a
blessed spirit.

When he came in he found that the experience prolonged itself through
the early night, even when he lay motionless on his bed staring at the
wall. And as he stared it seemed to him that there passed upon the
wall clouds upon clouds of exquisite and evanescent colour, and that
strange forms appeared and moved upon the clouds. He saw a shoal of
fishes (they _were_ fishes, radiant, iridescent, gorgeous fishes, with
the tails of peacocks); they swam round and round the room just under
the cornice, an ever-revolving, ever-floating frieze. He was immensely
interested in these decorative hallucinations. His brain seemed to be
lifted up, to be iridescent also, to swim round and round with the
swimming fishes.

He woke late in the morning with a violent sore throat and pain in all
his body. He was too giddy to sit up and help himself, but he knocked
weakly on the thin wall. His neighbour roused herself at the faint
summons and appeared. She stood at the foot of the bed with her hands
on her hips and contemplated him for a moment. He tried to speak, but
his tongue seemed to be stuck burning to the roof of his mouth. He
pointed to his throat.

"Yes, I dessay," said she. "I said you'd get somefing and you've got
it." So saying she disappeared into her own apartment.

As he saw her go despair shook him. He thought that he was abandoned.
But presently she returned, bringing a cup of hot tea with a dash of
gin in it from her own breakfast.

"I'd a seen to you afore ef you'd let me," she said. "You tyke it from
me, young man, wot you wants is a good hot lining to your belly. I'd
'ave given it to you ef you'd a let me. I'm a lydy as tykes her dinner
reg'ler, I am. No, you don't--" This, as he turned away his head in
protest. She however secured it firmly with one filthy hand, while
with the other she held the reeking cup to his lips. She had put it to
her own first to test the heat and quality of the brew. Yet he was
grateful. He had some difficulty in swallowing; and from time to time
she wiped his mouth with her villainous apron; and he was grateful
still, having passed beyond disgust.

She perceived the gratitude. "Garn," said she, "wot's a cup er tea?
I'd a seen to yer afore ef you'd a let me."

She continued her ministrations; she brought coal in her own scuttle
and after immense pains she lighted a fire in the wretched grate. Then
she smoothed his bed-clothes till they were covered with her smutty
trail. She would have gone for a doctor then and there, but difficulty
arose. For doctors meant hospitals, and the man below threatened to
sell his lodger's "sticks" if rent were not forthcoming. She cast her
eyes about in search of pawnable articles. They fell upon his clothes.
She took up his shirt and examined it carefully, appraising the sleeve
links and the studs. But when she touched the coat, the coat that had
Lucia's letter in the breast-pocket, Rickman turned in his bed and
made agonizing signs, struggling with the voice that perished in his
burning throat.

"Wot's the good," said she, "of a suit when yer can't wear it? As I
telled you wot you wa--No, the's no sorter use your making fyces at
me. And you keep your ----y legs in, or I'll--" The propositions that
followed were murmured in a hoarse but crooning tone such as a mother
might have used to soothe a fractious child. She went away, carrying
the clothes with her, and turned out the pockets in her den.

On her return she sent the man below to fetch the doctor. But the man
below fell in with boon companions on the way, and no doctor came. All
that night the woman watched by Rickman's bedside, heedless of her
luck. She kept life in him by feeding him with warm milk and gin, a
teaspoonful at a time. Rickman, aware of footsteps in the room,
fancied himself back again in Rankin's dressing-room. The whole scene
of that evening floated before him all night long. He had a sense of
presences hostile and offended, of being irretrievably disgraced. In
the recurring nightmare he saw Lucia Harden instead of Mrs. Rankin. So
persistently did he see her that when he woke he could not shake off
the impression that she had been actually, if unaccountably, present,
a spectator of his uttermost disgrace. He could never look her in the
face again. No, for he was disgraced; absolutely, irredeemably,
atrociously disgraced. Beyond all possibility of explanation and
defence; though he sometimes caught himself explaining and pleading
against those offended phantoms of his brain. Why should he suffer so?
Just because of his inability to deal with Rankin's never-ending
dinner, or to pay a debt of millions, many millions of figures that
climbed up the wall. He was not sure which of these two obligations
was laid upon him.

He became by turns delirious and drowsy, and the woman fetched a
doctor early the next day. He found enteric and blood-poisoning also,
of which Rickman's illness at the Rankins' must have been the first
warning symptoms.

"He'll have to go to the hospital; but you'd better send word to his
friends."

"'E ain't got no friends. And _I_ dunno 'oo 'e is."

The doctor said to himself, "Gone under," and looked round him for a
clue. He examined a postcard from Spinks and a parcel (containing an
overcoat) from Rankin, with the novelist's name and address inside the
wrapper. The poet's name was familiar to the doctor, who read
_Metropolis_. He first of all made arrangements for removing his
patient to the hospital. Then in his uncertainty he telegraphed to
Jewdwine, to Rankin and to Spinks.

The news of Rickman's illness was thus spread rapidly among his
friends. It brought Spinks that afternoon, and Flossie, the poor
Beaver, dragged to Howland Street by her husband to see what her
woman's hands could do. They entered upon a scene of indescribable
confusion and clangour. Poppy Grace, arrived on her errand (for which
she had attired herself in a red dress and ermine tippet), had mounted
guard over the unconscious poet.

"Ricky," cried Poppy, bending over him, "won't you speak to me? It's
Poppy, dear. Don't you know me?"

"No, 'e don't know yer, so you needn't arsk 'im."

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 passionate 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, Sussex 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.