The Divine Fire Part 56

CHAPTER XL

The end of May found Rickman still at Mrs. Downey's, established on the second floor in a glory that exceeded the glory of Mr. Blenkinsop.

He had now not only a bedroom, but a study, furnished with a simplicity that had the effect of luxury, and lined from floor to ceiling with his books. Mrs. Downey had agreed that Mr. Rickman should, whenever the mysterious fancy took him, have his meals served to him in his own apartment after the high manner of Mr. Blenkinsop; and it was under protest that she accepted any compensation for the break thus made in the triumphal order of the Dinner.

Here then at last, he was absolutely alone and free. Feeling perhaps how nearly it had lost him, or impressed by the sudden change in his position, the boarding-house revered this privacy of Rickman's as a sacred thing. Not even Mr. Soper would have dared to violate his virgin leisure. The charm of it was unbroken, it was even heightened by the inaudible presence of Miss Roots in her den on the same floor.

Miss Roots indeed was the tie that bound him to Mrs. Downey's; otherwise the dream of his affluence would have been chambers in Westminster or the Temple. For his income, in its leap from zero to a fluctuating two hundred a year, appeared to him as boundless affluence. To be sure, Jewdwine had expressly stated that it would not be permanent, but this he had understood to be merely a delicate way of referring to his former imperfect record of sobriety. And he had become rich not only in money but in time. Rickman's had demanded an eight or even a ten hours' day; the office of _The Museion_ claimed him but five hours of four days in the week. From five o'clock on Thursday evening till eleven on Monday morning, whatever work remained for him to do could be done in his own time and his own temper.

Much of the leisure time at his disposal he spent in endeavouring to follow the Harden library in its dispersion. He attended the great auctions in the hope of intercepting some treasure in its pa.s.sage from Rickman's to the home of the collector. Once, in his father's absence, he bought a dozen volumes straight over the counter from his successor there. It was also about this time that Spinks and Soper appeared in the new character of book fanciers, buying according to Rickman's instructions and selling to him on commission, a transaction which filled these gentlemen with superb importance. Thus Rickman became possessed of about twenty or thirty volumes which he ranged behind a curtain, on a shelf apart. The collection, formed gradually, included nothing of any intrinsic value; such as it was he treasured it with a view to restoring it ultimately to Lucia Harden. He was considering whether with the means at his disposal he could procure a certain Aldine Dante of his memory, when the Harden library disappeared from the market as suddenly and mysteriously as it had come. No volume belonging to it could be bought for love or money; and none were displayed in the windows of Rickman's. Keith learnt nothing by his inquiries beyond the extent of his estrangement from his father. When he called at the shop his successor regretted that he was unable to give him any information. When he visited the suburban villa Isaac refused to see him. When he wrote Isaac never answered the letters.

His stepmother in an unpleasant interview gave him to understand that the separation was final and complete.

He would have been more hurt by this rupture but for that other and abiding pain. The thought of Lucia Harden checked his enjoyment in the prospect of a now unimpeded career. Rickman was like some young athlete who walks on to the field stripped and strong for the race, but invisibly handicapped, having had the heart knocked out of him by some shameful incident outside the course. Apart from his own disgrace he was miserably anxious about Lucia herself, about her health, her happiness, her prospects; his misery being by no means lightened by his perception that these things were not exactly his concern.

He tried to picture her living as poor ladies live; he had seen them sometimes at Mrs. Downey's. He could not see her there, or rather, seeing her he could see nothing else; he perceived that surroundings and material accessories contributed nothing to his idea of her.

Still, he knew nothing; and he had to accept his ignorance as part, and the worst part, of the separation that was his punishment. Many mixed feelings, shame and pa.s.sion, delicacy and pride restrained him from asking Jewdwine any question. Even if Jewdwine had not told him as much, he would have known that his acquaintance with Jewdwine's affairs would not involve acquaintance with Jewdwine's family. He had absolutely nothing to hope for from that connection.

And yet he hoped. The probabilities were that if Lucia did not make her home with her cousins, she would at any rate stay with them the greater part of the year. He was always walking up to Hampstead Heath on the chance of some day seeing her there. Sometimes he would pa.s.s by the front of Jewdwine's beautiful old brown house, and glance quickly through the delicate iron gate and up at the windows. But she was never there. Sometimes he would sit for hours on one of the seats under the elm tree at the back. There was a high walk there overlooking the West Heath and shaded by the elms and by Jewdwine's garden wall. The wall had a door in it that might some day open and let out the thing he longed for. Only it never did. There was nothing to hope for from Jewdwine's house.

At last his longing became intolerable, and one day, in the office, he made up his mind to approach Jewdwine himself. He had been telling him about the apparent check in the career of the Harden library, when he saw his opportunity and took it.

"By the way, can you tell me where your cousin is now?"

"Miss Harden," said Jewdwine coldly, "is in Germany with Miss Palliser." He added, as if he evidently felt that some explanation was necessary (not on Rickman's account, but on his own), "She was to have come to us, but we were obliged to give her up to Miss Palliser, who is living alone."

"Alone?"

"Yes. Mrs. Palliser is dead."

Rickman turned abruptly away to the window and stared into the street below. Jewdwine from his seat by the table looked after him thoughtfully. He would have given a good deal to know what was implied in the sudden turning of Rickman's back. What on earth did it matter to Rickman if old Mrs. Palliser was dead or alive? What could he be thinking of?

He was thinking of Kitty who had shown him kindness, of Kitty and the pleasant jests with which she used to cover his embarra.s.sment; of Kitty who had understood him at the last. It was impossible not to feel some grief for the grief of Lucia's friend; but he had no business to show it. Therefore he had turned away.

And then he thought of Lucia; and in his heart he cursed that other business which was his and yet not his; he cursed the making of the catalogue; he cursed the great Harden Library which had brought them together and divided them. But for that, his genius, a thing apart, might have claimed her friendship for itself. As it was, his genius, being after all bound up with his person which suffered and was ashamed, had (as far as Lucia was concerned) to accept its humiliation and dismissal.

And all the time his genius, already vigorous enough in all conscience, throve on his suffering as it had thriven on his joy. In that summer of ninety-two, Rickman's _Saturnalia_ were followed by _On Harcombe Hill_ and _The Four Winds_, and that greatest poem of his lyric period, _The Song of Confession_. Upon the young poet about town there had descended, as it were out of heaven, a power hitherto undreamed of and undivined. No rapture of the body was ever so winged and flamed, or lost itself in such heights and depths of music, as that cry of the pa.s.sion of his soul.

CHAPTER XLI

Meanwhile, of a Sunday evening, Miss Poppy Grace wondered why Ricky-ticky never by any chance appeared upon his balcony. At last, coming home about ten o'clock from one of his walks to Hampstead, he found Poppy leaning out over _her_ balcony most unmistakably on the look-out.

"Come in and have some supper," said she.

"No thanks, I fancy it's a little late."

"Better late than never, when it's supper with _me_. Catch!" And Poppy, in defiance of all propriety, tossed her latch-key over the balcony. And somehow that latch-key had to be returned. He did not use it, but rang, with the intention of handing it to the servant; an intention divined and frustrated by Poppy, who opened the door to him herself.

"Don't go away," she said, "I've got something to tell you."

"Not now, I think--"

Her eyes were hideous to him in their great rings of paint and bistre.

"Why ever not? It'll only tyke a minute. Come in; there's n.o.body up there that matters."

And because he had no desire to be brutal or uncivil, he went up into the room he knew so well. It being summer, the folding doors were thrown wide open, and in the room beyond they came upon a large lady in a dirty tea-gown, eating lobster. For Poppy, now that she saw respectability departing from her, held out to it a pathetic little hand, and the tea-gown, pending an engagement as heavy matron on the provincial stage, was glad enough to play Propriety in Miss Grace's drawing-room. To-night Poppy made short work of Propriety. She waited with admirable patience while the large lady (whom she addressed affectionately as Tiny) followed up the last thin trail of mayonnaise; but when Tiny showed a disposition to toy with the intricacies of an empty claw, Poppy protested.

"Hurry up and clear out, there's a dear. I want to give Rickets his supper, and we haven't got a minute to spare."

And Tiny, who seemed to know her business, hurried up and cleared out.

But Rickets didn't want any supper, and Poppy was visibly abstracted and depressed. She mingled whipped cream with minute fragments of lobster, and finally fell to torturing a sandwich with a spoon; and all with an immense affectation of not having a minute to spare.

"Well, Ryzors," she said at last (and her accent jarred him horribly), "this is very strynge behyviour."

"Which?"

"Which? Do you know you haven't been near me for two months?"

He laughed uneasily. "I couldn't be near you when I was away."

"Never said you could. But what did you go away for?"

"Business."

"Too busy to write, I suppose?"

"Much too busy."

She rose, and with one hand on his shoulder steered him into the front room.

"Sit down," she said. "And don't look so sulky. I want to talk to you sensibly."

He sat down where he had sat that night two months ago, on the Polar bear skin. She sat down too, with a sweeping side-long movement of her hips that drew her thin skirts close about her. She contemplated the effect a little dubiously, then with shy nervous fingers loosened and shook out the folds. He leaned back, withdrawn as far as possible into the corner of the divan. The a.s.sociations of the place were unspeakably loathsome to him.

"Look here, dear"--(In Poppy's world the term of endearment went for nothing; it was simply the stamp upon the current coin of comradeship.

If only that had been the beginning and the end between them!)

"I haven't a minute--but, I'm going to ask you something" (though Poppy hadn't a minute she was applying herself very leisurely to the making of cigarettes). "Don't go and get huffy at what I'm going to say. Do you happen to owe d.i.c.ky anything?"

"Why?"

"Tell you why afterwards. _Do_ you owe him anything?"

"Oh, well--a certain amount--Why?"