The Divine Fire Part 71

"I see you do," said Miss Bishop solemnly.

"Yes, that's because she's a bit of a fancy article herself," murmured a voice from the back drawing-room, where Mr. Spinks had concealed himself behind a curtain, and now listened with a voluptuous sense of unlawful initiation.

"I sy, we shall have to stop, if he _will_ keep on listening that wy."

"Don't stop, please, Miss Ada. There, I've got my fingers in my ears.

On my honour, I have. You can talk as many secrets as you like now. I can't hear a word."

The two girls dropped their voices to a low impa.s.sioned monotone.

"You've got to dress for somebody else besides yourself now--an engaged young lady."

"Oh, I don't know that he takes so much notice. But he's given me lots of things, besides my ring. I'm to have a real silver belt--a Russian--next birthday."

"I sy, he's orf'ly good to you, you know. Some gentlemen get so careless once they're sure of you. D'you know, we all think you acted so honourable, giving out your engagement as soon as it was on. When do you think you'll be married?"

"I can't say. I don't know yet. Never, I think, as long as I'm in that old Bank."

Even with his fingers in his ears, young Sidney heard that voice, and before he could stop himself he was listening again.

"Don't you like it?" said Miss Bishop.

"No. I hate it."

Spinks gave a cough; and Miss Bishop began reading to herself in ostentatious silence, till the provocations of the page grew irresistible.

"Look here, Floss," she said excitedly. "Look at _me_. 'Fawn will be the pree-vyling colour this year, and for morning wear a plain tailor-myde costume in palest fawn is, for 'er who can stand it, most undeniably _chic_.'" Hitherto Miss Bishop had avoided that word (which she p.r.o.nounced "chick") whenever she met it; but now, in its thrilling connection with the fawn-coloured costume, it was brought home to her in a peculiarly personal manner, and she pondered. "I wish I knew what that word meant. It's always coming up in my magazine."

"I think," said Flossie, "it means something like smart. Stylish, you know."

Young Sidney leapt suddenly from his seat. "Go it, Flossie! Give us the French for a nice little cup er tea."

"Really, it's too bad we can't have a plyce to ourselves where we can talk. I'm going." And as Miss Bishop went she still pondered Flossie's rendering of the word _chic_. Little did any of them know what grave issues were to hang on it.

Then Mr. Spinks emerged from his hiding-place. "Miss Walker," he said (he considered it more honourable to call her Miss Walker now whenever he could think of it; only he couldn't always think), "I didn't know you knew the French language."

"And why shouldn't I know it as well as other people?"

"I expect you know it a jolly sight better. Do you think, now, you could read and write it easily?"

"I might," said Flossie guardedly, "if I had a little practice."

"Because, if you could--You say your're tired of the Bank?"

"I should think I _was_ tired of it."

"Well, Flossie, do you know, a good typewriter girl who can read and write French can get twice as much as you're getting."

"How do you know?"

"Girl I know told me so. She's corresponding clerk for a big firm of wine merchants in the City. She's going to be married this autumn; and if you looked sharp, you might get her berth."

"In a wine-merchant's shop? Mr. Rickman wouldn't hear of it."

"It isn't a shop, you know, it's an office. You ask him."

Flossie did not ask him; she knew a trick worth two of that. But not very long after Mr. Spinks had made his suggestion, finding Keith very snug in his study one evening, reading Anatole France, to his immense delight she whispered into his ear a little shy request that some day, when he wasn't busy, he would help her a bit with her French. The lessons were arranged for then and there, at so many kisses an hour, payable by quarterly instalments, if desired. And for several evenings (sitting very close together, as persons must sit who are looking over the same book) they read, translating turn by turn, the delicious _Livre de Mon Ami_, until Flossie's interest was exhausted.

"Come, I'm not going on with any more of that stuff, so you needn't think it. I've no time to waste, if you have; and I haven't come across one word in that book yet that'll be any use to me."

"What a utilitarian Beaver!" He lay back in his chair laughing at her, as he might have laughed at the fascinating folly of a child.

"I'll tell you what it is, Mr. Savage; I'll get another French master, if you don't look out. Some one who'll teach me the way I want to learn."

"I'll teach you any way you like, Floss, on any system; if you'll only explain what you want. What's your idea?"

"My idea's this. How would it be if you and me were to write French letters to each other?"

"Rather! The Beaver's intelligence is going to its head. That's the way to learn, Floss; you'll get over the ground like winking. But you know--I shall have to raise my terms."

"All right. We'll see about that."

He was delighted with her idea. That Flossie should have an idea at all was something so deliciously new and surprising; and what could be more heartrending than these prodigious intellectual efforts, her evident fear that her limitations const.i.tuted a barrier between them?

As if it mattered! As if he wanted a literary critic for his wife. And how brutally he had criticized _her_--as if it mattered! Still, in spite of his compunction, the French lessons were not altogether a success. There was too much disagreement and discussion about terms; for the master became more and more exorbitant in his charges as the days went on, and the pupil still complained that she was learning nothing. She was thoroughly dissatisfied with his method. He would break off at the most interesting, the most instructive point, and let loose his imagination in all sorts of ridiculous histories that followed from the idea of her being a Beaver; and when she desired him to tell her such simple things as the French for "Your esteemed favour to hand," "Cheque enclosed," "We have forwarded to you to-day as per invoice," he wanted to know what on earth a beaver had to do with invoices.

It was Spinks who explained the nature of the connection.

Poor Spinks, who had made the suggestion with an almost suicidally honourable intention, was to his immense astonishment merely sworn at for his interference. And when Flossie brought Keith his tea that evening she found him in a most ungentlemanly humour.

She waited demurely for a pause in the storm that raged round Spinks and his confounded wine-merchant. She cast a significant glance at the table strewn at that moment with the rough draft of Rickman's tragedy.

(Flossie couldn't understand why he could never write a thing out clearly from the first, nor why she shouldn't write it for him at his dictation.)

"It's all very well, Keith," said she, "but if _you_ can't do more, _I_ must."

Before she left the room it was understood between them that Flossie would renounce her wine-merchant, and that they would be married, if possible, some time in the autumn. He felt curiously shaken by that interview.

He spent the evening reading over what he had written, vainly trying to recall his inspiration, to kindle himself anew at his own flame.

Last night he had had more inspiration than he could do with; his ideas had come upon him with a rush, in a singing torrent of light.

His mind had been then almost intolerably luminous; now, there was twilight on its high parts and darkness over the face of its deep. His ideas, arrested in mid-air, had been flung down into the deep; and from the farther sh.o.r.e he caught, as it were, the flutter of a gown and the light laughter of a fugitive Muse.

CHAPTER L

One day, four years after the publication of _Saturnalia_, Rickman received a letter in an unknown hand; a woman's hand, but with a familiar vivid signature, the signature that is to be seen beneath the portraits of Walter Fielding, the greatest among contemporary poets, the living G.o.d of Rickman's idolatry.