Part 52 (1/2)
”Don't you? Well, he won't worry himself into fits about your opinion.”
”'Ad he got a new berth then, when he flung up the old one?”
Now one thing Mrs. Downey, with all her indulgence, did not permit, and that was any public allusion to her boarders' affairs. She might not refuse to discuss them privately with Miss Bramble or Miss Roots, but that was a very different thing. Therefore she maintained a dignified silence.
”Well, then, I should like to know 'ow he's going to pay 'is way.”
Before the grossness of this insinuation Mrs. Downey abandoned her policy of silence.
”Some day,” said Mrs. Downey, ”Mr. Rickman will be in a very different position to wot he is now. You mark my words.” (And n.o.body marked them but little Flossie Walker.)
Two tears rolled down Mrs. Downey's face and mingled with the tartan of her blouse. A murmur of sympathy went round the room, and Mr. Soper perceived that the rest of the company were sitting in an atmosphere of emotion from which he was shut out.
”I beg of you, Mr. Soper, that you will let Mr. Rickman be, for once this evening. Living together as we do, we all ought,” said Mrs.
Downey, ”to respect each other's feelings.”
”Ah--feelings. Wot sort of respect does your young gentleman ever show to mine? Takes me up one day and cuts me dead the next.”
”He wouldn't have dreamed of such a thing if he hadn't been worried in his mind. Mr. Rickman, Mr. Soper, is in trouble.”
Mr. Soper was softened. ”Is he? Well, really, I'm very sorry to hear it, very sorry, I'm sure.”
”My fear is,” said Mrs. Downey, controlling her voice with difficulty, ”that he may be leaving us.”
”If he does, Mrs. Downey, n.o.body will regret it more than I do.”
”Well, I hope it won't come to that.”
Mrs. Downey did not consider it politic to add that she was prepared to make any sacrifice to prevent it. It was as well that Mr. Soper should realize the consequences of an inability to pay your way. She was not prepared to make any sacrifice for the sake of keeping _him_.
”But what,” said Mrs. Downey to herself, ”will the Dinner be without Mr. Rickman?”
The Dinner was, in her imagination, a function, a literary symposium.
At the present moment, if you were to believe Mrs. Downey, no dinner-table in London could show such a gathering of remarkable people. But to none of these remarkable people did Mrs. Downey feel as she felt to Mr. Rickman, who was the most remarkable of them all. By her own statement she had enjoyed exceptional opportunities for studying the ways of genius. There was a room at Mrs. Downey's which she exhibited with pride as ”Mr. Blenkinsop's room.” Mr. Blenkinsop was a poet, and Mr. Rickman had succeeded him. If Mrs. Downey did not immediately recognize Mr. Rickman as a genius it was because he was so utterly unlike Mr. Blenkinsop. But she had felt from the first that, as she expressed it, ”there was something about him,” though what it was she couldn't really say. Only from the first she had had that feeling in her heart--”He will not be permanent.” The joy she had in his youth and mystery was drenched with the pathos of mutability. Mrs.
Downey rebelled against mutability's decree. ”Perhaps,” she said, ”we might come to some arrangement.”
All night long in her bedroom on the ground-floor, Mrs. Downey lay awake considering what arrangement could be come to. This was but a discreet way of stating her previous determination to make any sacrifice if only she could keep him. The sacrifice which Mrs. Downey (towards the small hours of the morning) found herself contemplating amounted to no less than four s.h.i.+llings a week. Occupying his present bed-sitting room he should remain for twenty-one s.h.i.+llings a week instead of twenty-five.
Unfortunately, at breakfast the next morning their evil genius prompted Mr. Spinks and Mr. Soper to display enormous appet.i.tes, and Mrs. Downey, to her everlasting shame, was herself tempted of the devil. A fall of four s.h.i.+llings a week, serious enough in itself, was not to be contemplated with gentlemen eating their heads off in that fas.h.i.+on. It would have to be made up in some way, to be taken out of somebody or something. She would--yes, she would take it out of them all round by taking it out of the Dinner. And yet when it came to the point, Mrs. Downey's soul recoiled from the immorality of this suggestion. There rose before her, as in a vision, the Dinner of the future, solid in essentials but docked of its splendour, its character and its pride. No; that must not be. What the Dinner was now it must remain as long as there were eight boarders to eat it. If Mrs. Downey made any sacrifice she must make it pure.
”On the condition,” said Mrs. Downey by way of putting a business-like face on it, ”on the condition of his permanence.”
But it seemed that twenty-one s.h.i.+llings were more than Mr. Rickman could afford to pay.
Mrs. Downey spent another restless night, and again towards the small hours of the morning she decided on a plan. After breakfast she watched Mr. Soper out of the dining-room, closed the door behind him with offensive and elaborate precaution, and approached Mr. Rickman secretly. If he would promise not to tell the other gentlemen, she would let him have the third floor back for eighteen s.h.i.+llings.
Mr. Rickman stood by the door like one in great haste to be gone. He could not afford eighteen s.h.i.+llings either. He would stay where he was on the old terms for a fortnight, at the end of which time, he said firmly, he would be obliged to go. Mr. Rickman's blue eyes were dark and profound with the pathos of recent illness and suffering, so that he appeared to be touched by Mrs. Downey's kindness. But he wasn't touched by it; no, not the least bit in the world. His heart inside him was like a great lump of dried leather. Mrs. Downey looked at him, sighed, and said no more. Things were more serious with him than she had supposed.
Things were very serious indeed.
His absence at Harmouth had entailed consequences that he had not foreseen. During those four weeks, owing to the perturbation of his mind and the incessant demands on his time, he had written nothing.