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Updated: August 21, 2024
But where he looked for some record of these treasures he found nothing but an elaborate description of the Harden arms with all their quarterings. The historian was not useful for Rickman's purposes. He was preoccupied with the Hardens, their antiquity and splendour; he grovelled before them; every event in their history gave him an opportunity of observing that their motto was Invictus.
And seeing it he forgave her that momentary abstraction. But the Beaver never dreamed; she was far too practical. She was building, that was all. That evening as they sat down to dinner, it might have been noticed that Mrs Downey's face was more flushed and festal than it had been since the day was fixed for Mr. Rickman's wedding and departure.
It was not merely that she was an engaged young lady; for, as Miss Bishop pointed out to her with some natural asperity, anybody can be engaged; but she had now the privilege, denied to any other boarder, of going in and out of Mr. Rickman's study. She said that she went in to tidy it; but strange to say, the more Flossie tidied it the more hopeless it became. Mr.
Rickman's was no longer sought after. It had ceased to be the rendezvous of affable young men from Fleet Street and the Temple. The customers who came nowadays were of another sort, and the tone of the business was changing for the worse. The spirit, that something illuminating, intimate, and immortal, had perished from the place. At first Isaac had not been able to take its departure seriously.
They were not improved by the discovery that Jewdwine had failed to give any sign; while the only reply sent by Rickman's was a brief note from his father to the effect that Keith's letter should have his very best consideration, and that by the time he saw him he would no doubt be in a better position to answer it.
Under the Euripides was the piled up manuscript of Rickman's great neo-classic drama, Helen in Leuce. He implored Spinks to read it. "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.
"PS. You had better come in time for lunch at one o'clock." Rickman's hand trembled as he answered that letter. All evening he said to himself, "To-morrow I shall see Fielding"; and the beating of his heart kept him awake until the dawn of the wonderful day. And as he dressed he said to himself, "To-day I shall see Fielding." That he should see him was enough.
And in the silence Rickman's mind wandered free among all imaginable horrors and forebodings. At last, out of the silence, there appeared to him one more terrible than the rest. He saw what Jewdwine must have meant. He gathered it, not from anything he had said, but from what he refused to say, from the sternness of his face, from his hesitations, his reserves.
When Spinks presented himself in Rickman's study he obtained admission in spite of the lateness of the hour. The youth's solemn agitation was not to be gainsaid. He first of all delivered himself of Flossie's message, faithfully, word for word. "Oh, so she's told you everything, has she? And what did she tell you?" "Why, that it was all over between you, broken off, you know."
"Nobody was with him before they took him to the hospital?" "Nobody, my dear lady, whom you would call anybody. He owes his life to the charity of a drunken prostitute." She was woman, the eternal, predestined enemy of Rickman's genius. Therefore he had determined not to spare her, but to smite her with words like sledge-hammers. And to judge by the look of her he had succeeded.
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