But this was insufferable, it was wounding Mrs. Downey in the tenderest spot of all. The rose of her face became a peony.

"I'm doing no such thing. If any gentleman wishes to pay me a compliment--" her gay smile took for granted that no gentleman could be so barbarous as not to feel that wish--"let him show an appet.i.te.

As for the ladies, I wish they had an appet.i.te to show. Mr. Partridge, let me give you a little more canary pudding. It's as light as light.

No? Oh--come, Mr. Partridge."

Mr. Partridge's gesture of refusal was so vast, so expressive, that it amounted to a solemn personal revelation which implied, not so much that Mr. Partridge rejected canary pudding as that he renounced pleasure, of which canary pudding was but the symbol and the sign.

"Mr. Spinks then? He'll let me give him another slice, _I_ know."

"You bet. Tell you wot it is, Mrs. Downey, the canary that pudding was made of, must have been an uncommonly fine bird."

There was a swift step on the pavement, the determined click of a latch-key, and the clang of a closing door.

"Why, here _is_ Mr. Rickman," said Mrs. Downey, betraying the preoccupation of her soul.

Rickman's entrance produced a certain vibration down both sides of the table, a movement unanimous, yet discordant, as if the nerves of this social body that was "Mrs. Downey's" were being played upon every way at once. Each boarder seemed to be preparing for an experience that, whether agreeable or otherwise, would be disturbing to the last degree. The birds of pa.s.sage raised their heads with a faint flutter.

Miss Walker contemplated a chromo-lithograph with a dreamy air. Mr.

Soper strove vainly to fix himself in an att.i.tude of dignified detachment.

The boarding-house was about to suffer the tremendous invasion of a foreign element. For a moment it was united.

Mrs. Downey's face revealed a grave anxiety. She was evidently asking herself: "Was he, or was he not, in his vein?"

A glance at the object of his adoration decided the question for Mr.

Spinks. Rickman was, thank goodness, _not_ in his vein, in which state he was incomprehensible to anybody but Miss Roots. He was in that comparatively commonplace condition which rendered him accessible to Mr. Spinks.

"Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce my friend, the lyte Mr.

Ryzors. Jemima, show the deceased gentleman to his chair. Miss Walker, Mr. Ryzors. He is really 'appy to myke your acquaintance, Miss Walker, though at first sight he may not appear so. Wot you might be apt to mistyke for coldness is merely 'is intense reserve."

"Oh, dry up, Spinks."

No, Mr. Rickman was certainly not in his vein this evening. He made no apology whatever for his lateness. He ignored the commercial gentleman's "Good-evening, Rickman." As he slipped into his place between Miss Walker and Miss Roots he forgot his usual "Busy to-day at the Museum, Miss Roots?"--a question that recognized her as a fellow worker in the fields of literature, thus lightening the obscurity that hid her labours there.

And for Miss Flossie's timid greeting (the lifting of her upper lip that just showed two dear little white teeth) he gave back a reluctant and embarra.s.sed smile. He used to like sitting by Flossie because she was so pretty and so plump. He used to be sorry for her, because she worked so hard, and, though plump, was so pathetically anaemic and so shy. Critically considered, her body, in spite of its plumpness, was a little too small for her head, and her features were a little too small for her face, but then they were so very correct, as correct as her demeanour and the way she did her hair. She had cl.u.s.ters and curls and loops and coils of hair, black as her eyes, which were so black that he couldn't tell the iris from the pupil. Not that Flossie had ever let him try. And now he had forgotten whether they were black or blue, forgotten everything about them and her. Flossie might be as correct as Flossie pleased, she simply didn't matter.

When she saw him smile she turned up her eyes to the chromo-lithograph again. The little clerk brought with her from the City an air of incorruptible propriety, a.s.sumed for purposes of self-protection, and at variance with her style of hair-dressing and the blueness and gaiety of her blouse. With all that it implied and took for granted, it used to strike him as pathetic. But now, he didn't find Flossie in the least pathetic.

He was waiting for the question which was bound to come.

It came from Spinks, and in a form more horrible than any that he had imagined.

"I say, Rickets, wot did you want all those shirts for down in Devonshire?"

Instead of replying Rickets blew his nose, making his pocket-handkerchief conceal as much of his face as possible. At that moment he caught Miss Bishop staring at him, and if there was one thing that Mr. Rickman disliked more than another it was being stared at. Particularly by Miss Bishop. Miss Bishop had red hair, a loose vivacious mouth, and her stare was grossly interrogative.

Flossie sent out a little winged look at him like a soft dark b.u.t.terfly. It skimmed and hovered about him, and flitted, too ethereal to alight.

Miss Bishop however had no scruples, and put it to him point blank.

"Devonshire?" said Miss Bishop, "what were you doing down there?" She planted her elbows on the table and propped her chin on her finger-tips; her stare thus tilted was partly covered by her eyelids.

"If you really want," said Mr. Spinks, "to see that gentleman opposite, you'll have to take a telescope." The adoring youth conceived that it had been given to him alone of the boarders to penetrate the mind of Rickman, that he was the guardian of his mood, whose mission it was to protect him from the impertinent approaches of the rest.

"A telescope? Wot d'you mean?"

"Don't you think he's got a sort of a far-away look? Especially about the mouth and nose?"

Whether it was from being stared at or for some other reason, but by this time Mr. Rickman had certainly become a little distant. He was not getting on well with anybody or anything, not even with Mrs.

Downey's excellent dinner, nor yet with the claret, an extra ordered for his private drinking, always to Mrs. Downey's secret trepidation.

She gave a half-timid, half-tender look at him and signalled to her ladies to withdraw. She herself remained behind, superintending the removal of the feast; keeping a motherly eye, too, on the poor boy and his claret. Ever since that one dreadful Sunday morning when she had found him asleep in full evening dress upon his bedroom floor, Mrs.

Downey was always expecting to see him drop under the table. He had never done it yet, but there was no knowing when he mightn't.

Whatever the extent of Mr. Rickman's alleged intemperance, his was not the vice of the solitary drinker, and to-night the claret was nearly all drunk by Spinks and Soper. It had the effect of waking in the commercial gentleman the demon of sociability that slept.

What Mr. Soper wanted to know was whether Rickman could recommend 'Armouth as a holiday resort? Could he tell him of any first-cla.s.s commercial hotel or boarding-house down there? To which Rickman replied that he really couldn't tell him anything at all.

"Perhaps," said Mrs. Downey, peering over the edge of the table-cloth she was helping to fold. "Perhaps he has his reasons."

The claret had made Mr. Soper not only sociable but jocose. "Reasons?

That's a new name for 'em. If he don't want more than one at a time, I wish he'd introduce the rest of 'em to me."

"I daresay he would be very happy, if he thought you would understand them, Mr. Soper."

"Understand 'em? Why, I don't suppose they talk Greek."

"Ryzors," said Spinks indignantly, "could give 'em points if they did.

He speaks the language."

Mr. Soper replied that in that case perhaps Mr. Rickman would oblige him with the Greek for "crumby bits."

At the moment Mr. Rickman did not look like obliging Mr. Soper with anything. The provocation was certainly immense. Mr. Soper's voice inspired him with a fury of disgust. The muscles of his mouth twitched; the blood rushed visibly to his forehead; he stood looming over the table like a young pink thunder-G.o.d.

Mrs. Downey and Mr. Partridge retreated in some alarm. Mr. Soper, however, was one of those people who are not roused but merely disconcerted by the spectacle of pa.s.sion. Mr. Soper said he supposed he could "make a 'armless remark." And still thirsting for companionship he pursued Mrs. Downey to the drawing-room. As he went, he fingered his little box of bon-bons as if it had been a talisman or charm.

Rickman poured himself out some claret which he drank slowly, with closed eyelids, leaning back in his chair. "For G.o.d's sake, Spinks,"

he muttered; "don't speak to me."

"All right, old chappy, I won't." But he whispered, "I wouldn't go off just yet, Ryzors, if I were you" (by "going off," Mr. Spinks meant departure in a train of thought). "He'll be back in another minute."

He was back already, sociable, elated, smoking a cigar. Upstairs with the ladies he and his bon-bons had met with unprecedented success.

Rickman opened his eyes.

"Ever try," said Mr. Soper, "a Flor di Dindigul? 'Ave one. You'll find the flavour very delicate and mild." He held it out, that Flor di Dindigul, as an olive branch to the tempestuous young man.

It was not accepted. It was not even seen.

Rickman rose to his feet. To his irritated vision the opposite wall seemed to heave and bulge forward, its chocolate design to become distended and to burst, spreading itself in blotches on the yellow ochre. On the face of the hideous welter swam the face of Mr. Soper, as it were bodiless and alone.

He drew in his breath with a slight shudder, pushed his chair back from the table, and strode out of the room.