CHAPTER LXX
All things seemed to work together to create an evening of misunderstanding rather than of reconciliation. To begin with he arrived at the Rankins' half an hour after the time appointed. Rankin lived in Sussex Square, which seemed to him an interminably long way off. The adventure with the trouser button, and a certain dizziness which precluded all swift and decided movement, would have been enough to make him late, even if he had not miscalculated the distance between Hyde Park and Bloomsbury.
He had also miscalculated the distance between Rankin the junior journalist and Rankin the celebrity. Rankin had achieved celebrity in a way he had not meant. There was a time when even Jewdwine was outdone by the young men of The Planet in honest contempt for the taste and judgement of the many; when it had been Rankin's task to pursue with indefatigable pleasantry the figures of popular renown. And now he was popular himself. The British public had given to him its fatal love.
At first he looked on himself as a man irretrievably disgraced. However proudly he might bear himself in the company of strangers, he approached his colleagues with the air of a man made absurd by unsolicited attentions, persecuted and compromised to the last degree. The bosses of his ruddy face displayed all the quiverings and tortures and suffusions of a smiling shame. He was, however, compensated for the loss of personal dignity by a very substantial income. Not that at first he would admit the compensation. "Ricky," he would say in the voice of a man bowed and broken on the wheel of life, "you needn't envy me my thousands. They are the measure of my abasement." Yet he continued to abase himself. Nothing was more amazing than his versatility. The public could hardly keep up with the flight of Rankin's incarnations. Drawing-room comedy, pathetic pastoral, fantastic adventure, slum idyll and medieval romance, it was all one to Rankin. An infallible instinct told him which genre should be chosen at any given moment; a secret tocsin sounded far-off the hour of his success. And still the spirit of Rankin held itself aloof; and underneath his many disguises he remained a junior journalist. But latterly (since his marriage with a rich City merchant's daughter) an insidious seriousness had overtaken him; he began first to tolerate, then to respect, then to revere the sources of his affluence. The old ironic spirit was there to chastise him whenever he caught himself doing it; but that spirit made discord with the elegant respectability which was now the atmosphere of his home.
Rankin's drawing-room (where he was now waiting for Rickman) was furnished with the utmost correctness in the purest Chippendale, upholstered in silver and grey and lemon and rose brocade; it had grey curtains, rose-lined, with a design of true lovers' knots in silver; straight draperies of delicate immaculate white muslin veiled the window-panes; for the feet an interminable stretch of grey velvet carpet whose pattern lay on it like a soft shadow. Globes of electric light drooped clustering under voluminously fluted shades. Rankin himself looked grossly out of keeping with the scene. It was (and they both knew it) simply the correct setting for his wife, who dominated it, a young splendour of rose-pink and rose-white and jewelled laces and gold.
Rickman, after many weeks' imprisonment between four dirty yellow ochre walls, was bewildered with the space, the colours, the perfumes, the illumination. He was suffering from a curious and, it seemed to him, insane illusion, the illusion of distance, the magnifying of the spaces he had got to traverse, and as he entered Mrs. Rankin's drawing-room the way from the threshold to the hearthrug stretched before him as interminably as the way from Howland Street to Sussex Square. But of any other distance he was blissfully unaware. Beside his vision of Lucia Harden Mrs. Herbert Rankin was an entirely insignificant person.
Now Rankin was a little afraid of the elegant lady his wife. He had had to apologise to her many times for the curious people he brought to the house, and he was anxious that Rickman should make a good impression. He was also hungry, as hungry as a man can be who has three square meals every day of his life. Therefore he was annoyed with Rickman for being late.
But his annoyance vanished at the first sight of him. His handshake was significant of atonement and immutable affection. He introduced him almost fearlessly to his wife. He had been at some pains to impress upon her that she was about to entertain a much greater man than her husband, and that it would be very charming of her if she behaved accordingly. At this she pouted prettily, as became a bride, and he pointed out that as Keith Rickman was a poet his greatness was incommensurable with that of her husband, it left him undisturbed upon his eminence as the supreme master of prose. So that Mrs. Rankin smiled dimly and deferentially as an elegant hostess must smile upon a poet who has kept her waiting. There were two other ladies there (Rankin's mother and sister from the provinces); their greeting conveyed a rustling and excited consciousness of the guest's distinction.
As Rankin's family retreated, Maddox heaved himself forward and grasped Rickman's hand without a word.
Rickman had no very clear idea of what happened in the brief pause before dinner. His first sensation was one of confused beatitude and warmth, of being received into an enfolding atmosphere of friendliness. He was sure it was friendliness that made Maddox pluck him by the arm and draw him down beside him on the sofa; and he was too tired to wonder why Maddy should think it necessary to whisper into his collar, "Steady, you'll be all right if you sit still, old man." The strange voices of the women confused him further, and standing made him giddy: he was glad to sit still in his corner obliterated by Maddy's colossal shoulders. It was friendliness, he knew, that made Rankin dispense with ceremony and pilot him through those never-ending spaces to the dining-room. And it must have been an exaggeration of the same feeling that made him (regardless of his wife's uplifted eyebrows) insist on placing the guest of the evening between Maddox and himself. It was later on, about the time when the wine went round, that Rickman became aware of a change, of a subtle undefined hostility in the air. He wondered whether the Rankins were annoyed with him because of his inability to take a brilliant part in the conversation or to finish any one thing that he took upon his plate. But for the life of him he couldn't help it. He was too tired to talk, and he had reached that stage of hunger when the desire to eat no longer brought with it the power of eating, when the masterpieces of Rankin's chef excited only terror and repugnance. He ate sparingly as starving men must eat, and he drank more sparingly than he ate; for he feared the probable effect of unwonted stimulants. So that his glass appeared ever to be full.
The hostility was more Mrs. Herbert Rankin's attitude than that of her husband, but he noticed a melancholy change in Rankin. His geniality had vanished, or lingered only in the curl of his moustache. He was less amusing than of old. His conversation was no longer that of the light-hearted junior journalist flinging himself recklessly into the tide of talk; but whatever topic was started he turned it to himself. He was exceedingly indignant on the subject of the war, which he regarded more as a personal grievance than as a national calamity. No doubt it was his eminence that constituted him the centre of so vast a range.
"The worst of it is," said he, "whichever side beats it's destruction to royalties. I lost a clean thousand on Spion Kop and I can tell you I didn't recover much on Mafeking, though I worked Tommy Atkins for all he was worth. This year my sales have dropped from fifty to thirty thousand. I can't stand many more of these reverses."
He paused, dubious, between two entrées.
"If it's had that effect on me," said the great man, "Heaven only knows what it's done to other people. How about you, Rickman?"
"Oh, I'm all right, thanks." The war had ruined him, but his ruin was not the point of view from which he had yet seriously regarded it. He was frankly disgusted with his old friend's tone.
"If it goes on much longer, I shall be obliged," said Rankin solemnly, "to go out to the seat of war."
Rickman felt a momentary glow. He was exhilarated by the idea of Rankin at the seat of war. He said he could see Rankin sitting on it.
Rankin laughed, for he was not wholly dead to the humour of his own celebrity; but there was a faint silken rustle at the head of the table, subtle and hostile, like the stirring of a snake. Mrs. Herbert Rankin bent her fine flat brows towards the poet, with a look ominous and intent. The look was lost upon Rickman and he wondered why Maddox pressed his foot.
"Have you written anything on the war, Mr. Rickman?" she asked.
"No; I haven't written anything on the war."
She looked at him almost contemptuously as at a fool who had neglected an opportunity.
"What do you generally write on, then?"
Rickman looked up with a piteous smile. He was beginning to feel very miserable and weary, and he longed to get up and go. It seemed to him that there was no end to that dinner; no end to the pitiless ingenuity of Rankin's chef. And he always had hated being stared at.
"I don't—generally—write—on anything," he said.
"Your last poem is an exception to your rule, then?"
"It is. I wrote most of that on gin and water," said Rickman desperately.
Rankin had tugged all the geniality out of his moustache, and his face was full of anxiety and gloom. Maddox tried hard not to snigger. He was not fond of Mrs. Herbert Rankin.
And Rankin's chef continued to send forth his swift and fair creations.
Rickman felt his forehead grow cold and damp. He leaned back and wiped it with his handkerchief. A glance passed between Maddox and Rankin. But old Mrs. Rankin looked at him and the motherhood stirred in her heart.
"Won't you change places with me? I expect you're feeling that fire too much at your back."
Maddox plucked his sleeve. "Better stay where you are," he whispered.
Rickman rose instantly to his feet. The horrible conviction was growing on him that he was going to faint, to faint or to be ignominiously ill. That came sometimes of starving, by some irony of Nature.
"Don't Maddy—I think perhaps—"
Surely he was going to faint.
Maddox jumped up and held him as he staggered from the room.
Rankin looked at his wife and his wife looked at Rankin. "He may be a very great poet," said she, "but I hope you'll never ask him to dine here again."
"Never. I can promise you," said Rankin.
The mother had a kinder voice. "I think the poor fellow was feeling ill from that fire."
"Well he might, too," said Rankin with all the bitterness that became the husband of elegant respectability.
"Go and make him lie down and be sure and keep his head lower than his feet," said Rankin's mother.
"I shouldn't be surprised if Ricky's head were considerably lower than his feet already," said Rankin. And when he said it the bosses of his face grew genial again as the old coarse junior journalistic humour possessed itself of the situation. And he went out sniggering and cursing by turns under his moustache.
Rankin's mother was right. Rickman was feeling very ill indeed. Without knowing how he got there he found himself lying on a bed in Rankin's dressing-room. Maddox and Rankin were with him. Maddox had taken off his boots and loosened his collar for him, and was now standing over him contemplating the effect.
"That's all very well," said Maddox, "but how the dickens am I to get him home? Especially as we don't know his address."
"Ask him."
"I'm afraid our Ricky-ticky's hardly in a state to give very reliable information."
"Sixty-five Howland Street," said Rickman faintly, and the two smiled.
"It was Torrington Square, but I forget the number."
"Sixty-five Howland Street," repeated Rickman with an effort to be distinct.
Maddox shook his head. Rickman had sunk low enough, but it was incredible to them that he should have sunk as low as Howland Street. His insistence on that address they regarded as a pleasantry peculiar to his state. "It's perfectly hopeless," said Maddox. "I don't see anything for it, Rankin, but to let him stay where he is."
At that Rickman roused himself from his stupor. "If you'd only stop jawing and give me some brandy, I could go."
"Oh my Aunt!" said Rankin, dallying with his despair.
"It isn't half a bad idea. Try it."
They tried it. Maddox raised the poet's head and Rankin poured the brandy into him. Rankin's hand was gentle, but there was a sternness about Maddox and his ministrations. And as the brandy brought the blood back to his brain, Rickman sat up on Rankin's bed, murmuring apologies that would have drawn pity from the nether mill-stone. But there was no sign of the tenderness that had warmed him when he came. He could see that they were anxious to get him out of the house. Since they had been so keen on reconciliation whence this change to hostility and disapproval? Oh, of course, he remembered; he had been ill (outrageously ill) in Rankin's dressing-room. Perhaps it wasn't very nice of him; still he didn't do it for his own amusement, and Rankin might have been as ill as he liked in his dressing-room, if he had had one. Even admitting that the nature of his calamity was such as to place him beyond the pale of human sympathy, he thought that Rankin might have borne himself with a somewhat better grace. And why Maddox should have taken that preposterous tone—
Maddox explained himself as they left Sussex Square.
Rickman did not at first take in the explanation. He was thinking how he could best circumvent Maddox's obvious intention of hailing a hansom and putting him into it. He didn't want to confess that he hadn't a shilling in his pocket. Coppers anybody may be short of, and presently he meant to borrow twopence for a bus. Later on he would have to ask for a loan of fifty pounds; for you can borrow pounds and you can borrow pennies, but not shillings. Not at any rate if you are starving.
"If I were you, Ricky," Maddox was saying. "I should go straight to bed when you get home. You'll be all right in the morning."
"I'm all right now. I can't think what bowled me over."
"Ricky, the prevarication is unworthy of you. Without humbug, I think you might keep off it a bit before you dine with people. It doesn't matter about us, you know, but it's hardly the sort of thing Mrs. Rankin's been accustomed to."
"Mrs. Rankin?"
"Well yes, I said Mrs. Rankin; but it's not about her I care—it's about you. Of course you'll tell me to mind my own business, but I wish—I wish to goodness you'd give it up—altogether. You did once, why not again? Believe me the game isn't worth the candle." And he said to himself, noting the sharp lines of his friend's haggard figure, "It's killing him."
"I see," said Rickman slowly. In an instant he saw it all; the monstrous and abominable suspicion that had rested upon him all the evening. It explained everything. He saw, too, how every movement of his own had lent itself to the intolerable inference. It was so complete, so satisfactory, so comprehensive, that he could not wonder that they had found no escape from it. He could find none himself. There was no way by which he could establish the fact of his sobriety; for it is the very nature of such accusations to feed upon defence. Denial, whether humorous or indignant, would but condemn him more. The very plausibility of the imputation acted on him as a despotic suggestion. He began to feel that he must have been drunk at Rankin's; that he was drunk now while he was talking to Maddox. And to have told the truth, to have said, "Maddy, I'm starving. I haven't had a square meal for four months," would have sounded too like a beggar's whine. Whatever he let out later on, it would be mean to spring all that on Maddox now, covering him with confusion and remorse.
He laughed softly, aware that his very laugh would be used as evidence against him. "I see. So you all thought I'd been drinking?"
"Well—if you'll forgive my saying so—"
"Oh, I forgive you. It was a very natural supposition."
"I think you'll have to apologise to the Rankins."
"I think the Rankins'll have to apologise to me."
With every foolish word he was more hopelessly immersed.
He insisted on parting with Maddox at the Marble Arch. After all, he had not borrowed that fifty pounds nor yet that twopence. Luckily Rankin's brandy enabled him to walk back with less difficulty than he came. It had also warmed him, so that he did not find out all at once that he had left his overcoat at Rankin's. He could not go back for it. He could never present himself at that house again.
It was a frosty night with a bitter wind rising in the east and blowing up Oxford Street. His attic under the icicled tiles was dark and narrow as the grave. And on the other side of the thin wall a Hunger, more infernal and malignant than his own, waited stealthily for its prey.