Raphael went out, not uncomforted. He would write to her at once. He got letter-paper at the nearest restaurant and wrote, "Dear Miss Ansell." The rest was a blank. He had not the least idea how to renew the relationship after what seemed an eternity of silence. He stared helplessly round the mirrored walls, seeing mainly his own helpless stare. The placard "Smoking not permitted till 8 P.M.," gave him a sudden shock. He felt for his pipe, and ultimately found it stuck, half full of charred bird's eye, in his breast-pocket. He had apparently not been smoking for some hours. That completed his perturbation. He felt he had undergone too much that day to be in a fit state to write a judicious letter. He would go home and rest a bit, and write the letter—very diplomatically—in the evening. When he got home, he found to his astonishment it was Friday evening, when letter-writing is of the devil. Habit carried him to synagogue, where he sang the Sabbath hymn, "Come, my beloved, to meet the bride," with strange sweet tears and a complete indifference to its sacred allegorical signification. Next afternoon he haunted the publishers' doorstep with the brilliant idea that Mr. Armitage sometimes crossed it. In this hope, he did not write the letter; his phrases, he felt, would be better for the inspiration of that gentleman's presence. Meanwhile he had ample time to mature them, to review the situation in every possible light, to figure Esther under the most poetical images, to see his future alternately radiant and sombre. Four long summer days of espionage only left him with a heartache, and a specialist knowledge of the sort of persons who visit publishers. A temptation to bribe the office-boy he resisted as unworthy.
Not only had he not written that letter, but Mr. Henry Goldsmith's edict and Mrs. Henry Goldsmith's invitation were still unacknowledged. On Thursday morning a letter from Addie indirectly reminded him both of his remissness to her hostess, and of the existence of The Flag of Judah. He remembered it was the day of going to press; a vision of the difficulties of the day flashed vividly upon his consciousness; he wondered if his ex-lieutenants were finding new ones. The smell of the machine-room was in his nostrils; it co-operated with the appeal of his good-nature to draw him to his successor's help. Virtue proved its own reward. Arriving at eleven o'clock, he found little Sampson in great excitement, with the fountain of melody dried up on his lips.—
"Thank God!" he cried. "I thought you'd come when you heard the news."
"What news?"
"Gideon the member for Whitechapel's dead. Died suddenly, early this morning."
"How shocking!" said Raphael, growing white.
"Yes, isn't it?" said little Sampson. "If he had died yesterday, I shouldn't have minded it so much, while to-morrow would have given us a clear week. He hasn't even been ill," he grumbled. "I've had to send Pinchas to the Museum in a deuce of a hurry, to find out about his early life. I'm awfully upset about it, and what makes it worse is a telegram from Goldsmith, ordering a page obituary at least with black rules, besides a leader. It's simply sickening. The proofs are awful enough as it is—my blessed editor has been writing four columns of his autobiography in his most original English, and he wants to leave out all the news part to make room for 'em. In one way Gideon's death is a boon; even Pinchas'll see his stuff must be crowded out. It's frightful having to edit your editor. Why wasn't he made sub?"
"That would have been just as trying for you," said Raphael with a melancholy smile. He took up a galley-proof and began to correct it. To his surprise he came upon his own paragraph about Strelitski's resignation: it caused him fresh emotion. This great spiritual crisis had quite slipped his memory, so egoistic are the best of us at times. "Please be careful that Pinchas's autobiography does not crowd that out," he said.
Pinchas arrived late, when little Sampson was almost in despair. "It is all right." he shouted, waving a roll of manuscript. "I have him from the cradle—the stupid stockbroker, the Man-of-the-Earth, who sent me back my poesie, and vould not let me teach his boy Judaism. And vhile I had the inspiration I wrote the leader also in the Museum—it is here—oh, vairy beautiful! Listen to the first sentence. 'The Angel of Death has passed again over Judaea; he has flown off vith our visest and our best, but the black shadow of his ving vill long rest upon the House of Israel.' And the end is vordy of the beginning. He is dead: but he lives for ever enshrined in the noble tribute to his genius in Metatoron's Flames."
Little Sampson seized the "copy" and darted with it to the composing-room, where Raphael was busy giving directions. By his joyful face Raphael saw the crisis was over. Little Sampson handed the manuscript to the foreman, then drawing a deep breath of relief, he began to hum a sprightly march.