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.
CHAPTER LXXI
It was five o'clock, and Dicky Pilkington was at his ease stretched before the fire in a low chair in the drawing-room of the flat he now habitually shared with Poppy Grace. It was beatitude to lie there with his legs nicely toasting, to have his tea (which he did not drink) poured out for him by the most popular little variety actress in London, and to know that she had found in him her master. This evening, his intellect in play under many genial influences, Dicky was once more raising the pæan of Finance. Under some piquant provocation, too; for Poppy had just informed him, that she "didn't fancy his business."
"Now, look here," said Dicky, "you call yourself an artist. Well—this business of mine isn't a business, it's an art. Think of the delicacy we 'ave to use. To know to a hairsbreadth how far you can go with a man, to know when to give him his head with the snaffle and when to draw him in with the curb. It's a feelin' your way all along. Why, I knew a fellow, a broker—an uncommonly clever chap he was, too—ruined just for want of a little tact. He was too precipitate, began hauling his man up just when he ought to have let him go. He'd no imagination, that fellow. (Don't you go eating too much cake, Popsie, or you'll make your little nose red.) I don't know any other profession gives you such a grip of life and such a feelin' of power. You've got some young devil plungin' about, kickin' up his heels all over the shop, say. He thinks he's got the whole place to break his neck in; and you know the exact minute by your watch that you can bring him in grovellin' on your office floor. It's the iron 'and in the velvet glove," said Dicky.
"I know what you're driving at, and I call it a beastly shame."
"No, it isn't. I shouldn't wonder if old Rickets paid up all right, after all."
"And if he doesn't?"