She continued her ministrations; she brought coal in her own scuttle and after immense pains she lighted a fire in the wretched grate. Then she smoothed his bed-clothes till they were covered with her smutty trail. She would have gone for a doctor then and there, but difficulty arose. For doctors meant hospitals, and the man below threatened to sell his lodger's "sticks" if rent were not forthcoming. She cast her eyes about in search of pawnable articles. They fell upon his clothes. She took up his shirt and examined it carefully, appraising the sleeve links and the studs. But when she touched the coat, the coat that had Lucia's letter in the breast-pocket, Rickman turned in his bed and made agonizing signs, struggling with the voice that perished in his burning throat.
"Wot's the good," said she, "of a suit when yer can't wear it? As I telled you wot you wa—No, the's no sorter use your making fyces at me. And you keep your ——y legs in, or I'll—" The propositions that followed were murmured in a hoarse but crooning tone such as a mother might have used to soothe a fractious child. She went away, carrying the clothes with her, and turned out the pockets in her den.
On her return she sent the man below to fetch the doctor. But the man below fell in with boon companions on the way, and no doctor came. All that night the woman watched by Rickman's bedside, heedless of her luck. She kept life in him by feeding him with warm milk and gin, a teaspoonful at a time. Rickman, aware of footsteps in the room, fancied himself back again in Rankin's dressing-room. The whole scene of that evening floated before him all night long. He had a sense of presences hostile and offended, of being irretrievably disgraced. In the recurring nightmare he saw Lucia Harden instead of Mrs. Rankin. So persistently did he see her that when he woke he could not shake off the impression that she had been actually, if unaccountably, present, a spectator of his uttermost disgrace. He could never look her in the face again. No, for he was disgraced; absolutely, irredeemably, atrociously disgraced. Beyond all possibility of explanation and defence; though he sometimes caught himself explaining and pleading against those offended phantoms of his brain. Why should he suffer so? Just because of his inability to deal with Rankin's never-ending dinner, or to pay a debt of millions, many millions of figures that climbed up the wall. He was not sure which of these two obligations was laid upon him.
He became by turns delirious and drowsy, and the woman fetched a doctor early the next day. He found enteric and blood-poisoning also, of which Rickman's illness at the Rankins' must have been the first warning symptoms.
"He'll have to go to the hospital; but you'd better send word to his friends."
"'E ain't got no friends. And I dunno 'oo 'e is."
The doctor said to himself, "Gone under," and looked round him for a clue. He examined a postcard from Spinks and a parcel (containing an overcoat) from Rankin, with the novelist's name and address inside the wrapper. The poet's name was familiar to the doctor, who read Metropolis. He first of all made arrangements for removing his patient to the hospital. Then in his uncertainty he telegraphed to Jewdwine, to Rankin and to Spinks.
The news of Rickman's illness was thus spread rapidly among his friends. It brought Spinks that afternoon, and Flossie, the poor Beaver, dragged to Howland Street by her husband to see what her woman's hands could do. They entered upon a scene of indescribable confusion and clangour. Poppy Grace, arrived on her errand (for which she had attired herself in a red dress and ermine tippet), had mounted guard over the unconscious poet.
"Ricky," cried Poppy, bending over him, "won't you speak to me? It's Poppy, dear. Don't you know me?"
"No, 'e don't know yer, so you needn't arsk 'im."