The Divine Fire Part 8

In the front room was a sofa--No, a divan, and on the divan the skin of a Polar bear sprawling. Rickman and Poppy sat on the top of the bear. Such a disreputable, out-of-elbow, cosmopolitan bear! His little eye-holes were screwed up in a wicked wink, a wink that repudiated any connection with his native waters of the Pole.

The house was very still. Behind his yellow gauze curtain the canary stirred in his sleep. "Swe-eet," he murmured plaintively in his dream.

"Swe-eet, d.i.c.ky!" echoed Poppy. Then because she had nothing to say she began to sing. She sang the song of Simpson the tenor, Simpson the master of tears.

"'Twas on the night our little byby died, And Bill, 'e comes, and, 'Sal,' 'e sez,'look ere, I've signed a pledge,'ser 'e, 'agains the beer.

'D'ye see?'

Sez 'e.

'And wot I 'ope ter syve Will t.i.ttervyte 'is bloomin' little gryve.'

Then--Well--yo' should 'ave 'eard us 'ow we cried-- Like bloomin' kids--the--night--the byby--died.

"That song," said Poppy, "doesn't exactly suit my style of beauty. You should have heard Simpey sing it. _That_ 'd 'ave given you something to 'owl for."

For Rickman looked depressed.

The sound of Poppy's song waked the canary; he fluttered down from his perch and stretched his wings, trailing them on the floor of his cage to brush the sleep out of them.

"Did you ever see such affectation," said Poppy, "look at him, striking att.i.tudes up there, all by 'is little self!"

Poppy seemed to cling to the idea of the canary as a symbol of propriety.

"Do you know, Rickets, it's past twelve o'clock?"

No, he didn't know. He had taken no count of time. But he knew that he had drunk a great many little tumblers of champagne, and that his love for Poppy seemed more than ever a supersensuous and immortal thing. He pulled himself together in order to tell her so; but at that moment he was confronted by an insuperable difficulty. In the tender and pa.s.sionate speech that he was about to make to her, it would be necessary to address her by name. But how--in Heaven's name--could he address a divinity as Poppy? He settled the difficulty by deciding that he would not address her at all. There should be no invocation.

He would simply explain.

He got up and walked about the room and explained in such words as pleased him the distinction between the corruptible and the incorruptible Eros. From time to time he chanted his own poems in the intervals of explaining; for they bore upon the matter in hand.

"Rickets," said Poppy, severely, "you've had too much fizz. I can see it in your eyes--most unmistakably. I know it isn't very nice of me to say so, when it's my fizz you've been drinking; but it isn't really mine, it's d.i.c.ky Pilkington's--at least he paid for it."

But Rickets did not hear her. His soul, soaring on wings of champagne, was borne far away from d.i.c.ky Pilkington.

"Know" (chanted Rickets) "that the Love which is my Lord most high, He changeth not with seasons and with days, His feet are shod with light in all his ways.

And when he followeth none have power to fly.

"He chooseth whom he will, and draweth nigh.

To them alone whom he himself doth raise Unto his perfect service and his praise; Of such Love's lowliest minister am I."

"If you'd asked me," said Poppy, "I should have said he had a pretty good opinion of himself. What do you say, d.i.c.ky?"

"Sweet!" sang the canary in one pure, penetrating note, the voice of Innocence itself.

"Isn't he rakish?" But Poppy got no answer from the sonneteer. He had wheeled round from her, carried away in the triumph and rapture of the sestette. His steps marked the beat of the iambics, he turned on his heel at the end of every line. For the moment he was sober, as men count sobriety.

"For he I serve hath paced Heaven's golden floor, And chanted with the Seraphims' glad choir; Lo! All his wings are plumed with fervent fire; He hath twain that bear him upward evermore, With twain he veils his holy eyes before The mystery of his own divine desire.

"Does it remind you of anything?" he asked. It struck her as odd that he seemed to realize her presence with difficulty.

"No, I can't say that I ever heard anything like it in my life."

"Well, the idea's bagged from Dante--I mean Dante-gabrier-rossetti.

But he doesn't want it as badly as I do. In fac', I don' think he wants it at all where he is now. If he does, he can take any of mine in exchange. You bear me out, Poppy--I invite the gentleman to step down and make 's own s'lection: n.o.body can say I plagiarize anyborry--anyborry but myself."

"All right, don't you worry, old chappy," said Poppy soothingly. "You come here and sit quiet."

He came and sat down beside her, as if the evening had only just begun. He sat down carefully, tenderly, lest he should crush so much as the hem of her fan-like, diaphanous skirts. And then he began to talk to her.

He said there was no woman--no lady--in the world for whom he felt such reverence and admiration; "Pop-oppy," he said, "you're fit to dance before G.o.d on the floor of Heaven when they've swept it."

"Oh come," said Poppy, "can't you go one better?"

He could. He did. He intimated that though he wors.h.i.+pped every hair of Poppy's little head and every inch of Poppy's little body, what held him, at the moment, were the fascinations of her mind, and the positively gorgeous beauty of her soul. Yes; there could be no doubt that the object of his devotion was Poppy's imperishable soul.

"Well," said Poppy, "that tykes the very tip-top macaroon!"

Then she laughed; she laughed as if she would never have done. She laughed, first with her eyes, then with her throat, then with her whole body, shaking her head and rocking herself backwards and forwards. She laughed till her hair came down, and he took it and smoothed it into two sleek straight bands, and tied them in a loose knot under her chin.

Then she stopped laughing. Her face between the two tight sheaths of hair seemed to close and shrink to a thin sharp bud. It closed and opened again, it grew nearer and bigger, it bent forward and put out its mouth (for it had a mouth, this extraordinary flower) and kissed him.

"I sy, it's nearly one o'clock," said she. "You've got to clear out of this. Come!"

She rose; she stood before him holding out her hands to help him to get up and go. She laughed again. She laughed wide-mouthed, her head flung back, her face foreshortened, her white throat swelled and quivering--the abandoned figure of Low Comedy incarnate. But that was not what he saw.

To him it was as if the dark, impenetrable world had suddenly unfolded, had blossomed and flowered in the rose of her mouth; as if all the roses of all the world went to make up the petals of that rose. Her body was nothing but a s.h.i.+ning, transparent vessel for the fire of life. It ran over; it leapt from her; the hands she stretched out to him were two shallow lamps that could hardly hold the tall, upward shooting, wind-tortured splendour of the flame.

He rose unsteadily to his feet. The movement, being somewhat complicated, brought him within a yard of his own figure as presented in one of the long mirrors. He stood there, arrested, fascinated, shocked by that person in the mirror. The face he was accustomed to see in mirrors was grave, and not high coloured, and it always kept its mouth shut. This person's face was very red, and his mouth was slightly open, a detail he noticed with a peculiar disgust. He could not get away from it, either. It was held there, illuminated, insisted on, repeated for ever and ever, smaller and smaller, an endless procession of faces, all animated by one frenzy and one flame. He was appalled by this mysterious multiplication of his person, and by the flushed and brilliant infamy of his face. The face was the worst; he thought he had never seen anything so detestable as the face. He sat down and hid it in his hands.

"Poor Rickets," said Poppy softly. She drew his hands from his face by a finger at a time.

"Oh, Ricky-ticky, you are such a rum little fellow. I suppose that's why I like you. But for the life of me I can't think why I kissed you; unless it was to say Good-night."

A kiss more or less was nothing to Poppy. And that one, she felt, had been valedictory. She had kissed, not Ricky-ticky, but his dying Innocence, the boy in him. And she had really wanted him to go.

The house was stiller than ever. The canary had tucked his head under his wing and gone to sleep again. Out of the silence the clock of St.

Pancras Church struck one.

And yet he had not gone.

CHAPTER XI

A step was heard on the pavement outside; then the click of a latch-key; a step on the stairs, at the threshold, and Mr. Pilkington walked in with the air of being the master of the house and everything in it.

The little laughing mask slipped from Poppy's face, her eyes were two sapphire crescents darting fright under down-dropped lids. There was a look in d.i.c.ky's face she did not care for. But Rickman--as Maddox had testified--was a perfect little gentleman when he was drunk, and at the sight of Pilkington, chivalry, immortal chivalry, leapt in his heart.

He became suddenly grave, steady and coherent.