The Divine Fire | Page 8

Park, by way of pumping some air into his
lungs, then, ten hours at least of high Parnassian leisure, of dalliance in
Academic shades; he saw himself wooing some reluctant classic, or, far

more likely, flirting with his own capricious and bewildering muse. (In
a world of prose it is only by such divine snatches that poets are made)
Friday evening, dinner at his club, the Junior Journalists'. Saturday
morning, recovery from dinner at the Junior Journalists'. Saturday
afternoon, to Hampstead or the Hippodrome with Flossie Walker, the
little clerk, who lived in his boarding-house and never had any fun to
speak of. Saturday night, supper with--well, with Miss Poppy Grace of
the Jubilee Variety Theatre. He had a sudden vision of Poppy as he was
wont to meet her in delightful intimacy, instantaneously followed by
her image that flaunted on the posters out there in the Strand, Poppy as
she appeared behind the foot-lights, in red silk skirts and black silk
stockings, skimming, whirling, swaying, and deftly shaking her foot at
him. Midnight and morning merging into one. Sunday, to Richmond,
probably, with Poppy and some others. Monday, up the river with
Himself. Not for worlds, that is to say, not for any amount of Poppies,
would he have broken his appointment with that brilliant and yet
inscrutable companion who is so eternally fascinating at twenty-three.
Monday was indistinct but luminous, a restless, shimmering
background for ideas. Ideas! They swarmed like motes in the blue air;
they loomed, they floated, vague, and somewhat supernaturally large,
all made out of Mr. Rickman's brain. And in the midst of the ideas a
figure insanely whirled, till it became a mere wheel of flying skirts and
tossing limbs.
At this point Mr. Rickman caught the cashier's eye looking at him over
the little mahogany rails of his pew, and he began wondering how on
earth the cashier would behave when they loosed him out for the Bank
Holiday. Then he set to and wrote hard at the Quarterly Catalogue. In
all London there was not a more prolific or versatile writer than Savage
Keith Rickman. But if in ninety-two you had asked him for his
masterpiece, his magnum opus, his life-work, he would mention
nothing that he had written, but refer you, soberly and benignly, to that
colossal performance, the Quarterly Catalogue.
"Vandam: Amours of Great Men (a little soiled). Rare. 30s." He was in
the middle of the Vs now and within measurable distance of the end.
Business being slack in the front shop, he finished earlier than usual,

and actually found himself with nearly a whole hour upon his hands
before dinner. He had half a mind to spend it at his club, the Junior
Journalists', in the side street over the way.
Only half a mind; for Mr. Rickman entertained the most innocent
beliefs with regard to that club of his. He was not yet sure whether it
belonged to him or he to it; but in going to the Junior Journalists' he
conceived himself to be going into society. So extreme was his illusion.
Mr. Rickman's place was in the shop and his home was in a boarding
house, and for years he had thought of belonging to that club; but quite
hopelessly, as of a thing beyond attainment. It had never occurred to
him that anything could come of those invasions of the friendly young
men. Yet this was what had come of them. He was friends, under the
rose, that is to say, over the counter, with Horace Jewdwine of Lazarus
College, Oxford. Jewdwine had proposed him on his own merits,
somebody else had seconded him (he supposed) on Jewdwine's, and
between them they had smuggled him in. This would be his first
appearance as a Junior Journalist. And he might well feel a little
diffident about it; for, though some of the members knew him, he could
not honestly say he knew any of them, except Rankin (of _The Planet_)
who possibly mightn't, and Jewdwine who certainly wouldn't, be there.
But the plunge had to be made some time; he might as well make it
now.
From the threshold of the Junior Journalists' he looked back across the
side street, as across a gulf, at the place he had just left. His eyes moved
from the jutting sign-board at the corner, announcing _Gentlemen's
Libraries Purchased_, to the legend that ran above the window,
blazoned in letters of gold:
_Isaac Rickman: New & Second-Hand Bookseller._
His connexion with it was by no means casual and temporary. It was
his father's shop.
CHAPTER V

The little booksellers of the Strand, in their death struggle against
Rickman's, never cursed that house more heartily than did the Junior
Journalists, in their friendly, shabby little den, smelling of old leather
and tobacco and