The Divine Fire | Page 9

the town. They complained that it cut on two-thirds of
the light from the front windows of the reading-room. Not that any of
them were ever known to read in it. They used it chiefly as a place to
talk in, for which purpose little illumination was required.
To-night one of the windows in question was occupied by a small
group of talkers isolated from the rest. There was Mackinnon, of The
Literary Observer. There were the three wild young spirits of The
Planet, Stables, who had launched it with frightful impetus into space
(having borrowed a sum sufficient for the purpose), Maddox, who
controlled its course, and Rankin, whose brilliance made it twinkle so
brightly in the firmament. With them, but emphatically not of them,
was Horace Jewdwine, of Lazarus, who had come up from Oxford to
join the staff of The Museion.
Jewdwine and Mackinnon, both secure of a position and a salary,
looked solemn and a little anxious; but the men of The Planet, having
formed themselves into a sort of unlimited liability company, and
started a brand new "weekly" of their own (upon no sort of security
beyond their bare brains) were as persons without a single care, worry
or responsibility. They were exchanging ideas in an off-hand and
light-hearted manner, the only stipulation being that the ideas must be
new; for, by some unwritten law of the club, the conversational
currency was liable at any moment to be called in.
This evening, however, they had hit on a topic almost virgin from the
mint.
"S.K.R.? Who is he? What is he?" said Mackinnon.
"I can't tell you what he _is_; but I can pretty soon tell you what he's
not," said Stables. He was a very young man with a white face and red
eyelids, who looked as if he sat up all night and went to bed in the
day-time, as indeed he generally did.

"Omnis negatio est determinatio," murmured Jewdwine, without
looking up from the letter he was trying to write.
"What has he done?" persisted Mackinnon.
"He's done a great many remarkable things," said Rankin; "things
almost as remarkable as himself."
"Who unearthed him?"
"I did," said Rankin, so complacently that the deep lines relaxed round
the five copper-coloured bosses that were his chin and cheeks and brow.
(The rest of Rankin's face was spectacles and moustache.)
"Oh, did you?" said Maddox. Maddox was a short man with large
shoulders; heavy browed, heavy jowled, heavy moustached. Maddox's
appearance belied him; he looked British when he was half Celt; he
struck you as overbearing when he was only top-heavy; he spoke as if
he was angry when he was only in fun, as you could see by his eyes.
Little babyish blue eyes they were with curly corners, a gay light in the
sombre truculence of his face. They looked cautiously round.
"I can tell you a little tale about S.K.R. You know the last time Smythe
was ill--?"
"You mean drunk."
"Well--temporarily extinguished. S.K.R., who knows his music-halls,
was offered Smythe's berth. We delicately intimated to him that if he
liked at any time to devote a little paragraph to Miss Poppy Grace, he
was at perfect liberty to do so."
"A liberty he interpreted as poetic licence."
"Nothing of the sort. He absolutely declined the job."
"Why?"
"Well--the marvellous boy informed me that he was too intimate with

the lady to write about her. At any rate with that noble impartiality
which distinguishes the utterances of The Planet."
"Steady, man. He never told ye that!" said Mackinnon.
"I didn't say he told me, I said he informed me."
"And whar's the differ'nce? I don't see it at all."
"Trepan him, trepan him."
Stables took out his penknife and indicated by dumb show a surgical
operation on Mackinnon's dome-like head.
"I gathered it," continued Maddox suavely, "from his manner. I culled
his young thought like a flower."
"Perhaps," Rankin suggested, "he was afraid of compromising Poppy."
"He might have left that subtle consideration to Pilkington."
"That was it. He scented Dicky's hand in it, and wasn't particularly
anxious to oblige him. The point of the joke is that he happens to owe
Dicky a great deal more than he can conveniently pay. That'll give you
some faint notion of the magnificence of his cheek."
Stables was impressed. He wondered what sort of young man it could
be who had the moral courage to oppose Dicky Pilkington at such a
moment. He could not have done it himself. Dicky Pilkington was the
great and mysterious power at the back of The Planet.
"But this isn't the end of it. I told him, for his future guidance and
encouragement, that he had mistaken cause and effect--that little
variety artistes, like other people, are not popular because