He saw in
fancy the procession of the hours, the flight of the dreams, of all
the gorgeous intellectual pageants that move through the pages of
_Saturnalia_. For in ninety-two Savage Keith Rickman was a little poet
about town, a cockney poet, the poet not only of neo-classic drama,
but of green suburban Saturday noons, and flaming Saturday nights, and
of a great many things besides. He had made his plans long beforehand,
and was prepared to consign to instant perdition the person or thing
that should interfere with them. Good Friday morning, an hour's
cycling before breakfast in Regent's 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.
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