Spinks sat down and stared at the object of his devotion. "Poor old
chappie," he murmured tenderly. He was helpless before that slow
melancholy shaking of the head, that mysterious and steadfast smile.
He approached tip-toe on deprecating feet. But Rickman would none of
him; his whole attitude was eloquent of rebuke. He waved Spinks away
with one pathetic hand; with the other he clutched and gathered round
him the last remnants of his personal majesty. And thus, in his own
time and in his own fashion, he wandered to his bed. Even then he
conveyed reproach and reproof by his manner of entering it; he seemed
to vanish subtly, to withdraw himself, as into some sacred and
inviolable retreat.
Spinks crept away, saddened by the rebuff. After all, he was no nearer
to Rickman drunk than to Rickman sober. Half an hour later, he was
asleep in the adjoining room, dreaming a lightsome dream of ladies and
_mousselines de laine_, when suddenly the dream turned to a
nightmare. It seemed to him that there descended upon him a heavy
rolling weight, as of a bale of woollens. He awoke and found that it
was Rickman.
The poet lay face downwards across the body of his friend, and was
crooning into his ear the great chorus from the third act of Helen in
Leuce. He said that nobody but Spinky understood it. And Spinky
couldn't understand it if he wasn't drunk.
Whereupon Spinks was most curiously uplifted and consoled.
CHAPTER XIII
He woke tired out, as well he might be, after spending half the night
in the pursuit of young Joy personified in Miss Poppy Grace, young
Joy, who, like that little dancer, is the swiftest of all swift
things.
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