CHAPTER LXXII

Of all the consequences of that terrible dinner at Rankin’s there was none that Rickman resented more than the loss of his overcoat.  As he lay between his blankets he still felt all the lashings of the east wind around his shivering body.  He was awake all that night, and the morning found him feverish with terror of the illness that might overtake him before he attained his end.  He stayed in bed all day to prevent it, and because of his weakness, and for warmth.

But the next day there came a mild and merciful thaw, a tenderness of Heaven that was felt even under the tiles in Howland Street.  And the morning of that day brought a thing that in all his dreams he had not yet dreamed of, a letter from Lucia.

He read it kneeling on the floor of his garret, supporting himself by the edge of the table.  It was only a few lines in praise of the Elegy (which had appeared in The Planet the week before) and a postscript that told him she would be staying at Court House with Miss Palliser till the summer.

He knelt there a long time with his head bowed upon his arms.  His brains failed him when he tried to write an answer, and he put the letter into his breast-pocket, where it lay like a loving hand against his heart.  And yet there was not a word of love in it.

The old indomitable hope rose in his heart again and he forced himself to eat and drink, that he might have strength for the things he had to do.  That night he did not sleep, but lay wrapt in his beatific passion.  His longing was so intense that it created a vision of the thing it longed for.  It seemed to him that he heard Lucia’s soft footfall about his bed, that she came and sat beside his pillow, that she bowed her head upon his breast, and that her long hair drifted over him.  For the beating of his own heart gave him the sense of a presence beside him all night long, as he lay with his right arm flung across his own starved body, guarding her letter, the letter that had not a word of love in it.

In the morning he discovered that another letter had lain on his table under Lucia’s.  It was from Dicky Pilkington, reminding him that it wanted but seven days to the thirtieth.  Dicky said nothing about any willingness to renew the bill.  What did it matter?  Dicky would renew it, Dicky must renew it; he felt that there was force in him to compel Dicky to renew it.  He went out and bought a paper with the price of a meal of milk (he couldn’t pawn his good clothes; their assistance was too valuable in interviews with possible employers).  He found the advertisement of an Exeter bookseller in want of a foreman and expert cataloguer at a salary of ninety pounds.  He answered it by return.  In the list of his credentials he mentioned that he had catalogued the Harden library (a feat, as he knew, sufficient to constitute him a celebrity in the eyes of the Exeter man).  He added that if the bookseller felt inclined to consider his application he would be obliged by a wire, as he had several other situations in view.