Rickie scarcely knew him; last night he had seemed so colorless, no negligible. In a few hours he had recaptured motion and passion and the imprint of the sunlight and the wind. He stood, not consciously heroic, with arms that dangled from broad stooping shoulders, and feet that played with a hassock on the carpet. But his hair was beautiful against the grey sky, and his eyes, recalling the sky unclouded, shot past the intruder as if to some worthier vision. So intent was their gaze that Rickie himself glanced backwards, only to see the neat passage and the banisters at the top of the stairs. Then the lips beat together twice, and out burst a torrent of amazing words.
"Add it all up, and let me know how much. I'd sooner have died. It never took me that way before. I must have broken pounds' worth. If you'll not tell the police, I promise you shan't lose, Mr. Elliot, I swear. But it may be months before I send it. Everything is to be new. You've not to be a penny out of pocket, do you see? Do let me go, this once again."
"What's the trouble?" asked Rickie, as if they had been friends for years. "My dear man, we've other things to talk about. Gracious me, what a fuss! If you'd smashed the whole house I wouldn't mind, so long as you came back."
"I'd sooner have died," gulped Stephen.
"You did nearly! It was I who caught you. Never mind yesterday's rag. What can you manage for breakfast?"
The face grew more angry and more puzzled. "Yesterday wasn't a rag," he said without focusing his eyes. "I was drunk, but naturally meant it."
"Meant what?"
"To smash you. Bad liquor did what Mrs. Elliot couldn't. I've put myself in the wrong. You've got me."
It was a poor beginning.
"As I have got you," said Rickie, controlling himself, "I want to have a talk with you. There has been a ghastly mistake."
But Stephen, with a countryman's persistency, continued on his own line. He meant to be civil, but Rickie went cold round the mouth. For he had not even been angry with them. Until he was drunk, they had been dirty people—not his sort. Then the trivial injury recurred, and he had reeled to smash them as he passed. "And I will pay for everything," was his refrain, with which the sighing of raindrops mingled. "You shan't lose a penny, if only you let me free."
"You'll pay for my coffin if you talk like that any longer! Will you, one, forgive my frightful behaviour; two, live with me?" For his only hope was in a cheerful precision.
Stephen grew more agitated. He thought it was some trick.
"I was saying I made an unspeakable mistake. Ansell put me right, but it was too late to find you. Don't think I got off easily. Ansell doesn't spare one. And you've got to forgive me, to share my life, to share my money.—I've brought you this photograph—I want it to be the first thing you accept from me—you have the greater right—I know all the story now. You know who it is?"
"Oh yes; but I don't want to drag all that in."
"It is only her wish if we live together. She was planning it when she died."
"I can't follow—because—to share your life? Did you know I called here last Sunday week?"
"Yes. But then I only knew half. I thought you were my father's son."
Stephen's anger and bewilderment were increasing. He stuttered. "What—what's the odds if you did?"
"I hated my father," said Rickie. "I loved my mother." And never had the phrases seemed so destitute of meaning.
"Last Sunday week," interrupted Stephen, his voice suddenly rising, "I came to call on you. Not as this or that's son. Not to fall on your neck. Nor to live here. Nor—damn your dirty little mind! I meant to say I didn't come for money. Sorry. Sorry. I simply came as I was, and I haven't altered since."
"Yes—yet our mother—for me she has risen from the dead since then—I know I was wrong—"
"And where do I come in?" He kicked the hassock. "I haven't risen from the dead. I haven't altered since last Sunday week. I'm—" He stuttered again. He could not quite explain what he was. "The man towards Andover—after all, he was having principles. But you've—" His voice broke. "I mind it—I'm—I don't alter—blackguard one week—live here the next—I keep to one or the other—you've hurt something most badly in me that I didn't know was there."
"Don't let us talk," said Rickie. "It gets worse every minute. Simply say you forgive me; shake hands, and have done with it."
"That I won't. That I couldn't. In fact, I don't know what you mean."
Then Rickie began a new appeal—not to pity, for now he was in no mood to whimper. For all its pathos, there was something heroic in this meeting. "I warn you to stop here with me, Stephen. No one else in the world will look after you. As far as I know, you have never been really unhappy yet or suffered, as you should do, from your faults. Last night you nearly killed yourself with drink. Never mind why I'm willing to cure you. I am willing, and I warn you to give me the chance. Forgive me or not, as you choose. I care for other things more."
Stephen looked at him at last, faintly approving. The offer was ridiculous, but it did treat him as a man.
"Let me tell you of a fault of mine, and how I was punished for it," continued Rickie. "Two years ago I behaved badly to you, up at the Rings. No, even a few days before that. We went for a ride, and I thought too much of other matters, and did not try to understand you. Then came the Rings, and in the evening, when you called up to me most kindly, I never answered. But the ride was the beginning. Ever since then I have taken the world at second-hand. I have bothered less and less to look it in the face—until not only you, but every one else has turned unreal. Never Anselclass="underline" he kept away, and somehow saved himself. But every one else. Do you remember in one of Tony Failing's books, 'Cast bitter bread upon the waters, and after many days it really does come back to you'? This had been true of my life; it will be equally true of a drunkard's, and I warn you to stop with me."
"I can't stop after that cheque," said Stephen more gently. "But I do remember the ride. I was a bit bored myself."
Agnes, who had not been seeing to the breakfast, chose this moment to call from the passage. "Of course he can't stop," she exclaimed. "For better or worse, it's settled. We've none of us altered since last Sunday week."
"There you're right, Mrs. Elliot!" he shouted, starting out of the temperate past. "We haven't altered." With a rare flash of insight he turned on Rickie. "I see your game. You don't care about ME drinking, or to shake MY hand. It's some one else you want to cure—as it were, that old photograph. You talk to me, but all the time you look at the photograph." He snatched it up.
"I've my own ideas of good manners, and to look friends between the eyes is one of them; and this"—he tore the photograph across "and this"—he tore it again—"and these—" He flung the pieces at the man, who had sunk into a chair. "For my part, I'm off."
Then Rickie was heroic no longer. Turning round in his chair, he covered his face. The man was right. He did not love him, even as he had never hated him. In either passion he had degraded him to be a symbol for the vanished past. The man was right, and would have been lovable. He longed to be back riding over those windy fields, to be back in those mystic circles, beneath pure sky. Then they could have watched and helped and taught each other, until the word was a reality, and the past not a torn photograph, but Demeter the goddess rejoicing in the spring. Ah, if he had seized those high opportunities! For they led to the highest of all, the symbolic moment, which, if a man accepts, he has accepted life.
The voice of Agnes, which had lured him then ("For my sake," she had whispered), pealed over him now in triumph. Abruptly it broke into sobs that had the effect of rain. He started up. The anger had died out of Stephen's face, not for a subtle reason but because here was a woman, near him, and unhappy.
She tried to apologize, and brought on a fresh burst of tears. Something had upset her. They heard her locking the door of her room. From that moment their intercourse was changed.