ing except consummate
impudence, a disconcerting humour and a startling style. But he was
still more distantly related to Mr. Rickman the young man about town.
And that made four. Besides these four there was a fifth, the serene
and perfect intelligence, who from some height immeasurably far above
them sat in judgement on them all. But for his abnormal sense of
humour he would have been a Mr. Rickman of the pure reason, no good at
all. As it was, he occasionally offered some reflection which was
enjoyed but seldom acted upon.

And underneath these Mr. Rickmans, though inextricably, damnably one
with them, was a certain apparently commonplace but amiable young man,
who lived in a Bloomsbury boarding-house and dropped his aitches. This
young man was tender and chivalrous, full of little innocent
civilities to the ladies of his boarding-house; he admired, above all
things, modesty in a woman, and somewhere, in the dark and unexplored
corners of his nature, he concealed a prejudice in favour of marriage
and the sanctities of home.

That made six, and no doubt they would have pulled together well
enough; but the bother was that any one of them was liable at any
moment to the visitation of the seventh--Mr. Rickman the genius. There
was no telling whether he would come in the form of a high god or a
demon, a consolation or a torment. Sometimes he would descend upon Mr.
Rickman in the second-hand department, and attempt to seduce him from
his allegiance to the Quarterly Catalogue. Or he would take up the
poor journalist's copy as it lay on a table, and change it so that its
own editor wouldn't know it again. And sometimes he would swoop down
on the little bookseller as he sat at breakfast on a Sunday morning,
in his nice frock coat and clean collar, and wrap his big flapping
wings round him, and carry him off to the place where the divine ideas
come from leaving a silent and to all appearances idiotic young
gentleman in his place. Or he would sit down by that young gentleman's
side and shake him out of his little innocences and complacencies, and
turn all his little jokes into his own incomprehensible humour. And
then the boarding-house would look uncomfortable and say to itself
that Mr. Rickman had been drinking.

In short, it was a very confusing state of affairs, and one that made
it almost impossible for Mr. Rickman to establish his identity. Seven
Rickmans--only think of it! And some reckon an eighth, Mr. Rickman
drunk