He found in the table drawer three unpublished articles, a few poems, and the First Act of the second and unfinished tragedy, saved by its obscure position at the back of the drawer.  The woman owned to having lit the fire with the rest.  Maddox cursed and groaned as he thought of that destruction.  He knew that many poems which followed Saturnalia had remained unpublished.  Had they too been taken to light the fire?  He turned the garret upside down in search of the missing manuscripts.  At last in a cupboard, he came upon a leather bag.  It was locked and he could find no key, but he wrenched it open with the poker.  It contained many manuscripts; among them the Nine and Twenty Sonnets, and the testament concerning them.  He read the Sonnets, but not the other document which was in a sealed envelope.  He found also a bundle of Dicky Pilkington’s receipts and his last letter threatening foreclosure.  And when he had packed up the books (Lucia’s books) and redeemed Rickman’s clothes from the pawn-shop, he took all these things away with him for safety.

There was little he could do for Rickman, but he promised himself the pleasure of settling Dicky’s claim.  But even that satisfaction was denied him.  For Dicky had just renewed his bill for a nominal three months.  Nominal only.  Dicky had in view a magnificent renunciation, and he flatly refused to treat with Maddox or anybody else.  He was completely satisfied with this conclusion; it meant that Rickman, for all his style and pluck, had lost the game and that he, Pilkington, had done the handsome thing, as he could do it when the fancy took him.  For Dicky’s heart had been touched by the tale that Poppy told him, and it melted altogether when he went and saw for himself poor Ricky lying in his cot in the North-Western Hospital.  He had a great deal of nice feeling about him after all, had Dicky.

Terrible days followed Rickman’s removal to the hospital; days when his friends seemed justified in their sad conviction; days when the doctors gave up hope; days when he would relapse after some brief recovery; days when he kept them all in agonizing suspense.

But Rickman did not die.  As they said, it was not in him to take that exquisitely mean revenge.  It was not in him to truckle to the tradition that ordains that unfortunate young poets shall starve in garrets and die in hospitals.  He had always been an upsetter of conventions, and a law unto himself.  So there came a day, about the middle of March, when he astonished them all by appearing among them suddenly in Maddox’s rooms, less haggard than he had been that night when he sat starving at Rankin’s dinner-table.

And as he came back to them, to Jewdwine, to Maddox and to Rankin, they each could say no more to him than they had said five years ago.  “What a fool you were, Rickman.  Why didn’t you come to me?” But when the others had left, Maddox put his hands on Rickman’s shoulders and they looked each other in the face.