Rankin

“ He had also miscalculated the distance between Rankin the junior journalist and Rankin the celebrity. Rankin had achieved celebrity in a way he had not meant. There was a time when even Jewdwine was outdone by the young men of The Planet in honest contempt for the taste and judgement of the many; when it had been Rankin's task to pursue with indefatigable pleasantry the figures of popular renown. And now he was popular himself. The British public had given to him its fatal love.
At first he looked on himself as a man irretrievably disgraced. ”

“ Each village hints that it has gained the greater number of victories; each is inclined in its heart to believe that the other one has actually done so—because, as I suppose, the agony of defeat leaves a more lasting impression than the joy of victory. But I digress. We have not even got to Rankin's mannerism yet.
Rankin's mannerism is the habit of plunging his hands into his trouser pockets. A very ordinary one, you will say; but not when carried to the extent to which Rankin carries it. It is useless for Rankin to field at short slip, for instance. ”

“ Other men seemed to find cheerful places in which to live, cosy dens where one felt at home at once. But the furniture even of this place was not of Rankin's choosing; he had taken it as it stood from the last tenant. There was a great desk at one side of the room, and an easy-chair that belied its name set against it. Against one wall was a great ugly cupboard, in which sometimes Rankin hung a coat, or into which he pitched something he did not want at the moment, in true bachelor fashion. ”

“ Rankin dropped his point and laughed.
The line wavered. It takes courage to assault a madman.
A long, fierce lunge, and a deadly swift flicker of steel; and Rankin withdrew from the mêlée, on guard again. That sudden assault from beyond probable striking-distance had caught them off balance; one of them was even now a dead man, shorn half asunder.
Then they closed in. Rankin's footwork saved him, and during that instant of grace, his blade again hit deep as he evaded the charge. ”

“ Rankin has turned out one of the greatest villains I ever met with. He had latterly behaved most infamously, and I had reason to suspect him of stealing, but could bring no absolute proof. I, however, had determined he should join his Regt. as soon as I should come near it. However at Castello Branco I detected him in falsifying a ration return from 2 to 12 rations of bread and wine, adding the 1, and turned him off at Niza to a party of the 23rd. ”

“ And, said Dwight-Rankin, even as the door was seen to close, it was also seen how all colour was instantly ravished from Lady Surplice’s face and how she sat in her chair still and cold. But even in death, said Dwight-Rankin, a smile of such happiness lit her face that her many friends, who never could think of her departure from among them but with the deepest regret, found solace in the certainty of the good lady’s contentment in the other world. ”

“ Beside his vision of Lucia Harden Mrs. Herbert Rankin was an entirely insignificant person.
Now Rankin was a little afraid of the elegant lady his wife. He had had to apologise to her many times for the curious people he brought to the house, and he was anxious that Rickman should make a good impression. He was also hungry, as hungry as a man can be who has three square meals every day of his life. Therefore he was annoyed with Rickman for being late. ”

“ The drum resumed its savage muttering; and the opponents, swords advanced, circled warily, each seeking an opening in the other's guard. Then swift as thought came a relentless whirlwind of steel that bore Rankin back, step by step. The green flames singed his kaftán. Rankin halted, flat-footed, parrying and returning, cut for cut. And from without the circle of quivering, leaping flame the little drum muttered fiercely the song of doom which old Ismeddin's knuckles and finger tips coaxed from its head of serpent hide.
"In four lives you have failed!" ”

“ She strode into the silence like a warrior from Babel; and a forest of laughter stood on the site of the Ritz Hotel. She cried: “Dwight-Rankin! The very man I am looking for! Now I want you to be certain and come to——”
Dwight-Rankin indicated my presence.
“Mr.——” he said. “Mrs. Amp.”
“Say, listen, that’s not true! Mr.——, I certainly am glad to know you. How do you do, how do you do? You must come too, Mr.——. I have read your books. They are amazing, enchanting, universal. You are a genius. I tell the world so. I was telling the Duke of Mall and the Grand Duke Charles so only the other night. ”

“ Rankin just patted the round curve of her shoulder and still said nothing. Bob was one of the many who had paid the toll to the greatest of all games; Jim was the other brother. Rankin understood how the girl felt, and the scrupulous conscience which besets every decent young man when he is in love smote him.
Almost he confessed. But when a beautiful, tearful girl jumps to a conclusion and makes a self-sacrificing hero out of one, how shall a man who is ordinarily human disillusion her? Jack Rankin stifled the still, small voice and postponed the telling to a vague, more propitious future. ”

“ After spending a few months in Charlestown, South Carolina, as agent for a firm of Edinburgh merchants, he was induced by a Wesleyan itinerant preacher in 1759 to visit some methodist societies in the north of England, and during this tour Rankin preached his first sermons. For two years he endured much mental trouble and uncertainty, and at Morpeth, in 1761, sought the counsel of Wesley. After another interview with Wesley in London, Rankin's doubts were removed, and in that year he was appointed to the Sussex circuit. ”

“ To sleep under Rankin’s bridge, when he thought of it in the daytime, and with his schoolmates around him, was nothing more than a pleasant little adventure; but when it came to carrying the plan into execution it was [224] quite a different matter. The night was dark; the brook gurgled and sang in a most ghostly fashion; the air under the stone arches felt damp; and he could find no place where he could lie down with any prospect of comfort.
“It’s no use. I can’t fix any kind of a bed here, so I’ve got to sit up all night—that’s all there is to it.” ”

“ But latterly (since his marriage with a rich City merchant's daughter) an insidious seriousness had overtaken him; he began first to tolerate, then to respect, then to revere the sources of his affluence. The old ironic spirit was there to chastise him whenever he caught himself doing it; but that spirit made discord with the elegant respectability which was now the atmosphere of his home.
Rankin's drawing-room (where he was now waiting for Rickman) was furnished with the utmost correctness in the purest Chippendale, upholstered in silver and grey and lemon and rose brocade ”

“ Rankin emphatically asserted her belief that the affliction was the result of heredity⁠—of the union between the naturally opposing and contrary Beall and Rankin elements. She believed that the inherited spirit of the ancient feud had taken on physical manifestations, exhibiting them in the person of the unfortunate outcome of the union of opposites. That in Miss Annabel Rankin was warring the imperishable antipathy of the two families. ”

“ Miles lay and listened, and watched the various groups. Some were thieves from choice there was little doubt, but many alas! were decent farmers and farm labourers, who, with their families, had been driven from the land, and whose number his father wanted to increase.
By-and-bye he saw Rankin himself enter the cave, but he was greatly changed from when he had last seen him. ”

“ And Rankin had said he drank.
In the light of Lucia Harden's and his sister's possible criticism, he considered him more carefully than he had done before.
The contrast between the two men was certainly rather marked. A gentleman can be neither more nor less than a gentleman, and Rickman, in a sense not altogether intended by Maddox, was decidedly more. His individuality was too exuberant, too irrepressible. He had the restless, emphatic air of a man who has but little leisure and is too obviously anxious to make the most of what he has. He always seemed to be talking against time ”

“ He had found cheap rooms unfurnished in Torrington Square where the houses are smaller and less sumptuous than Mrs. Downey's. He had succeeded in letting the little house in Ealing, where the abominable furniture that had nearly cost so dear justified its existence by adding a small sum to his income. He had benefited indirectly by Rankin's greatness; for Rankin seldom contributed anything to The Planet now beyond his lively column once a week; and Rickman was frequently called on to fill his place. The Planet was good for at least a solid hundred a year ”

“ Rankin was among the first to be thus summarily rejected, and he joined the crowd outside the bar, only half contented with his release. He would have liked "to convict that beast."
It was not much of a compliment to be retained on Rumpety's jury. As often as, in his cursory examination, he came upon an ignorant or brutish face, a complacent smile played about the thin lips, and he said, "That man 'll do. He 'll do." ”

“ Rankin would have ten times the chance I've got of a job like that, and you should hear him let himself go when he gets cold feet about anything. He's got five kids, you know, and he'd do any mortal thing not to offend the old man. And then, of course, he guesses that he's down for a bit in the will. They all do—all the servants, I mean. They're all hanging on on low wages." He gave a little bark of laughter as he concluded: "Like the rest of us."
"Rotten," Arthur agreed sympathetically. He had begun to like Hubert. ”

“ There were many women with eager eyes and low heels. Dwight-Rankin said they were American. There were many women with good complexions and large feet. Dwight-Rankin said they were English. There was a young man who looked like a pretty girl, except that his hair was long. Dwight-Rankin said he was known as the Venus de Marlow and that his friends thought him too marvellous. Pacing up and down was a French gentleman with drooping ginger moustachios, a gardenia and a dog. ”

“ Lady Surplice, however, stood firm. She wouldn’t, said Dwight-Rankin, accept Mrs. Amp. “Mrs. Amp,” said Lady Surplice, “is a Low woman. One does not know Mrs. Amp.” But thousands did, said Dwight-Rankin. So Lady Surplice tore between London and Paris, giving luncheons, dinners, dances and receptions right and left in the hope that no one would have time to go to any of Mrs. Amp’s parties. But people always had time, said Dwight-Rankin, to go to Mrs. Amp’s parties. Mrs. Amp’s parties were like that. Unavoidable, inevitable, eternal. And, said Dwight-Rankin, uncommonly amusing. ”

“ His gavel fell.
As he was descending from the platform, Rankin rushed heavily toward him, and at the same instant, Randolph also started for him. Before Rankin could congratulate him, Randolph was talking.
“Look here, Zeph, and you, too, Jim,” he began in that curious inofficial tone which men use when their relations become personal again, “we demand a vote on this permanent organization business. We ain’t going to be shut out altogether.” ”

“ Dwight-Rankin said dreamily: “Have a spot of brandy?”
I choked. “You dare!” I said. “You dare to{369} sit there and talk to me about spots of brandy after having palmed off on me that abominable rigmarole——”
“But it might have happened,” said Dwight-Rankin dreamily, waving a hand around the restaurant. “Perhaps it will happen. It certainly ought to happen. To all these charming people. Even lions will turn. ”

“ And after that, the man could no longer have held up his head among his fellow-men, but would have descended from a man to a savage brute only too easily; so that Rankin was not far wrong when he said that Miles had saved him soul and body, and he would serve him with both till death if he needed such service.
So the simple service of fetching supplies from the hostelry was quickly accomplished, and he was only too eager to give up the best his cottage afforded for the accommodation of Cicely. ”

“ Crane. The campers, never very early risers, grew lazier every day—and fatter! Mabel, always exceedingly plump, was now so rotund that Mrs. Crane was obliged to tie loops of twine in all her buttonholes. Bettie's cheeks and the calves of her legs were certainly rounding into new and pleasing curves. Tall Jean was casting a wider shadow, shapely Henrietta had punched two new holes in her tight leather belt; and it was now possible to pinch the hitherto unpinchable Marjory. ”

“ There's just enough water for the rest to drown in, but it isn't deep enough to float a man of Rickman's size. He's only got his feet wet, and that won't hurt him."
"There are things," said Rankin, "in Saturnalia that lend themselves to Crawley's treatment."
"And there are things in it that Crawley can't touch. And look at the later poems—The Four Winds, On Harcombe Hill, and The Song of Confession. Good God! It makes my blood boil to compare the man who wrote that with Letheby. Letheby! I could wring Vaughan's neck and Hanson's too. I should like to take their heads and knock them together. ”

“ Dwight-Rankin had just returned from Monte Carlo, where he had lost money, and I had just returned from Rome, where I had lost my luggage. We confounded Monte{330} Carlo and Rome. Then Dwight-Rankin said that the report of his death on Gallipoli was a gross exaggeration and that one should not believe all one hears. His younger brother, Dwight-Rankin said, had believed the report with an agility surprising in one who was a confirmed sceptic in all religious matters, had stepped into the property and had gone bankrupt before Dwight-Rankin could say “knife.” ”