Isaac Rickman stood in his front shop at the close of a slack winter day. He looked about him with a gaze uncheered by the contemplation of his plate-glass and mahogany; and as he looked he gathered his beard into a serious meditative hand, not as of old, but with a certain agitation in the gesture.
Isaac was suffering from depression; so was the book-trade. Every year the pulse of business beat more feebly, and in the present year, eighteen ninety-six, it was almost standing still. Isaac had seen the little booksellers one by one go under, but their failure put no heart into him; and now the wave of depression was swallowing him up too. He had not got the grip of the London book-trade; he would never build any more Gin Palaces of Art; he had not yet freed himself from the power of Pilkington; and more than all his depression the mortgage of the Harden Library weighed heavily on his soul. The Public in which he trusted had grown tricky; and he found that even capital and incomparable personal audacity are powerless against the malignity of events.
For his own part Isaac dated his decline from the hour of his son's defection. He had not been brought to this pass by any rashness in speculation, or by any flaw whatever in his original scheme. But his original scheme had taken for granted Keith's collaboration. He had calculated to a nicety what it would cost him to build up his fortunes; and all these calculations had been based on the union of his own borrowed capital with Keith's brilliant brains. And Keith with unimaginable perfidy had removed himself and his brilliant brains at the crisis of the start. Isaac thought he had estimated pretty accurately the value of his son's contribution; but it was only in the actual experiment of separation that he realized the difference it had made.
The immediate effect of the blow was to paralyse the second-hand department. As far as new books went Isaac was fairly safe. If the Public was tricky he was generally up to its tricks. But with second-hand books you never knew where you were, not unless you had made a special study of the subject. Owing to his defective education he had always been helpless in the second-hand shop; liable at any moment to be over-reached by one of those innocent, lantern-jawed student fellows who go poking their noses everywhere.
And in buying he was still more at a disadvantage. He had grown nervous in the auction-room; he never knew what to do there, and when he did it, it was generally wrong. He would let himself be outbidden where Keith would have carried all before him by a superb if reckless persistence.
But if business was at its worst in the second-hand department, in the front shop there was a sense of a sadder and more personal desolation. Rickman's was no longer sought after. It had ceased to be the rendezvous of affable young men from Fleet Street and the Temple. The customers who came nowadays were of another sort, and the tone of the business was changing for the worse. The spirit, that something illuminating, intimate, and immortal, had perished from the place.
At first Isaac had not been able to take its departure seriously. He had never really grasped the ground of that disagreement with his son; he had put it all down to "some nonsense about a woman"; and certain hints dropped by Pilkington supported him in that belief. Keith, he had said to himself, would come back when his belly pinched him. Every day he looked to see him crawling through the big swinging doors on that empty belly. When he did it, Isaac meant to take him back instantly, unquestioned, unreproved and unreproached. His triumph would be so complete that he could afford that magnanimity. But Keith had not come back; he had never put his nose inside the shop from that day to this. He called to see his father now and again on a Sunday (for Isaac no longer refused to admit him into his house); and then, as if in obedience to the holy conventions that ruled in the little villa at Ilford in Essex, no allusion was made to the business that had driven them apart. In the same spirit Isaac sternly refrained from inquiring into the state of Keith's finances; but from his personal appearance he gathered that, if Keith returned to the shop, it would not be hunger that would send him there. And if the young man's manner had not suggested the unlikelihood of his return, a hint to that effect was conveyed by his clothes. They were the symbols of prosperity, nay more, of a social advance that there could be no going back upon. Isaac had only to look at him to realize his separation. The thing was monstrous, incomprehensible, but certain. But it was in Keith's gaze (the gaze which he could never meet, so disturbing was it in its luminous sincerity) that he read the signs of a more profound and spiritual desertion.
Isaac stood pondering these things in the front shop, at the hour of closing. As he moved drearily away, the lights were turned out one by one behind him, the great iron shutters went up with a clang, and it was dark in Rickman's.
That evening, instead of hailing a Liverpool Street 'bus, he crossed the Strand and walked up Bow Street, and so into Bloomsbury. It was the first time for four years that he had called in Tavistock Place. He used to go up alone to the boarding-house drawing-room, and wait there till Keith appeared and took him into his bedroom on the second floor. Now his name brought an obsequious smile to the maid's face; she attended him upstairs and ushered him with ceremony into a luxurious library. Keith was writing at a table strewn with manuscripts, and he did not look up all at once. The lamp-light fell on his fair head and boyish face, and Isaac's heart yearned towards his son. He held out his hand and smiled after his fashion, but said no word.
The grip of the eager young hand gave him hope.
Keith drew up two chairs to the fire. The chairs were very deep, very large, very low, comfortable beyond Isaac's dreams of comfort. Keith lay back in his, graceful in his abandoned attitude; Isaac sat up very straight and stiff, crushing in his knees the soft felt hat that made him look for ever like a Methodist parson.
His eyes rested heavily on the littered table. "Well," he said, "how long have you been at it?"
"Oh, ever since nine in the morning—"
(Longer hours than he had in the shop); "—and—I've two more hours to put through still." (And yet he had received him gladly.)
"It doesn't look quite as easy as making catalogues."
"It isn't."
Isaac had found the opening he desired. "I should think all this literary work was rather a 'eavy strain."
"It does make you feel a bit muzzy sometimes, when you're at it from morning to night."
"Is the game worth the candle? Is it worth it? Have you made your fortune at it?"
"Not yet."
"Well—I gave you three years."
Keith smiled. "What did you give me them for? To make my fortune in?"
"To learn common-sense in."
Keith laughed. "It wasn't enough for that. You should have given me three hundred, at the very least!"
The laugh was discouraging, and Isaac felt that he was on the wrong tack.
"I'd give you as many as you like, if I could afford to wait. But I consider I've waited long enough already."
"What were you waiting for?"
"For you to come back—"
Keith's face was radiant with innocent inquiry.
"—To come back into the business."
The light of innocence died out of the face as suddenly as it had kindled.
"My dear father, I shall never come back. I thought I'd made that very clear to you."
"You never made it clear—your behaviour to me. Not but what I 'ad an idea, which perhaps I need not name. I've never asked what there was at the bottom of that foolish business, and I've never blamed you for it. If it made you act badly to me, I've reason to believe it kept you out of worse mischief."
Keith felt a queer tightening at the heart. He understood that his father was referring darkly to Lucia Harden. He was surprised to find that even this remote and shadowy allusion was more than he could bear. He must call him off that trail; and the best way of doing it was to announce his engagement.
"As you seem to be rather mixed, father, I ought to tell you that I'm engaged to be married. Have been for the last eighteen months."
"Married?" Isaac's face was tense with anxiety; for he could not tell what this news meant for him; whether it would remove his son farther from him, or bring him, beyond all expectation, near.
"May I ask who the lady is? Any of your fine friends in Devonshire?"
Keith was silent, tongue-tied with presentiment of the coming blow. It came.
"I needn't ask. It's that—that Miss 'Arden.I've heard of her."
"As it happens it's somebody you haven't heard of. You may have seen her, though—Miss Flossie Walker."
"No. I've never seen her, not to my knowledge. How long have you known her?"
"Ever since I came here. She's one of the boarders."
"Ah-h. Has she any means?"
"None."
Isaac's heart leapt high.
"Aren't you going to congratulate me?"
"How can I, when I haven't seen the lady?"
"You would, if youhadseen her."
"And when is it to be? Like most young people, you're a bit impatient, I suppose?"
Keith betrayed the extremity of his impatience by a painful flush. This subject of his marriage was not to be approached without a certain shame.
"I suppose so; and like most young people we shall have to wait."
Isaac's eyes narrowed and blinked in the manner of a man uncertain of his focus; as it happened, he was just beginning to see.
"Ah—that's what's wearing you out, is it?"
"I'm beginning to get a bit sick of it, I own."
"What's she like to look at it, this young lady? Is she pretty?"
"Very."
A queer hungry look came over the boy's face. Isaac had seen that look there once or twice before. His lips widened in a rigid smile; he had to moisten them before they would stretch. He was profoundly moved by Keith's disclosure, by the thought of that imperishable and untameable desire. It held for him the promise of his own continuance. It stirred in him the strange fury of his fatherhood, a fatherhood destructive and malign, that feeds on the life of children. As he looked at his son his sickly frame trembled before that embodiment of passion and vigour and immortal youth. He longed to possess himself of these things, of the superb young intellect, of the abounding life, to possess himself and live.
And he would possess them. Providence was on his side. Providence had guided him. He could not have chosen his moment better; he had come at a crisis in Keith's life. He knew the boy's nature; after all, he would be brought back to him by hunger, the invincible, implacable hunger of the flesh.
"Your mother was pretty. But she lost her looks before I could marry her. I had to wait for her; so I know what you're going through. But I fancy waiting comes harder on you than it did on me."
"It does," said Keith savagely. "Every day I think I'll marry to-morrow and risk it. But," he added in a gentler tone, "that might come hard on her."
"Youcouldmarry to-morrow, if you'd accept the proposal I came to make to you."
Keith gave a keen look at his father. He had been touched by the bent figure, the wasted face; the evident signs of sickness and suffering. He had resolved to be very tender with him. But not even pity could blind him to the detestable cunning of that move. It revolted him. He had not yet realized that the old man was fighting for his life.
"I'm not open to any proposals," he said coldly. "I've chosen my profession, and I mean to stick to it."
"That's all very well; but you should 'ave a solid standby, over and above."
"Literature doesn't leave much room for anything over and above."
"That's where you're making a mistake. Wot you want is variety of occupation. There's no reason why you shouldn't combine literature with a more profitable business."
"I can't make it combine with any business at all."
"Well, I can understand your being proud of your profession."
"Can you understand my profession being proud of me?"
Isaac smiled. Yes, he could well understand it.
"And," said he, "I can understand your objection to the shop."
"I haven't any objection to the shop."
"Well—then there's no reason why we shouldn't come to an agreement. If I don't mind owning that I can't get on without your help, you might allow that you'd get on a bit better with mine."
"Why,aren'tyou getting on, father?"
"Well, considering that my second-'and business depended on you entirely—and that that's where the profits are to be made nowadays—That's where I'm 'andicapped. I can't operate without knowledge; and from hour to hour I've never any seecurity that I'm not being cheated."
Isaac would gladly have recalled that word. Keith met it with silence, a silence more significant than any speech; charged as it was with reminiscence and reproof.
"Now, what I propose—"
"Please don't propose anything. I—I—I can't do what you want."
Keith positively stammered in his nervous agitation.
"Wait till you hear what I want. I'm not going to ask you to make catalogues, or stand behind the counter, or," he added almost humbly, "to do anything a gentleman doesn't do." He looked round the room. The materials of the furnishing were cheap; but Keith had appeased his sense of beauty in the simplicity of the forms and the broad harmony of the colours. Isaac was impressed and a little disheartened by the refinement of his surroundings, a refinement that might be fatal to his enterprise. "You shall 'ave your own private room fitted up on the first floor, with a writing table, and a swivel chair. You needn't come into contact with customers at all. All I want is to 'ave you on the spot to refer to. I want you to give me the use of those brains of yours. Practically you'd be a sleeping partner; but we should 'alve profits from the first."
"Thanks—thanks" (his voice seemed to choke him)—"it's awfully good and—and generous of you. But I can't."
"Why not?"
"I've about fifteen reasons. One's enough. I don't like the business, and I won't have anything to do with it."
"You—don't—like—the business?" said Isaac, with the air of considering an entirely new proposition.
"No. I don't like it."
"I am going to raise the tone of the business. That's wot I want you for. To raise the tone of the business."
"I should have to raise the tone of the British public first."
"Well—an intelligent bookseller has a good deal of influence with customers; and you with your reputation, there's nothing you couldn't do. You could make the business anything you chose. In a few years we should be at the very head of the trade. I don't deny that the house has been going down. There's been considerable depression. Still, I should be in a very different position now, Keith, if you hadn't left me. And in the second-hand department—yourdepartment—there are still enormous—enormous—profits to be made."
"That's precisely why I object to my department, as you call it. I don't approve of those enormous profits."
"Now look 'ere. Let's have a quiet talk. We never have 'ad, for you were always so violent. If you'd stated your objections to me in a quiet reasonable manner, there'd never have been any misunderstanding. Supposing you explain why you object to those profits."
"I object, because in nine cases out of ten they're got by trading on another person's ignorance."
"Of course they are. Why not? If he's ignorant, it's only fair he should pay for his ignorance; and if I'm an expert, it's fair I should get an expert's profits. It's all a question of buying and selling. He can't sell what he hasn't got; and I can't sell what I haven't got. Supposing I've got knowledge that he hasn't—if I can't make a profit out ofthat, what can I make a profit out of?"
"I can't say. My own experience of the business was unfortunate. It struck me, if you remember, that some of your profits meant uncommonly sharp practice."
"Talk of ignorance! Really, for a clever fellow, Keith, you talk a deal of folly. There's sharp practice in every trade—in your own trade, if it comes to that. Supposing you write a silly book, and some of your friends boom it high and low, and the Public buys it for a work of genius—well—aren't you making a profit out of other people's ignorance? Of course you are."
"I haven't mademuchprofit that way—yet."
"Because you're unbusiness-like. Well. I'm perfectly willing to believe your objections are conscientious. But look at it another way. I'm a God-fearing, religious-minded man" (unconsciously he caressed his soft hat, the hat of a Methodist parson, as he spoke), "is it likely I'd continue in any business I couldn't reconcile to my conscience?"
"I've no doubt you've reconciled it to your conscience. That's hardly a reason why I should reconcile it to mine."
"That means that you'll let me be ruined for want of a little advice which I'd 'ave paid you well for?"
"If my advice is all you want, you can have it any day for nothing."
"Wot you get for nothing is worth just about wot you get it for. No. Mine was a fair business proposal, and either you come into it or you stay out."
"Most decidedly I prefer—to stay out."
"Then," said Isaac suddenly, "I shall have to give up the shop."
"I'm most awfully sorry."
"There's no good your being sorry if you won't help me."
"I would help you—if I could."
"If you could!" He paused. Prudence plucked him by the sleeve, whispering that never while he lived must he breathe the word Insolvency; but a wilder instinct urged him to disclosure. "Why—it rests with you to keep me out of the Bankruptcy Court."
Keith said nothing. He had held out against the appeal to his appetites; it was harder to withstand this call on his finer feelings. But if the immediate effect of the news was to shock and distress him, the next instant he was struggling with a shameful reflection. For all his shame it was impossible not to suspect his father of some deeper, more complicated ruse.
Isaac sat very still, turning on his son a look of concentrated resentment. Keith's youth was hateful to him now; it withheld pitilessly, implacably, the life that it was in its hands to give. Meanwhile Keith wrestled with his suspicion and overcame it.
"Look here, father, I'll do what I can. I'll come round to-morrow and look into things for you, if that's any good."
The instant he had made the offer he was aware of its futility. It was not for his business capacity that he was valued; and he never had been permitted to interfere with the finances of the shop. The suggestion roused his father to a passion that partook of terror.
"Look into things?" He rose trembling. "You mind your own business. I can look into things myself. There'd 'ave been no need to look into them at all if you 'adn't robbed and deceived me. Robbed and deceived me, I said. You took your education—whichIgaveyouto put intomybusiness—you took it out of the business, and set up with it on your own account. And I tell you you might as well 'ave made off with a few thousands out of my till. Robbing's wotyou'vebeen guilty of in the sight of God; and you can come and talk to me about your conscience. I don't understand your kind of conscience—Keith." There was still a touch of appeal in his utterance of his son's name.
"Perhaps not," said Keith sorrowfully. "I don't understand it myself."
He walked with his father to Holborn, silently, through the drizzling rain. He held an umbrella over him, while they waited, still silently, for the Liverpool Street omnibus. He noticed with some anxiety that the old man walked queerly, shuffling and trailing his left foot, that he had difficulty in mounting the step of the omnibus, and was got into his seat only after much heaving and harrying on the part of the conductor. His face and attitude, as he sank crouching into his seat, were those of a man returning from the funeral of his last hope.
And in Keith's heart there was sorrow, too, as for something dead and departed.
If, much to Rickman's regret, Flossie did not take kindly to Miss Roots, very soon after her engagement she discovered her bosom friend in Miss Ada Bishop. The friendship was not founded, as are so many feminine attachments, upon fantasy or caprice, but rested securely on the enduring commonplace. If Flossie respected Ada because of her knowledge of dress, and her remarkable insight into the ways of gentlemen, Ada admired Flossie because of the engagement, which, after all, was not (like some girls' engagements) an airy possibility or a fiction, but an accomplished fact.
This attachment, together with the firm possession of Keith, helped to tide Flossie over the tedium of waiting. Only one thing was wanting to complete her happiness, and even that the thoughtful gods provided.
About six o'clock one evening, as Rickman was going out of the house, he was thrust violently back into the passage by some one coming in. It was young Spinks; and the luggage that he carried in his hand gave a frightful impetus to his entry. At the sight of Rickman he let go a hat-box, an umbrella and a portmanteau, and laid hold of him by both hands.
"Razors—what luck! I say, I've gone and done it. Chucked them—hooked it. Stood it eighteen months—couldn't stand it any longer. On my soul I couldn't. But it's all right—I'll explain."
"Explain what? To whom, you God-forsaken lunatic?"
"Sh—sh—sh! To you. For Heaven's syke don't talk so loud. They'll hear you. You haven't got a train you want to catch, or an appointment, have you?"
"I haven't got a train, but I have got an appointment."
"You might spare a fellow five minutes, ten minutes, can't you? I shan't keep you more than ten at the outside. There's something I must tell you; but I can't do it here. Andnot there!" As Rickman opened the dining-room door Spinks drew back with a gesture of abhorrence. He then made a dash for the adjoining room; but retired precipitately backwards. "Oh damn! That's somebody's bedroom, now. How couldItell?"
"Look here, if you're going to make an ass of yourself, you'd better come up to my room and do it quietly."
"Thanks, I've got a room somewhere; but I don't know which it is yet."
Rickman could only think that the youth had broken his habit of sobriety. He closed the study door discreetly, lit the lamp and took a good look at him. He fancied he caught a suggestion of melancholy in the corners of his mouth and the lines of his high angular nose. But there was no sign of intoxication in Sidney's clear grey eye, nor trace of wasting emotion in his smooth shaven cheek. Under the searching lamp-light he looked almost as fresh, as pink, as callow, as he had done four years ago. He dropped helplessly into a low chair. Rickman took a seat opposite him and waited. While not under the direct stimulus of nervous excitement, young Spinks had some difficulty in finding utterance. At last he spoke.
"I say, you must think I've acted in a very queer way."
"Queer isn't the word for it. It's astounding."
"D'you really think so? You mean I 'adn't any rights—it—it wasn't fair to you—to come back as I've done?"
"Well, I don't know about its being very fair; it certainly wasn't very safe."
"Safe? Safe? Ah—I was afraid you'd think that. Won't you let me explain?"
"Certainly. I should like to know your reasons for running into me like a giddy locomotive."
"Well, but I can't explain anything if you go on rotting like that."
"All right. Only look sharp. I've got to meet a fellow in Baker Street at seven. If you'll get under weigh we might finish off the explanation outside, if you're going back that way."
"Going back. Oh Lord—don't you know that I've come back here to stay. I've got a room—"
"Oh, that's the explanation, is it?"
"No, that's the thing I've got to explain. I thought you'd think I'd acted dishonourably in—in following her like this. But I couldn't stand it over there without her. I tried, but on my soul I couldn't. I shall be all right if I can only see her sometimes, at meals and—and so forth. I shan't say a word. I haven't said a word. I don't even think she knows; and if she did—So it's perfectly safe, you know, Rickman, it's perfectly safe."
"Who doesn't know what? And if who did?" roared Rickman, overcome with laughter.
"Sh—sh—sh—Flossie. I mean—M—miss Walker."
Rickman stopped laughing and looked at young Spinks with something like compassion. "I say, old chap, what do you mean?"
"I mean that I should have gone off my chump if I'd hung on at that place. I couldn't get her out of my mind, not even in the shop. I used to lie awake at nights, thinking of her. And then, you know—I couldn't eat."
"In fact, you were pretty bad, were you?"
"Oh, well, I just chucked it up and came here. It's all right, Razors; you needn't mind. I never had a chance with her. She never gave me so much as a thought. Not a thought. It's the queerest thing. I couldn't tell you how I got into this state—I don't know myself. Only now she's engaged and so forth, you might think that—well, you might think"—young Spinks had evidently come to the most delicate and complicated part of his explanation—"well, that I'd no right to go on getting into states. But when it doesn't make any difference to her, and it can't matter to you—" He paused; but Rickman gathered that what he wished to plead was that in those circumstances he was clearly welcome to his "state." "I mean that if it's all up with me, you know, it's all right—I mean, it's safe enough—for you."
Poor Spinks became lost in the maze of his own beautiful sentiments. Adoration for Rickman (himself the soul of honour) struggled blindly with his passion for Flossie Walker. But the thought, which his brain had formed, which his tongue refused to utter, was that the hopelessness of his passion made it no disloyalty to his friend. "It can make no difference to her, my being here," he said simply.
"Nonsense, you've as much right to be here as I have."
"Yes, but under the circumstances, it mightn't have been perfectly fair to you. See?"
"My dear Spinky, it's perfectly fair to me; but is it—you won't mind me suggesting it—is it perfectly fair to yourself?"
Spinks sat silent for a minute, laying his hand upon the place of, thought, as if trying to take that idea in. "Yes," he said deliberately. "That's all right. In fact, nothing else will do my business. It sounds queer; but that's the only way to get her out of my head. You see, when I see her I don't think about her; but when I don't see her I can't think of anything else."
Rickman was interested. It struck him that latterly he had been affected in precisely the opposite way. It was curious to compare young Sidney's sensations with his own. He forgot all about the man in Baker Street.
"I don't mean to say I shall ever get over it. When a man goes through this sort of business it leaves its mark on him somewhere." And indeed it seemed to have stamped an expression of permanent foolishness on Spinks's comely face.
Rickman smiled even while he sympathized. "Yes, I daresay. I'm sorry, old man; but if I were you I wouldn't be too down in the mouth. It's not worth it—I mean; after all, there are other things besides women in the world. It wouldn't be a bad place even if there weren't any women in it. Life is good," said the engaged man. "You had better dress for dinner." He could give no richer consolation without seeming to depreciate the unique value of Flossie. As for Spinks's present determination, he thought it decidedly risky for Spinks; but if Spinks enjoyed balancing himself in this way on the edge of perdition it was no business of his.
As it happened, the event seemed to prove that Spinks knew very well what he was about. The callow youth had evidently hit on the right treatment for his own disease. In one point, however, his modesty had deceived him. His presence was far from being a matter of indifference to Flossie. A rejected lover is useful in so many ways. It may be a triumph to make one man supremely happy; but the effect is considerably heightened if you have at the same time made another man supremely wretched. Flossie found that the spectacle of young Sidney's dejection restored all its first fresh piquancy to her engagement. At Tavistock Place he more than justified his existence. True, he did not remain depressed for very long, and there was something not altogether flattering in the high rebound of his elastic youth; but, as Miss Bishop was careful to point out, his joyous presence would have a most salutary effect in disturbing that prosaic sense of security in which gentlemen's affections have been known to sleep.
But Spinks was destined to serve the object of his infatuation in yet another way.
It was in the second spring after Rickman's engagement. Flossie and Ada were in the drawing-room one half hour before dinner, putting their heads together over a new fashion-book.
"Shouldn't wonder," said Miss Bishop, "if you saw me coming out in one of these Gloriana coats this spring. I shall get a fawn. Fawn's my colour."
"I must say I love blue. I think I'm almost mad about blue; any shade of blue, I don't care what it is. I know I can't go wrong about a colour. But then there's the style—" Flossie's fingers turned over the pages with soft lingering touches, while her face expressed the gravest hesitation. "Keith likes me best in these stiff tailor-made things; but I can't bear them. I like more of a fancy style."
"I see you do," said Miss Bishop solemnly.
"Yes, that's because she's a bit of a fancy article herself," murmured a voice from the back drawing-room, where Mr. Spinks had concealed himself behind a curtain, and now listened with a voluptuous sense of unlawful initiation.
"I sy, we shall have to stop, if hewillkeep on listening that wy."
"Don't stop, please, Miss Ada. There, I've got my fingers in my ears. On my honour, I have. You can talk as many secrets as you like now. I can't hear a word."
The two girls dropped their voices to a low impassioned monotone.
"You've got to dress for somebody else besides yourself now—an engaged young lady."
"Oh, I don't know that he takes so much notice. But he's given me lots of things, besides my ring. I'm to have a real silver belt—a Russian—next birthday."
"I sy, he's orf'ly good to you, you know. Some gentlemen get so careless once they're sure of you. D'you know, we all think you acted so honourable, giving out your engagement as soon as it was on. When do you think you'll be married?"
"I can't say. I don't know yet. Never, I think, as long as I'm in that old Bank."
Even with his fingers in his ears, young Sidney heard that voice, and before he could stop himself he was listening again.
"Don't you like it?" said Miss Bishop.
"No. I hate it."
Spinks gave a cough; and Miss Bishop began reading to herself in ostentatious silence, till the provocations of the page grew irresistible.
"Look here, Floss," she said excitedly. "Look atme. 'Fawn will be the pree-vyling colour this year, and for morning wear a plain tailor-myde costume in palest fawn is, for 'er who can stand it, most undeniablychic.'" Hitherto Miss Bishop had avoided that word (which she pronounced "chick") whenever she met it; but now, in its thrilling connection with the fawn-coloured costume, it was brought home to her in a peculiarly personal manner, and she pondered. "I wish I knew what that word meant. It's always coming up in my magazine."
"I think," said Flossie, "it means something like smart. Stylish, you know."
Young Sidney leapt suddenly from his seat. "Go it, Flossie! Give us the French for a nice little cup er tea."
"Really, it's too bad we can't have a plyce to ourselves where we can talk. I'm going." And as Miss Bishop went she still pondered Flossie's rendering of the wordchic. Little did any of them know what grave issues were to hang on it.
Then Mr. Spinks emerged from his hiding-place. "Miss Walker," he said (he considered it more honourable to call her Miss Walker now whenever he could think of it; only he couldn't always think), "I didn't know you knew the French language."
"And why shouldn't I know it as well as other people?"
"I expect you know it a jolly sight better. Do you think, now, you could read and write it easily?"
"I might," said Flossie guardedly, "if I had a little practice."
"Because, if you could—You say your're tired of the Bank?"
"I should think Iwastired of it."
"Well, Flossie, do you know, a good typewriter girl who can read and write French can get twice as much as you're getting."
"How do you know?"
"Girl I know told me so. She's corresponding clerk for a big firm of wine merchants in the City. She's going to be married this autumn; and if you looked sharp, you might get her berth."
"In a wine-merchant's shop? Mr. Rickman wouldn't hear of it."
"It isn't a shop, you know, it's an office. You ask him."
Flossie did not ask him; she knew a trick worth two of that. But not very long after Mr. Spinks had made his suggestion, finding Keith very snug in his study one evening, reading Anatole France, to his immense delight she whispered into his ear a little shy request that some day, when he wasn't busy, he would help her a bit with her French. The lessons were arranged for then and there, at so many kisses an hour, payable by quarterly instalments, if desired. And for several evenings (sitting very close together, as persons must sit who are looking over the same book) they read, translating turn by turn, the deliciousLivre de Mon Ami, until Flossie's interest was exhausted.
"Come, I'm not going on with any more of that stuff, so you needn't think it. I've no time to waste, if you have; and I haven't come across one word in that book yet that'll be any use to me."
"What a utilitarian Beaver!" He lay back in his chair laughing at her, as he might have laughed at the fascinating folly of a child.
"I'll tell you what it is, Mr. Savage; I'll get another French master, if you don't look out. Some one who'll teach me the way I want to learn."
"I'll teach you any way you like, Floss, on any system; if you'll only explain what you want. What's your idea?"
"My idea's this. How would it be if you and me were to write French letters to each other?"
"Rather! The Beaver's intelligence is going to its head. That's the way to learn, Floss; you'll get over the ground like winking. But you know—I shall have to raise my terms."
"All right. We'll see about that."
He was delighted with her idea. That Flossie should have an idea at all was something so deliciously new and surprising; and what could be more heartrending than these prodigious intellectual efforts, her evident fear that her limitations constituted a barrier between them? As if it mattered! As if he wanted a literary critic for his wife. And how brutally he had criticizedher—as if it mattered! Still, in spite of his compunction, the French lessons were not altogether a success. There was too much disagreement and discussion about terms; for the master became more and more exorbitant in his charges as the days went on, and the pupil still complained that she was learning nothing. She was thoroughly dissatisfied with his method. He would break off at the most interesting, the most instructive point, and let loose his imagination in all sorts of ridiculous histories that followed from the idea of her being a Beaver; and when she desired him to tell her such simple things as the French for "Your esteemed favour to hand," "Cheque enclosed," "We have forwarded to you to-day as per invoice," he wanted to know what on earth a beaver had to do with invoices.
It was Spinks who explained the nature of the connection.
Poor Spinks, who had made the suggestion with an almost suicidally honourable intention, was to his immense astonishment merely sworn at for his interference. And when Flossie brought Keith his tea that evening she found him in a most ungentlemanly humour.
She waited demurely for a pause in the storm that raged round Spinks and his confounded wine-merchant. She cast a significant glance at the table strewn at that moment with the rough draft of Rickman's tragedy. (Flossie couldn't understand why he could never write a thing out clearly from the first, nor why she shouldn't write it for him at his dictation.)
"It's all very well, Keith," said she, "but ifyoucan't do more,Imust."
Before she left the room it was understood between them that Flossie would renounce her wine-merchant, and that they would be married, if possible, some time in the autumn. He felt curiously shaken by that interview.
He spent the evening reading over what he had written, vainly trying to recall his inspiration, to kindle himself anew at his own flame. Last night he had had more inspiration than he could do with; his ideas had come upon him with a rush, in a singing torrent of light. His mind had been then almost intolerably luminous; now, there was twilight on its high parts and darkness over the face of its deep. His ideas, arrested in mid-air, had been flung down into the deep; and from the farther shore he caught, as it were, the flutter of a gown and the light laughter of a fugitive Muse.
One day, four years after the publication ofSaturnalia, Rickman received a letter in an unknown hand; a woman's hand, but with a familiar vivid signature, the signature that is to be seen beneath the portraits of Walter Fielding, the greatest among contemporary poets, the living god of Rickman's idolatry.
"Dear Sir," he wrote (or rather, some woman had written for him), "I came across your Poems the other day; by chance, I must confess, and not by choice. I have something to say to you about them, and I would therefore be glad if you could call on me here, to-morrow. I say, call on me; for I am an old man, and you, if I am not mistaken, are a young one; and I say to-morrow, because the day after to-morrow I may not have that desire to see you which I feel to-day."Faithfully yours,"Walter Fielding."PS.—You had better come in time for lunch at one o'clock."
"Dear Sir," he wrote (or rather, some woman had written for him), "I came across your Poems the other day; by chance, I must confess, and not by choice. I have something to say to you about them, and I would therefore be glad if you could call on me here, to-morrow. I say, call on me; for I am an old man, and you, if I am not mistaken, are a young one; and I say to-morrow, because the day after to-morrow I may not have that desire to see you which I feel to-day.
"Faithfully yours,
"Walter Fielding.
"PS.—You had better come in time for lunch at one o'clock."
Rickman's hand trembled as he answered that letter. All evening he said to himself, "To-morrow I shall see Fielding"; and the beating of his heart kept him awake until the dawn of the wonderful day. And as he dressed he said to himself, "To-day I shall see Fielding." That he should see him was enough. He could hardly bear to think what Fielding had to say to him.
He had risen early, so as to go down into Surrey on his bicycle. About noon he struck into the long golden road that goes straight across the high moor where the great poet had built him a house. Inside his gates, a fork of the road sloped to the shore of a large lake fringed with the crimson heather. The house stood far back on a flat stretch of moor, that looked as if it had been cut with one sweep of a gigantic scythe from the sheltering pine-woods.
He saw Fielding far off, standing at the door of his house to welcome him. Fielding was seventy-five and he looked sixty. A strong straight figure, not over tall nor over slender, wearing, sanely but loosely, the ordinary dress of an English gentleman. A head with strong straight features, masses of white hair that hid the summit of the forehead, a curling moustache and beard, close-clipped, showing the line of the mouth still red as in his youth. A head to be carved in silver or bronze, its edges bitten by time, like the edges of an antique bust or coin.
"So you've come, have you?" was his greeting which the grasp of his hand made friendly.
He took Rickman straight into his study, where a lady sat writing at a table in the window.
"First of all," said he, "I must introduce you to Miss Gurney, who introduced you to me."
Miss Gurney rose and held out a slender feverish hand. She did not smile (her face narrowed so abruptly below her cheekbones that there was hardly room for a smile on it), but her eyes under their thick black brows turned on him an eager gaze.
Her eyes, he thought, were too piercing to be altogether friendly. He wondered whether it was the flame in them that had consumed her face and made it so white and small.
She made a few unremarkable remarks and turned again to her writing table.
"Yes, Gertrude, you may go."
Her sallow nervous hands had already begun gathering up her work in preparation for the word that banished her. When it came she smiled (by some miracle), and went.
They had a little while to wait before luncheon. The poet offered whisky and soda, and could hardly conceal his surprise when it was refused.
"You must forgive me," he said presently, "for never having heard of you till yesterday. My secretary keeps these things from me as a rule. This time she allowed herself to be corrupted."
Rickman felt a sudden interest in Miss Gurney.
"Your poems were sent to her by a friend of hers, with the request—a most improper one—that I should read them. I had no intention of reading them; but I was pleased with the volume at first sight. It was exactly the right length."
"The right length?"
"Yes, small octavo; the very best length for making cigar lighters."
Rickman had heard of the sardonic, the cruel humour with which Fielding scathed his contemporaries; still, he could hardly have expected even him to deal such a violent and devilish blow. Though he flushed with the smart he bore himself bravely under it. After all, it was to see Fielding that he had come.
"I am proud," said he, "to have served so luminous a purpose."
His readiness seemed to have disarmed the formidable Fielding. He leaned back in his chair and looked at the young man a moment or two without speaking. Then the demon stirred in him again with a malignant twinkle of his keen eyes.
"You see I was determined to treat you honourably, as you came to me through a friend of Miss Gurney's. But for her, you would have gone where your contemporaries go—into the waste-paper basket. They serve no purpose—luminous or otherwise." He chuckled ominously. "I had the knife ready for you. But if you want to know why I paused in the deed of destruction, it was because I was fascinated, positively fascinated by the abominations of your illustrator. And so, before I knew what I was doing (or I assure you I would never have done it), I had read, actually read the lines which the creature quotes at the bottom of his foul frontispiece. Why he quoted them I do not know—they have no more to do with his obscenities than I have. And then—I read the poem they were taken from."
He paused. His pauses were deadly.
"You have one great merit in my eyes."
Rickman looked up with a courageous smile, prepared for another double-edged pleasantry more murderous than the last.
"You have not imitated me."
For one horrible moment Rickman was inspired to turn some phrase about the hopelessness of imitating the inimitable. He thought better of it; but not before the old man divined his flattering intention. He shook himself savagely in his chair.
"Don't—please don't say what you were going to say. If you knew how I loathe my imitators. I shouldn't have sent for you if you had been one of them."
His mind seemed to be diverted from his present victim by some voluptuous and iniquitous reminiscence. Then he began again. "But you and yourSaturnalia—Ah!"
He leant forward suddenly as he gave out the interjection like a growl.
"Do you know you're a very terrible young man? What do you mean by setting my old cracked heart dancing to those detestable tunes? I wish I'd never read the d——d things."
He threw himself back in his chair.
"No, no; you haven't learnt any of those tunes from me. My Muse wears a straighter and a longer petticoat; and I flatter myself she has the manners of an English gentlewoman."
Rickman blushed painfully this time. He had no reply to make to that.
"I didn't mean," Fielding went on, "to talk to you about yourSaturnalia. ButOn Harcombe Hill, andThe Song of Confession—those are great poems."
Rickman looked up, startled out of his self-possession by the unexpected words and the sudden curious vibration in the voice that uttered them. Yet he could hardly realize that Fielding was praising him.
"They moved me," said Fielding, "as nothing moves me now, except the Psalms of David. I have been a great poet, as poets go nowadays; but" (he smiled radiantly) "the painful conviction is forced upon me that you will be a greater—if you live. I wanted to tell you this, because nobody else is likely to find it out until you'redead. You may make up your mind to that, my friend."
"I had made up my mind to many things. But they don't matter—now."
Fielding ignored the compliment. "Hasany one found it out? Except yourself?"
"Only one person."
"Man or woman?"
He thought of Maddox, that irresponsible person. "A man. And perhaps he hardly counts."
The old poet gave him a keen glance from his all-knowing eyes.
"Thereisone other person, who apparently doesn't count, either. Well, I think that was the luncheon-bell."
On their way to the dining-room he remarked: "That's another reason why I sent for you. Because I hear they've not been particularly kind to you. Don't suppose I'm going to pity you for that."
"I don't pity myself, sir."
"No—no—you don't. That's what I like about you," he added, taking his guest by the arm and steering him to his place.
At luncheon Miss Gurney took a prominent part in the conversation, which Rickman for her sake endeavoured to divert from the enthralling subject of himself. But his host (perceiving with evident amusement his modest intention) brought it up again.
"Don't imagine, for a moment," said he, "that Miss Gurney admires you. She hates young poets."
Miss Gurney smiled; but as Rickman saw, more in assent than polite denial. Throughout the meal she had the air of merely tolerating his presence there because it humoured the great man's eccentricity. From time to time she looked at him with an interest in which he detected a certain fear. The fear, he gathered, was lest his coming should disturb, or in any way do harm to the object of her flagrant adoration.
After she had left the table Fielding reproached him for mixing water with his wine.
"In one way," said he, "you're a disappointment. I should have preferred to see you drink your wine like a man."
"Unfortunately," said Rickman, "it's not so easy to drink it like a man, if you've ever drunk it like a beast."
"Ah-h. You're an even more remarkable person than I thought you were," said the poet, rising abruptly from the table.
He proposed that they should take a walk in the garden, or rather on the moor; for the heather ran crimson to the poet's doors, and the young pines stood sentinel at his windows.
They walked slowly towards the lake. On their way there Fielding stopped and drew a deep breath, filling his lungs with the pure, sweet air.
"Ah! that's better." He looked round him. "After all, we're right, Rickman. It's the poets that shall judge the world; and ifwesay it's beautiful, itisbeautiful.Andgood."
Happy Fielding, thought Rickman. Fielding had never suffered as he had suffered;hisdream had never been divorced from reality. It seemed fitting to the younger poet that his god should inhabit these pure and lofty spaces, should walk thus on golden roads through a land of crimson, in an atmosphere of crystal calm. He would have liked to talk to Fielding of Fielding; but his awe restrained him.
Fielding's mind did not wander long from his companion. "Let me see," said he, "do you follow any trade or profession?" He added with a smile, "besides your own?"
"I'm a journalist." Rickman mentioned his connection withThe MuseionandThe Planet.
"Ah, I knew there was an unlucky star somewhere. Well, at any rate, you won't have to turn your Muse on to the streets to get your living. But a trade's better than a profession; and a craft's better than a trade. It doesn't monopolize the higher centres. I certainly had the impression that you had been in trade."
Rickman wondered who could have given it to him. Miss Gurney's friend, he supposed. But who was Miss Gurney's friend? A hope came to him that made his heart stand still. But he answered calmly.
"I was. I worked for two years in a second-hand bookshop as a bibliographical expert; and before that I stood behind the counter most of my time."
"Why did you leave it? You weren't ashamed of your trade?"
"Not of my trade, but of the way I had to follow it. I'm not ashamed of working for Mr. Horace Jewdwine."
He brought the name in awkwardly. In bringing it in at all he had some vague hope that it might lead Fielding to disclose the identity of the friend. Horace Jewdwine was a link; if his name were familiar to Fielding there would be no proof perhaps, but a very strong presumption that what he hoped was true.
"He is a friend of yours?"
"Yes." His hope leapt high; but Fielding dashed it to the ground.
"I never heard of him. I see," he said, "you've got a conscience. Have you also got a wife?"
"Not yet—but—"
"Good. So young a man as you cannot afford to keepboth. I am so old that I may be pardoned if I give you some advice. But why should I? You won't take it."
"I should like to hear it all the same, sir."
"Well, well, it's cheap enough. Whatever you do, don't fritter yourself away upon the sort of women it may be your misfortune to have met."
It was beautifully done, this first intimation of his consciousness of any difference between them; between Rickman who had glorified a variety actress, and Walter Fielding whose Muse had "always had the manners of an English gentlewoman." And to Rickman's heart, amid vivid images of Poppies and Flossies, the memory of Lucia Harden stirred like a dividing sword.
"That is my advice," said Fielding. "But you will not take it."
"These things," said Rickman, "are not always in our power."
In the silence which followed he put the question that was burning in him.
"May I ask who the friend was who told Miss Gurney about me?"
"You may ask Miss Gurney; but I do not think she'll tell you. It seems to be a secret, and Miss Gurney, strange to say, is a young woman who can keep a secret."
He led the way to a seat overlooking the lake where they sat for awhile in silence, and Rickman found his thoughts roaming from his god.
Presently Fielding rose and turned back to the house. Rickman felt that the slow footsteps were measuring now the moments that he had to be with him. He was glad that they were slow.
Fielding stopped at his house-door, and stood for a second gazing earnestly at the young man.
"When you write anything," he said, "you may always send it to me. But no more—please—no moreSaturnalia."
"There won't be any moreSaturnalia."
"Good. I do not ask you to come again to see me."
Rickman struggled for an answer, but could not think of anything better than, "It's enough for me to have seen you once," which was not at all what he had meant to say.
Fielding smiled faintly; his humour pleased, Rickman fancied, with the ambiguity of his shy speech.
"I'm afraid I've tired you, sir," he said impulsively.
"You have not tired me. I tire myself. But here is Miss Gurney; she will look after you and give you tea."
"Geniality," he continued, "is not my strong point, as you may have perceived. And any unnatural effort of the kind fatigues me. My own fault."
"You have been very generous to me."
"Generous? There can't be any generosity between equals. Only a simple act of justice. It is you who have been good to me."
"I? To you?"
"Yes. You have satisfied my curiosity. I own that sometimes I have wanted to know what sort of voice will be singing after I am dead. And now Idoknow. Good-bye, and thank you."
He pressed his hand, turned abruptly and shuffled into the house. He was noticeably the worse for his walk, and Rickman felt that he had to answer for it to Miss Gurney.
"I'm afraid I've tired him. I hope I haven't done him harm."
Miss Gurney glanced sharply at him, turned, and disappeared through the study window. Her manner implied that if he had harmed Fielding she would make him feel it.
She came back still unsmiling. "No. You have not tired him."
"Then," said he as he followed her into the drawing-room, "I am forgiven?"
"Yes. But I did not say you had not done him harm."
The lady paused in her amenities to pour out his tea.
"Miss Gurney," he said as he took the cup from her, "can you tell me the name of the friend who sent my book to you?"
"No, I'm afraid I cannot."
"I see. After all, I am not forgiven?"
"I am not at all sure that you ought to be."
"I heard what he said to you," she went on almost fiercely. "That's why I hate young poets. He says there is only you to hate."
"So, of course, you hate me?"
"I think I do. I wish I had never heard of you. I wish he had never seen you. I hope you will never come again. I haven't looked at your poems that he praises so. He says they are beautiful. Very well, I shall hate thembecausethey are beautiful. He says they have more life in them than his. Do you understandnowwhy I hate them and you? He was young before you came here. You have made him feel that he is old, that he must die. I don't know what else he said to you. Shall I tell you what he said to me? He said that the world will forget him when it's listening to you."
"You misunderstood him." He thought that he understood her; but it puzzled him that, adoring Fielding as she did, she yet permitted herself to doubt.
"Do you suppose I thought that he grudged you your fame? Because he doesn't. But I do."
"You needn't. At present it only exists in his imagination."
"That's enough. If it exists there—"
"You mean, it will go down the ages?"
She nodded.
"And you don't want it to go?"
"Not unless his goes too, and goes farther."
"You need hardly be afraid."
"I'mnotafraid. Only, he has always stood alone, so high that no one has touched him. I've always seen him that way, all my life—and I can't bear to see him any other way. I can't bear any one to touch him, or even to come anywhere near him."
"No one ever will touch him. Whoever comes after him, he will always stand alone. And," he added gently, "you will always see him so."
"Yes," she said, but in a voice that told him she was still unconsoled. "If I had seen him when he was young, I suppose I should always see him young. Not that I care about that so much. His youth is the part of him that interests me least; perhaps because it was never in any way a part of me."
He looked at her. Did she realize how far Fielding's youth, if report spoke truly, had belonged to, or in her own words, "been a part of" other women? Did she resent their part in him? He thought not. It was not so much that she was jealous of Fielding's youth, as that she shrank from any appearance of disloyalty to his age.
"And yet," she said, "I feel that no one has a right to be young when he is old. I hate young poets because they are young. I hate my own youth—"
Her youth? Yes, it was youth that leapt quivering in her tragic face, like a blown flame. Her body hardly counted except as fuel to the eager and incessant fire.
"Don't hate it," he said. "It is the most beautiful thing you have to give him."
"Ah—if Icouldgive it him!"
He smiled. "You have given it him. He isn't old when he can inspire such devotion. He is to be envied."
He rose and held out his hand. As she took it, Miss Gurney's flame-like gaze rested on him a moment and grew soft.
"If you want to know, it was Lucia Harden who sent me your poems," said she. And he knew that for once Miss Gurney had betrayed a secret.
He wondered what had made her change her mind. He wondered whether Lucia had really made a secret of it. He wondered what the secret had to do with Fielding. And wondering he went away, envying him the love that kept its own divine fire burning for him on his hearth.