The Divine Fire Part 12

Rickman searched carefully for information under this head. He learnt that the Harden library was the work of ten generations of scholars beginning with Sir Thomas, a Jacobean maker of madrigals, and ending with Sir Joseph, the Victorian Master of Lazarus; that the founder's date is carved on the oak chimney-piece at the north end, with the Harden motto:

16 INVICTUS 20;

that the late Master of Lazarus bought books by the cartload, and was obliged to break through the south wall and sacrifice the west wing (his wife's boudoir) to make room for them. But where he looked for some record of these treasures he found nothing but an elaborate description of the Harden arms with all their quarterings. The historian was not useful for Rickman's purposes. He was preoccupied with the Hardens, their antiquity and splendour; he grovelled before them; every event in their history gave him an opportunity of observing that their motto was _Invictus_. He certainly seemed to have found them so; for when he wrote of them his style took on the curious contortions and prostrations of his spirit. The poor wretch, in the pay of the local bookseller, had saturated himself with heraldry till he saw gules.

To a vision thus inflamed book-collecting was simply a quaint hereditary freak, and scholarship a distinction wholly superfluous in a race that owned half the parish, and had its arms blazoned on the east windows of a church and the sign-board of a public-house. And with the last generation the hereditary pa.s.sion had apparently exhausted itself. "The present owner, Sir Frederick Harden," said the chronicler, "has made no addition to the library of his ancestors."

What he had done was not recorded in the history of the Hardens. It was silent also as to the ladies of that house, beyond drawing attention to the curious fact that no woman had ever been permitted to inherit the Harden Library. The inspired pen of the chronicler evoked the long procession of those Hardens whose motto was _Invictus_; crossed-legged crusading Hardens, Hardens in trunk hose, Hardens in ruff and doublet, in ruffles and periwig; Hardens in powder and patches, in the loosest of stocks and the tightest of trousers; and never a petticoat among them all. It was just as well, Rickman reflected, that Poppy's frivolous little phantom had not danced after him into the Harden library; those other phantoms might not have received it very kindly, unless indeed Sir Thomas, the maker of madrigals, had spared it a shadowy smile.

He looked round and realized that his separation from Poppy would be disagreeably prolonged if he was expected to catalogue and arrange all the books in the Harden Library. Allowing so much time to so much s.p.a.ce, (measuring by feet of bookshelf) hours ran rapidly to days, and days to weeks--why, months might pa.s.s and find him still labouring there. He would be buried in the blackness, forgotten by Poppy and the world. That was a.s.suming that the Harden Library really belonged to the Hardens. And if it was to belong to d.i.c.ky Pilkington, what on earth had he been sent for?

"You were sent in answer to my letter, I suppose?"

Rickman's nervous system was still so far under the dominion of d.i.c.ky's champagne that he started violently. Double doors and double carpets deadened all sound of coming and going, and the voice seemed to have got into the room by itself. As from its softness he judged it to be still some yards distant, he suffered a further shock on finding a lady standing by his elbow.

It had been growing on him lately, this habit of starting at nothing, this ridiculous spasm of shoulder-blade, eyelids and mouth. It was a cause of many smiles to the young ladies of his boarding-house; and this lady was smiling too, though after another fashion. Her smile was remote and delicately poised; it hovered in the fine, long-drawn corners of her mouth and eyes; it sobered suddenly as a second and less violent movement turned towards her his white and too expressive face. He could not say by what subtle and tender transitions it pa.s.sed into indifference, nor how in pa.s.sing it contrived to intimate her regret at having taken him somewhat at a disadvantage. It was all done and atoned for in the lifting of an eyelid, before he could take in what she had actually said.

Her letter? He murmured some sort of a.s.sent, and entered on a dreamy and protracted search for his pocket handkerchief. He was miserably conscious that she was looking, looking down on him all the time. For this lady was tall, so tall indeed that her gaze seemed to light on his eyelids rather than his eyes. When he had found his courage and his handkerchief he looked up and their eyes met half way. Hers were brown with the tinge of hazel that makes brown eyes clear; they had a liquid surface of light divided from their darkness, and behind the darkness was more light, and the light and darkness were both unfathomable.

These eyes were entirely unembarra.s.sed by the encounter. They still swept him with their long gaze, lucid, meditative, and a little critical.

"You have been very prompt."

"We understood that no time was to be lost."

She hesitated. "Mr. Rickman understood, did he not, that I asked for some one with experience?"

Most certainly Mr. Rickman understood.

"Do you think you will be able to do what I want?"

Her eyes implied that he seemed to her too young to have had any experience at all.

Knowing that a sense of humour was not one of the things required of him, he controlled a smile.

"We understood you wanted an expert, so I came myself."

"You are Mr. Rickman then?"

"Well--Mr. Rickman's son."

The lady puckered her brows as if trying to recall something, an idea, a memory that escaped her. She gave it up.

"Have you been waiting long?"

"Not more than half an hour or so."

"I am sorry. Perhaps you had better stay now and see what has to be done."

He was tired, he had eaten nothing all day, his nerves were out of order, and he had an abominable headache, but he intimated that he and his time were at her service. She spoke with authority, and he wondered who she was. Sir Frederick Harden's daughter? Or his sister?

Or his wife?

"As you see, the books are fairly well arranged. It will not take very long to sort them."

Oh wouldn't it, though! His heart sank miserably as he followed her progress round the room.

"They'll have to be catalogued under their subjects--alphabetically, of course."

"Quite so."

She continued with the same swiftness and serenity, mistress of his time and intelligence, as of her own luminous and elaborate plan.

"Their size will have to be given, the edition, the place and date of publication, the number of their shelf, and their place on the shelves."

Their place on the shelves indeed! If those books had got into d.i.c.ky Pilkington's clutches their place would know them no more. He wondered; did she know nothing about d.i.c.ky Pilkington? Her plan implied certainty of possession, the permanence of the Harden Library world without end. He wondered whether he ought not to remind her that it might be about to come into the market, if it were not already as good as sold?

"Besides the cataloguing I want notes on all the rare or remarkable books. I believe some of them are unique."

He wondered more and more, and ended by wondering whether d.i.c.ky Pilkington were really so sure of his game?

"I see. You want a catalogue _raisonne_."

"I want something like this." She opened a drawer and showed him one of Rickman's Special Quarterly Catalogues of a year back. He remembered; it used to be sent regularly to old Sir Joseph Harden, their best customer.

"My grandfather said these catalogues were models of their kind--they could only have been done by a scholar. He wanted the library catalogued on the same lines. It was to have been done in his lifetime--"

"I wish it had been. I should have liked to have worked for Sir Joseph 'Arden."

Stirred by the praise, and by a sudden recollection of Sir Joseph, he spoke with a certain emotion, so that an aitch went by the board.

"Are you quite sure," said she, "that you know all about this sort of work?"

Had she noticed that hideous accident? And did it shake her belief in his fitness for the scholarly task?

"This _is_ my work. I made that catalogue. I have to make them every quarter, so it keeps my hand in."

"Are you a quick worker?"

"Yes, I can be pretty quick."

"Could you finish my catalogue by the twenty-seventh? That's a little more than three weeks."

"Well--it would depend rather on the number of notes you wanted. Let me see--there must be about fourteen or fifteen thousand books here--"

"There are fifteen thousand."

"It would take three weeks to make an ordinary catalogue; and that would be quick work, even for me. I'm afraid you must give me rather more time."

"I can't. I'm leaving England on the twenty-sixth."