The Divine Fire Part 41

Conversationally he was furnished with tentacles sensitive to the lightest touch of an idea; he had the very subtlest discernment of shades within shades. He grasped with airy impact; he moved by a delicate contact and recoil, a process he was pleased to describe as "feelin' his way."

He did not rush brutally into business, as a man of coa.r.s.er fibre might have done. He removed his gloves, adjusted his eye-gla.s.s and admired the view. He shrank from the suggestion that he had come to "take possession," but clearly he could not take possession of the view. It was a safe and soothing topic.

"You have a very glorious outlook here, Miss Harden."

Then Mr. Pilkington perceived a shade. Miss Harden's outlook was _not_ glorious.

By an almost visible recoil from his own blunder he strove to convey an impression of excessive delicacy.

"Wot very exceptional weather we are enjoying--" Perceiving another and a finer shade (for evidently Miss Harden was not enjoying the weather, or indeed anything else) Mr. Pilkington again shifted his ground. He spoke of books. He noticed with approval the arrangement of the library. He admired the Harden taste in costly bindings, as if he were by no means personally concerned with any of these things. And thus by a delicate and imperceptible transition, he slid into his theme.

"Now, as regards this--this sale, Miss Harden. I hope you understand--"

"I understand that you are my father's chief creditor, and that the sale is necessary."

"Quite so. But I'm most awfully sorry for the necessity As for time--I don't want you to feel that you're pressed or hurried in any way." Mr.

Pilkington's eyes gazed up at her under their great gla.s.ses, humid and immense. His lower lip drooped in an uncertain manner. He had a great deal of nice feeling about him, had d.i.c.ky.

"I hope those men aren't making a nuisance of themselves They've had strict orders to keep in the background I'm orf'ly upset," said Mr.

Pilkington in a thick emotional voice, "about this affair; and I want to consider you, Miss Harden, in every possible way."

"You are very kind. But I would rather you didn't consider me, in any way at all."

As she said this Mr. Rickman looked at her with a grave smile, conveying (behind Mr. Pilkington's back) an unmistakable warning.

Mr. Pilkington smiled too, a large and fluttering smile as of one indulgent to any little attempt at brilliance on the part of a young lady under a cloud. Lucia swept him and his smile with her long and steady gaze, a gaze which made d.i.c.ky exceedingly uncomfortable.

"I think if you have any arrangements to make, you had better see my solicitor."

"I have an appointment," said d.i.c.ky, not without a certain dignity, "with Mr. Schofield, to-morrow morning."

"Then I suppose what you want now is to look over the house?"

The question and the gaze were so direct that d.i.c.ky (who had meant to amble delicately round that point for another quarter of an hour) lost his head, dropped his eye-gla.s.s, and fairly let himself go.

"Well, perhaps as I _am_ here, I'd better 'ave a look round. Of course--if--if it's in any way inconvenient--"

"Not in the least. You can look round at once."

She rang the bell. On her way to it she gathered up some books that were lying out of sight and laid them on the table.

"These," she said to Rickman, "belong to the library. They must go with the rest."

He looked at them. One was an Aldine Dante, he had seen her reading it. He took Pilkington aside and said something to him in a tone which Lucia could not hear. Her hand was on the door when Pilkington sprang forward.

"One moment, Miss Harden. Everything must be sold in the regular way, but if you'll tell me of any books you've a special fancy for, I'll make a note of them and buy them in for you." He paused, awaiting the breath of inspiration. It came. "For--for a merely nominal sum."

To do d.i.c.ky justice this delicate idea greatly commended itself to his good nature. Business is business, but not willingly did d.i.c.ky inflict pain, least of all upon a young and pretty woman. Besides he had an eye to his reputation; he was disposed to do this thing handsomely.

Rickman envied him his inspiration, his "merely nominal sum."

"Thank you. The books were not mine," said Lucia in spite of another meaning look from her ally.

"Quite so. But I should disregard that if I were you. Anyhow you can think it over, and if you change your mind you can let me or Mr Rickman know before the sale."

Lucia looked down at him from her height. "I shall not change my mind.

If I want to keep any of the books, I can buy them from Mr. Rickman."

She turned to Rickman in the doorway. "All the same, it was kind of you to think of it." She said it very distinctly, so that Mr.

Pilkington could hear.

Rickman followed her out of the room and closed the door behind them.

She turned on him eyes positively luminous with trust. It was as if she had abandoned the leading of her intellect and flung the reins on the neck of her intuition.

"I was right, wasn't I? I would so much rather buy them back from you."

"From my father?"

"It's the same thing, isn't it?"

He smiled sadly. "I'm afraid it isn't, quite. Why didn't you accept his offer?"

"I couldn't." She shuddered slightly. Her face expressed her deep and desperate repugnance. "I _can_ buy them back from you. He is really arranging with your father, isn't he?"

"Yes." It was the third time that she had appealed from Pilkington to him, and there was a profound humiliation in the thought that at this precise moment the loathsome d.i.c.ky might be of more solid use to her than he.

"Well then," she said almost triumphantly. "I shall be safe. You will do your best for me."

It was a statement, but he met it as if it had been a question.

"I will indeed."

He saw that it was in identifying his father with him that she left it to their honour.

CHAPTER x.x.xII

d.i.c.ky Pilkington did not belong to the aristocracy of finance. Indeed, finance had not in any form claimed him at the first.

Under the grey frock-coat and gleaming shirt-front, hidden away behind the unapparent splendours of d.i.c.ky Pilkington's attire (his undermost garments were of woven silk), in a corner of his young barbarian heart there lurked an obscure veneration for culture and for art. When his day's work was done, the time that d.i.c.ky did not spend in the promenade of the Jubilee Variety Theatre, he spent in reading Karl Pearson and Robert Louis Stevenson, with his feet on the fender. He knew the Greek characters. He _said_ he could tell Plato from Aristotle by the look of the text. d.i.c.ky had begun life as a Junior Journalist. But before that, long, long before, when he was an innocent schoolboy, d.i.c.ky had a pair of wings, dear little cherubic wings, that fluttered uneasily under his little jacket. The wings moulted as d.i.c.ky grew older; they shrank (in the course of his evolution) to mere rudimentary appendages, and poor d.i.c.ky flopped instead of flying. Finally they dropped off and d.i.c.ky was much happier without them. Rickman used to say that if you stripped him you saw the marks of them still quite plainly; and d.i.c.ky was always stripping himself and showing them. They proved to these writing fellows what he might have been if he had only chosen. He had begun by being a poet like the best of them, and in his heart of hearts d.i.c.ky believed that it was as a poet he should end. His maxim upon this head was: "When I've feathered my nest it will be time enough for me to sing."

d.i.c.ky's nest was not long in feathering, and yet d.i.c.ky had not begun to sing. Still, at moments, after supper, or on a Sunday afternoon, walking in a green lane, d.i.c.ky would unbosom himself. He would tell you touching legends of his boyhood and adolescence. Then he would talk to you of women. And then he would tell you how it was that he came to forsake literature for finance.

He had begun in a small way by financing little tradesmen, little journalists and actresses in temporary difficulties; lending small sums to distressed clergymen, to governesses and the mistresses of boarding-houses. By charging a moderate interest he acquired a character for fairness and straight-forwardness. Now and then he did what he called a really tip-top generous thing. "Character," said d.i.c.ky Pilkington, "is capital"; and at thirty he had managed to save enough of it to live on without bothering about earning any more.

Then, by slow degrees, d.i.c.ky extended his business. He lent larger sums at correspondingly higher interest. Then he let himself go. He was caught by the glory of the thing, the poetry of finance. He soared to all the heights and sounded all the depths of speculation. He took risks with rapture. He fancied himself lending vast sums at giddy interest. "That," said d.i.c.ky to his conscience, was to "cover his risk." He hadn't forgotten that character is capital. And when it occurred to him, as it sometimes did, that he was making rather a large hole in it, he would then achieve some colossal act of generosity which set him on his legs again. So that d.i.c.ky Pilkington was always happy in his conscience as in everything else.