The Divine Fire Part 42

He had been prepared to do the handsome thing by Miss Harden, only her manner had somehow "choked him off." He could have afforded it, for he considered this Freddy Harden business as his very largest deal. He held a mortgage on the land, from the river to the top of Harcombe Hill. There was any amount to be got out of the pictures and the furniture. And the library was not altogether to be sneezed at. It had been Fred Harden's last desperate resource, (rather poor security in d.i.c.ky's opinion); but if the sum advanced had not been prodigious (compared with the sums that had gone before it) the interest had been high. So that, in returning from his tour of inspection, he felt considerably elated.

Rickman, as he went down the High Street that evening, saw d.i.c.ky a little way in front of him. He noticed that the financial agent was an object of considerable interest to the people of Harmouth. Men stood at shop doors and street corners, women (according to their social standing) hung out of bedroom windows or hid behind parlour curtains to look after him as he went. Here and there Rickman caught sullen and indignant glances, derisive words and laughter. Evidently the spirit of Harmouth was hostile to d.i.c.ky. A Harden was a Harden, and Sir Frederick's magnificently complete disaster had moved even the townspeople, his creditors.

The excitement caused by d.i.c.ky concentrated at the windows of the London and Provincial Bank, where Sir Frederick had had a large balance--overdrawn.

Harmouth High Street is a lane, wide at the top and narrow at the bottom, which gives on to the esplanade between the Marine Hotel and the Bank. At a certain distance these buildings cut the view into a thin slip of grey beach and steep blue sea. The form of d.i.c.ky was now visible in the centre of that slip, top-hatted, distinct against the blue. He stood on the edge of the esplanade as on a railway platform, reading the paper and smoking a cigar. From time to time, looking up with an expression half visionary, half voluptuous, he puffed and spat in dreamy rhythmic sequence.

"_Coelum, non animam_," said Rickman to himself, "they change their skies, but not their habits." When he came up with him, he found the soul of Pilkington disporting itself in its own airy element, exchanging ideas with two young damsels who frolicked on the beach below. Backwards and forwards flew the light-hearted banter, like b.a.l.l.s of sea-foam, Mr. Pilkington the inspirer and the inspired. The after-glow of his last triumphant witticism still illuminated his countenance when he turned again to the printed page.

Now, owing to its peculiar construction, Harmouth High Street acts as a funnel for the off-sh.o.r.e breezes; they rush through it as they rush through Windy Gap, that rift in the coast before which the wary fisherman slackens sail. Just such an air was careering seawards when Mr. Pilkington was about to perform the difficult feat of folding his paper backwards. It smote one side of the broadsheet and tore it from his grasp, making it flutter like a sail escaped from the lanyard. The breeze dropped; it hovered; it waited like the wanton that it was; and when Mr. Pilkington's free hand made a clutch at the flying columns, it seized that moment to lift his hat from his head and dash it to the ground. Then the demon of the wind entered into and possessed that high thing; the hat rolled, it curvetted, it turned brim over crown, it took wings and flew, low and eager like a cormorant; finally it struck the beach, gathering a frightful impetus from the shock, and bounded seawards, the pebbles beating from it a thin drum-like note.

Never was any created thing so tortured with indecent merriment in the face of doom. The end seemed certain, for d.i.c.ky Pilkington, though he joined in the hysterics of the crowd, had not compromised his dignity by pursuit; when, just as the hat touched the foam of perdition, Molly Trick, the fat bathing woman, interposed the bulwark of her body; she stooped; she spread her wide skirts, and the maniac leapt into them as into a haven.

The young men who watched this breezy incident over the blinds of the London and Provincial Bank were immensely diverted. Even Rickman laughed as d.i.c.ky turned to him his cheerful face buffeted by the wind.

Mr. Pilkington had put up at the same hotel as Rickman, and they found themselves alone at the dinner-table.

"Glori-orious air this," said Mr. Pilkington. "I don't know how you feel, young 'un, but there's a voice that tells me I shall dine."

Mr. Pilkington was not deceived by that prophetic voice. He dined with appet.i.te undiminished by his companion's gloom. From time to time he rallied him on his coyness under the fascinations of beef-steak, lager beer, apricots and Devonshire cream.

"Well, Razors," he said at last, "and wot do you think of the Harden Library?"

Rickman was discreet. "Oh, it isn't bad for a private show. Sir Frederick doesn't seem to have been much of a collector."

"Wasn't he, though! In his own line he was a pretty considerable collector, quite a what d'you call 'em--virtuoso."

"Not very much virtue about him, I imagine."

"Well, whatever there may have been, in ten years that joker went through his capital as if it had been a paper hoop. Slap through it and out at the other side, on his feet, grinning at you."

"How did he manage it?"

"Cards--horses--women--everything you can name," said d.i.c.ky, "that's amusing, and at the same time expensive. They're precious slow down here in the country; but get 'em up to town, and there's nothing like 'em for going the pace, when they _do_ go it."

"His velocity must have been something tremendous, to judge by the smash." Rickman was looking at the financial agent with an expression which some people might have been inclined to resent, but d.i.c.ky's gaiety was proof against criticism.

"What did he die of?" Rickman asked slowly.

"What a beastly question to ask at dinner. He died, like most people, of his way of living. If Freddy Harden had had opportunities equal to his talents he would have smashed up ten years ago. Talent wasn't the word for it, it was genius--genius."

"I see. And when you come across a poor struggling devil with a gift like that, you long to be kind to him, don't you? To bring him forward, to remove every obstacle to his career?"

"Well, yes, I suppose I did run Harden for all he was worth. Queer fish, Harden. He used to rave like a lunatic about his daughter; but I don't suppose he spent a fiver on her in his life. It's pretty rough on her, this business. But Loocher'll do. She's got cheek enough for half a dozen." d.i.c.ky chuckled at the memory of his discomfiture. "I like it. I like a girl with some bounce in her. Trust her to fall on her little tootsies anywhere you drop her."

"I can't say you've made the falling very easy for her."

d.i.c.ky's bright face clouded. "Wot the devil has that got to do with me? I've done _my_ level best. Why, I could have cleaned them out years ago, if I'd chosen. Now, just to show you what sort of fellow Freddy Harden was--last time I ever saw him, poor chap, he told me that girl of his was a regular musical genius, just a little more technique, you know, and she'd beat Paderewski into a c.o.c.ked hat. She was wonderful. That's the way he piled it on, and it may have been all true; he could have made a fortune, fiddling, if he hadn't been as proud as Satan and as lazy as a wombat. Well, I said, if that was so, I'd take her up and run her as a pro.--for friendship, mind you. I liked Freddy, and I was orf'ly sorry for him. She could pay me if she pulled it off; if not, she could let it stand over till the day of judgement."

Rickman flushed. "Did you know anything of Miss Harden, then?"

"Not I. Never set eyes on her. She might have been as ugly as sin for all I knew. I risked that."

"What did Sir Frederick say to your generous proposal?"

d.i.c.ky's face became luminous at the recollection. "He said he'd see me d--d first. But I meant it. I'd do it to-morrow if she asked me prettily."

"Have you any notion how she'll be left after all this?"

"Yes. There's the house, and her mother's money. Freddy couldn't get at that. When it's all settled up she can't be so badly off, I fancy.

Still it's a beastly back-hander in the face, poor girl. By Jove, she does stand up to it in form, too. Too d----d well bred to let you know she's. .h.i.t. You wouldn't think she'd be plucky, to look at her, would you? It's queer how the breeding comes out in a woman."

Rickman held himself in with difficulty. When pearls are cast before swine you look for depreciation as a matter of course; you would be infinitely more revolted if, instead of trampling them under their feet, the animals insisted on wearing them in their snouts. So Pilkington rootling in Miss Harden's affairs; Pilkington posing as Miss Harden's adviser; Pilkington adorning his obscene conversation with Miss Harden's name, was to Rickman an infinitely more abominable beast than Pilkington behaving according to his nature. But to quarrel with Pilkington on this head would have provoked the vulgarest of comments, and for Miss Harden's sake he restrained himself.

d.i.c.ky remained unconscious. "I'm glad you put me up to offering some of those books back. It goes against me to sell them, but what the devil am I to do?"

"_I_ can't tell you."

"I shan't collar all this furniture, either. I'll buy in some of it and return it. The decent thing would be to give her back poor Freddy's portrait."

He pa.s.sed his hand over a bunch of bananas,--he selected one, pinched it, smelt it, put it down and took another.

"It's a pity it's a Watts, that portrait," he murmured dreamily. He seemed to be wrestling with himself; and apparently he overcame. When he had eaten his banana his face was flushed and almost firm.

"I'll not take it. He sticks in my throat, does Freddy."

Rickman left the table. If he had disliked d.i.c.ky when he was callous, he loathed him when he was kind.

He threw open the window, and sat on the ledge. The breeze had died down and the heat in the little hotel was stifling. Across the pa.s.sage gla.s.ses clinked in the bar, sounding a suitable accompaniment to the voice of d.i.c.ky. From time to time bursts of laughter came from the billiard-room overhead. Outside there, in the night, the sea smothered these jarring human notes with its own majestic tumult. Rickman, giving up his sickened senses to the night and the sea, was fortunate enough to miss a great deal that Pilkington was saying.

For d.i.c.ky, still seated at the table, talked on. He had mingled soda with whisky, and as he drank it, the veil of our earthly life lifted for d.i.c.ky, and there was revealed to him the underlying verity, the fabric of the world. In other words, d.i.c.ky had arrived at the inspired moment of the evening, and was chanting the Hymn of Finance.

"Look," said d.i.c.ky, "at the Power it gives you. Now all you writing chaps, you know, you're not in it, you're not in it at all. You're simply 'opping and dodging round the outside--you 'aven't a chance of really seeing the show. Whereas--look at _me_. I go and take my seat plump down in the middle of the stage box. I've got my ear to the heart of 'Umanity and my 'and on its pulse. I've got a grip of realities. You say you want to por-tray life. Very well, por-tray it.

When all's said and done you've only got a picture. And wot's a picture, if it's ever so lifelike? You 'aven't got a bit nearer to the real thing. I tell you, you aren't in it with me. I'd have been a writer myself if I'd thought it was good enough. I began that way; but as to going back to it, you might just as well expect me to go back to kissing a woman's photo when I can put my arm round her waist."

And d.i.c.ky, gracefully descending on the wings of his metaphor, alighted on Miss Poppy Grace. But to Rickman the figure of Poppy, once an obsession, was now as indistinct as the figure of d.i.c.ky seen through a cloud of tobacco smoke. He was roused by a more direct appeal, and what seemed to him a violent change of theme.

"Did you notice what rum eyes Miss Harden's got? They haven't taught her how to use 'em, though. Hi, Ricky! Aren't you going to join us in a drink?"

"No, I'm not." His tone implied that he was not going to join Pilkington in anything.

"You seem a bit cut up on Miss Harden's account."

"If you mean that I think she's been most infernally treated, I do."

"H'm. Well, I will say the wind is not exactly tempered to that shorn lamb. But it's an ill wind that blows n.o.body any good. Queer how things are mixed up in this world. You wouldn't think there was much connexion between Miss Harden and Miss Poppy Grace, would you? Well, wot's Loocher's loss is Popsie's gain; if that's any consolation."

"I certainly don't see the connexion."

"No? I say, can't you shut the window? That d----d sea makes such a noise I can't hear myself speak. I was going to say I'd some notion of running Poppy on her own before long. And I think--I _think_ I can do it out of this haul, before she signs another contract. Of course, we expect you and your friends to back us."