The Divine Fire Part 91

He did not say it all at once. At the very thought of it his swollen tongue moved impotently without words. At last he got it out.

"I've been thinking it over--that affair of the library. And I've been led to see that what I did was wrong. Wrong, I mean, in the sight of G.o.d."

There was a sense he could not get rid of, in which it might still be considered superlatively right.

"And wot you did--"

"Oh, never mind what I did. _That's_ all right."

"You did the righteous and the Christian thing."

"Did I? I'm sure I don't know why I did it."

"Ah--if you'd done it for the love of G.o.d, there's no doubt it'd 'ave been more pleasing to 'im."

"Well, you know I didn't do it for the love--of G.o.d."

"You did it for the love of woman? I was right then, after all."

Isaac felt inexpressibly consoled by Keith's cheerful disclaimer of all credit. His manner did away with the solemnity of the occasion; but it certainly smoothed for him the painful path of confession.

"Well, yes. If it hadn't been for Miss Harden I don't suppose I should have done it at all."

He said it very simply; but not all the magnificent consolations of religion could have given Isaac greater peace. It was a little more even, the balance of righteousness between him and Keith. He had never sinned, as Keith had done, after the flesh. Of the deeds done in the body he would have but a very small account to render at the last.

"And you see, you haven't got anything for it out of _her_."

There was a certain satisfaction in his tone. He saw a mark of the divine displeasure in Keith's failure to marry the woman he desired.

"And if I could only raise that money--"

He meant it--he meant it. The balance, held in G.o.d's hands, hung steady now.

"How much is it?" asked Keith; for he thought, "Perhaps he's only holding on to that share for my sake; and if he knew that I would give it up now, he might really--"

"Four thousand nine with th' interest," said Isaac.

"Do you think, Keith, it would have sold for five?"

"Well, yes, I think it very possibly might."

"Ah!" Isaac turned his face from his son. The sigh expressed a profound, an infinite repentance.

CHAPTER LXIII

On the twenty-fifth Isaac Rickman lay dead in his villa at Ilford. Two days after Keith's visit he had been seized by a second and more terrible paralytic stroke; and from it he did not recover. The wedding was now indefinitely postponed till such time as Keith could have succeeded in winding up his father's affairs.

They proved rather less involved than he had expected. Isaac had escaped dying insolvent. Though a heavy mortgage delivered Rickman's in the Strand into Pilkington's possession, the City house was not only sound, as Isaac had said, but in a fairly flourishing condition.

Some blind but wholly salutary instinct had made him hold on to that humbler and obscurer shop where first his fortunes had been made; and with its immense patronage among the Nonconformist population Rickman's in the City held a high and honourable position in the trade. The bulk of the profits had to go to the bookseller's widow as chief owner of the capital; still, the slender partnership settled on his son, if preserved intact and carefully manipulated, would yield in time a very comfortable addition to Keith's income. If Isaac had lived, his affairs (as far as he was concerned) would have been easily settled. But for his son and heir they proved most seriously complicated.

For Keith was heir, not only to his father's estate, but to that very considerable debt of honour which Isaac had left unpaid. It seemed as if the Harden library, the symbol of a superb intellectual vanity, was doomed to be in eternal necessity of redemption. Until yesterday it had not occurred to Keith that it could be his destiny to redeem it.

Yesterday he had refused to let his mind dally with that possibility; to-day it had become the most fitting subject of his contemplation.

The thing was more easily conceived than done. His literary income amounted, all told, to about three hundred and fifty a year, but its sources were not absolutely secure. _Metropolis_ or _The Planet_ might conceivably at any moment cease to be. And there was his marriage. It was put off; but only for a matter of weeks. He had only a hundred and fifty pounds in ready money; the rest had been swallowed up by the little house at Ealing. It was impossible to redeem the Harden library unless he parted with his patrimony; which was, after all, his only safe and imperishable source of income. Still, he had not the smallest hesitation on this head. Neither he nor Flossie had taken it into their calculations when they agreed to marry, and he was not going to consider it now.

The first step proved simple. Mrs. Rickman had no objection to buying him out. On the contrary, she was thankful to get rid of a most reckless and uncomfortable partner. But in the present state of the trade it was impossible to estimate his share at more than four thousand. That covered the princ.i.p.al; but Isaac had paid no interest for more than two years; and that interest Keith would have to pay.

Though the four thousand was secure, and Pilkington had given him three years to raise the seven hundred and fifty in, it was not so easily done on an income of three hundred and fifty. Not easy in three years; and impossible in any number of years if he married. Possible only, yes, just possible, if his marriage were postponed until such time as he could have collected the money. Some brilliant stroke of luck might unexpectedly reduce the term; but three years must be allowed. _Metropolis_ and _The Planet_ were surely good for another three years. The other alternative, that of repudiating the obligation, never entered his head for an instant. He could not have touched a shilling of his father's money till this debt was cleared.

There could be no doubt as to what honour demanded of him. But how would Flossie take it? The worst of it was that he was bound (in honour again) to give her the option of breaking off their engagement, if she didn't care to wait. And after all that had pa.s.sed between them it might not be so easy to persuade her that he was not glad of the excuse; for he himself was so lacking in conviction. Still she was very intelligent; and she would see that it wasn't his fault if their marriage had to be put off. The situation was inevitable and impersonal, and as such it was bound to be hard on somebody. He admitted that it was particularly hard on Flossie. It would have been harder still if Flossie had been out of work; but Flossie, with characteristic prudence, had held on to her post till the very eve of her wedding-day, and had contrived to return to it when she foresaw the necessity for delay. Otherwise he would have had to insist on providing for her until she was independent again; which would have complicated matters really most horribly. It was quite horrible enough to have to explain all this to Flossie. The last time he had explained things (for he had explained them) to Flossie the result had not been exactly happy. But then the things themselves had been very different, and he had had to admit with the utmost contrition that a woman could hardly have had more reasonable grounds for resentment. That was all over and done with now. In that explanation they had explained everything away. They had left no single thread of illusion hanging round the life they were to live together. They accepted themselves and each other as they were. And in the absence of any brighter prospect for either of them there was high wisdom in that acceptance.

If then there was a lack of rapture in his relations with Flossie, there would henceforth at any rate be calm. Her temperament was, he judged, essentially placid, not to say apathetic. There was a soft smoothness about the plump little lady that would be a security against friction. She was not great at understanding; but, taking it all together, she was now in an infinitely better position for understanding him than she had been two weeks ago. Besides, it was after all a simple question of figures; and Flossie's att.i.tude to figures was, unlike his own, singularly uninfluenced by pa.s.sion. She would take the sensible, practical view.

The sensible practical view was precisely what Flossie did take. But her capabilities of pa.s.sion he had again misjudged.

He chose his moment with discretion, when time and place and Flossie's mood were most propitious. The time was Sunday evening, the place was the Regent's Park, Flossie's mood was gentle and demure. She had been very nice to him since his father's death, and had shown him many careful small attentions which, with his abiding sense of his own shortcomings towards her, he had found extremely touching. She seemed to him somehow a different woman, not perhaps so pretty as she had been, but nicer. He may have been the dupe of an illusory effect of toilette, for Flossie was in black. She had discussed the propriety of mourning with Miss Bishop, and wore it to-day for the first time with a pretty air of solemnity mingled with satisfaction in her own delicate intimation that she was one with her lover in his grief. She had not yet discovered that black was unbecoming to her, which would have been fatal to the mood.

The flowers were gay in the Broad Walk, Flossie tried to be gay too; and called on him to admire their beauty. They sat down together on a seat in the embrasure of a bed of chrysanthemums. Flossie was interested in everything, in the chrysanthemums, in the weather and in the pa.s.sers-by--most particularly interested, he noticed, in the family groups. Her black eyes, that glanced so restlessly at the men and so jealously at the women, sank softly on the children, happy and appeased. Poor Flossie. He had long ago divined her heart. He did his best to please her; he sat down when she told him to sit down, stared when she told him to stare, and relapsed into his now habitual att.i.tude of dejection. A little girl toddled past him in play; stopped at his knees and touched them with her hand and rubbed her small body against them, chuckling with delight.

"The dear little mite," said Flossie; "she's taken quite a fancy to you, Keith." Her face was soft and shy under her black veil, and when she looked at him she blushed. He turned his head away. He could not meet that look in Flossie's eyes when he thought of what he had to say to her. He was going to put the joy of life a little farther from her; to delay her woman's tender ineradicable hope.

This was not the moment or the place to do it in. They rose and walked on, turning into the open Park. And there, sitting under a solitary tree by the path that goes towards St. John's Wood, he broke it to her gently.

"Flossie," he said, "I've something to tell you that you mayn't like to hear."

She made no sign of agitation beyond sc.r.a.ping a worn place in the gra.s.s with the tips of her little shoes. "Well," she said, with an admirable attempt at patience, "what is it _now_?"

"You mean you think it's been about enough already?"

"If it's really anything unpleasant, for goodness' sake let's have it out and get it over."

"Right, Flossie. I'm awfully sorry, but I'm afraid we shan't be able to marry for another two years, perhaps three."

"And why not?" Her black eyes darted a vindictive look at him under her soft veil.

"My father's death has made a difference to me."

Her lips tightened, and she drew a sharp but inaudible breath through her nostrils. He had been wrong in supposing that she had not looked for any improvement in his finances after his father's death. On the contrary, knowing of their reconciliation and deceived by the imposing appearance of Rickman's in the Strand, she had counted on a very substantial increase of income.

"Do you mean to say, Keith, he hasn't left you anything?"

He laughed softly--an unpleasant way he had in situations where most people would consider it only decent to keep grave.

"He _has_ left me something. A bad debt."

"What have you got to do with his bad debts? n.o.body can come down on you to pay them." She paused. A horrible thought had struck her.