But before very long he obtained more light on the Beaver's logic, and
owned that it was singularly sound. They managed to put in a great
many nice walks between that Sunday and Christmas. Whenever he could
spare time Rickman made a point of meeting Flossie at the end of her
day's work. He generally waited at the corner where the long
windowless wall of the Bank stretches along Prince's Street, iron and
implacable. It was too cold now to sit under the shadow of St. Paul's.
Sometimes they would walk home along Holborn, sometimes they would go
down Ludgate Hill and thence on to the Embankment. It was certainly
better for Flossie to be out of doors than in the dingy drawing-room
in Tavistock Place. They could talk freely in the less crowded
thorough-fares; and it was surprising the things they still found to
say to each other all about nothing. Every trace of Flossie's
depression had vanished; she walked with a brisk step, she chatted
gaily, she laughed the happiest laughter at the poorest jokes. All was
going well; and why, oh why could he not let well alone?

They were walking on the Embankment one day, and she, for such a
correct little person, was mad with mirth, when he broke out.
"Flossie, you little lunatic! You might be going to marry a
stock-broker instead of a journalist."

"I'm going to marry a very rich man--for me."

"For you, darling? A devilish poor one, I'm afraid."

"Oh don't! We've said enough about that."

"Yes, but I haven't told you everything. Do you know, I might have
been fairly well off by now, if I'd only chosen."

Now there was no need whatever for him to make that revelation. He was
driven to it by vanity. He wanted to make an impression. He wanted
Flossie to see him in all his moral beauty.

"How was that?" she asked with interest.

"I can't tell you much about it. It was something to do with business.
I got an offer of a thumping big partnership three years ago--and I
refused it."

He had made an impression. Flossie turned on him a look of wonder, a
look uncertain and inscrutable. "What did you do that for?"

"I did it because it was right. I didn't like the business."

"That's not quite the same thing, is it?"

"Not always. It happened to be in this case."

"Why, what sort of business was it?"

"It wasn't scavenging, and it wasn't burglary--exactly. It was--" he
hesitated--"only the second-hand book-trade."

"I know--they make a lot of money that way."

"They make too much for my taste sometimes. Besides--"

"Besides what?" They had turned into an embrasure of the parapet to
discuss this question. They stood close together looking over the
river.

"It isn't my trade. I'm only a blooming journalist."

"You don't make so very much out of that, do you? Is that the reason
why we have to wait?"

"I'm afraid so. But I hope I shall be something more than a journalist
some day."

"You _like_ writing, don't you?"

"Yes, Flossie; I shouldn't be much good at it, if I didn't."

"I see." She was looking eastwards away from him, and her expression
had changed; but it was still inscrutable. And yet by the turning of
her head, he saw her mind moving towards a conclusion; but it was
impossible to say whether she reached it by the slow process of
induction, or by woman's rapid intuition. Anyhow she had reached it.
Presently she spoke again. "Could you still get that thing, that
partnership any time--if you tried?"

"Any time. But I'm not going to try."

She turned round abruptly with an air of almost fierce determination.
"Well, if _I_ get an offer of a good place, _I_ shan't refuse it. I
shall leave the Bank." She spoke as if so desperate a step would be
followed by the instantaneous collapse of that institution.

He was surprised to find how uneasy this threat always made him. The
proverbial safety of the Bank had impressed him in more ways than one.
And Flossie's post there had other obvious advantages. It brought her
into contact with women of a better class than her own, with small
refinements, and conventions which were not conspicuous at Mrs.
Downey's.

"Let me implore you not to do that. Heaven knows, I hate you having to
earn your own living at all, but I'd rather you did it that way than
any other."

"Why, what difference would it make to you, I should like to know?"

"It makes all the difference if I know you're doing easy work, not
slaving yourself to death as some girls do. It _is_ an easy berth.
And--and I like the look of those girls I saw you with to-day. They
were nice. I'd rather think of you working with them than sitting in
some horrible office like a man. Promise me you won't go looking out
for anything else."

"All right. I promise."

"No, but--on your honour?"

"Honour bright. There! Anything for a quiet life."

They turned on to the street again. Rickman looked at his watch. "Look
here, we're both late for dinner--supposing we go and dine somewhere
and do a theatre after, eh?"

"Oh no--we mustn't." All the same Flossie's eyes brightened, for she
dearly loved the play.

"Why not?"

"Because I don't think perhaps you ought to."

"You mean I can't afford it?"

"Well--"

"Oh, I fancy even a journalist's income will run to that."

It did run to that and to a hansom afterwards, though Flossie
protested, dragging at his arm.

"I'd rather walk," said she, "indeed I would."

"Nonsense. Come, bundle in."

"Please--please let me walk." He helped her in and closed the apron
sharply. He was annoyed. That was the second time she had insisted on
his poverty. He thought she had a little too much the air of preparing
herself to be a poor man's wife. Of course it was pretty of her; but
he thought it would have been prettier still if she had let it alone.

Now Flossie had never thought of him as a poor man before to-night;
but somehow the idea of the good income he might have had and hadn't
made him appear poor by comparison. She lay back in the hansom
meditating. "If you could only write a play like that, Keith, what a
lot of money you'd make."

"Shouldn't I? But then, you see, I couldn't write a play like that."

"Rubbish. I don't believe that author--what d'you call him?--is so
very much cleverer than you."

"Thanks." He bowed ironically.

"Well, I mean it. And look how they clapped him--why, they made as
much fuss about him as any of the actors. I say, wouldn't you like to
hear them calling 'Author! Author!'? And then clapping!"

"H'm!"

"Oh, wouldn't you love it just; you needn't pretend! Look there, I
declare I've split my glove." (That meant, as Flossie had calculated,
a new pair that _she_ should not have to pay for.)

"If _you_ clapped me I would, Flossie. I should need all the
consolation I could get if I'd written as bad a play."

"Well, if that was a bad play, I'd like to see a good one."

"I'll take you to a good one some day."

"Soon?"

"Well, I'm afraid not very soon." He smiled; for the play he thought
of taking her to was not yet written; would never be written if many
of his evenings were like this. But to Flossie, meditating, his words
bore only one interpretation--that Keith was really very much worse
off than she had taken him to be.

As they lingered on the doorstep in Tavistock Place, a young man
approached them in a deprecating manner from the other side of the
street, and took off his hat to Flossie.

"Hallo, Spinks!" said Rickman.

"That you, Razors?" said Spinks.

"It is. What are you doing here?"

"Oh nothing. I was in the neighbourhood, and I thought I'd have a look
at the old place."

"Come in, will you? (If they don't come, Flossie, I shall _have_ to
use my latch-key.")

"Not to-night, thanks, it's a bit too late. I'd better be going." But
he did not go.

"I hope," said Flossie politely, "you're comfortable where you are
now?"

"Oh, very comfortable, very comfortable indeed." Yet his voice had a
melancholy sound, and under the gas-light his face (a face not
specially designed for pathos) looked limp and utterly dejected.

"I think, Keith," said Flossie, "you'd better ring again." Ringing was
a concession to propriety that Flossie insisted on and he approved. He
rang again; and Mrs. Downey in a beautiful wrapper herself opened the
door. At the sight of Spinks she gave a joyful exclamation and invited
him into the hall. They left him there.

"What's up?" asked Rickman as they parted on his landing.

"Who with? Sidney? I can't tell you--really."

"I wonder why he left."

"I can't tell you that, either." They said good-night at the foot of
the stairs, and she kissed him laughing. And the two men heard it
echoing in their dreams, that mysterious laughter of woman, which is
as the ripple over the face of the deep.




CHAPTER XLVIII


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 you _had_ seen 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."

"You _could_ marry 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't_ you 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--_your_ department--there are
still enormous--e_nor_mous--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 of _that_, 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 made _much_ profit 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--which _I_ gave _you_ to put into
_my_ business--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 wot _you've_ been 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.




CHAPTER XLIX


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. And _not 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 could _I_
tell?"

"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 he _will_ keep 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 at _me_. '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
undeniably _chic_.'" 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 word _chic_. 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 I _was_ tired 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 delicious
_Livre 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 criticized _her_--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 if _you_ can't do more,
_I_ must."

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.




CHAPTER L


One day, four years after the publication of _Saturnalia_, 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."

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 your _Saturnalia_--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 your _Saturnalia_.
But _On Harcombe Hill_, and _The 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're _dead_. 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. "_Has_ any 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.

"There _is_ one 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 if _we_ say
it's beautiful, it _is_ beautiful. _And_ good."

Happy Fielding, thought Rickman. Fielding had never suffered as he had
suffered; _his_ dream 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 with _The
Museion_ and _The 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 keep _both_. 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 more _Saturnalia_."

"There won't be any more _Saturnalia_."

"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 I _do_ know. 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 them _because_ they are beautiful. He says they have more
life in them than his. Do you understand _now_ why 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'm _not_ afraid. 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."