But he had not the smallest intention of spending his whole life so.
As always, long ago, in the darkness of the City shop, he had seen a
brilliance of his own spreading around Rickman's and beyond it,
shining away into the distance, so he saw it now, flinging out a
broad, flaming, unmistakable path that could by no possibility lead
back there. He only suffered a certain limited and unimportant part of
him to be made into a machine.

Meanwhile it was perhaps in the divine mercy that the workings of
this machine were hidden from Isaac. He hadn't even found out that the
secret spring was not in the brain but the heart of it. He would look
up a little uneasily as Keith pushed through the big swinging doors
and took his seat at the table on the platform, and while he wondered
what Keith was thinking of him, ten to one Keith wasn't thinking of
him at all.

This morning, however, he _was_ thinking of him, as it happened. And
when the old man saw him up there, holding his poor bursting head in
his hands, and said: "'Ead achin' my boy, again? That comes of
studyin' too 'ard!" he thought with a touch of compunction, "What
would he say if he knew I'd gone drunk to bed last night? And if he
knew about Poppy?"

Isaac approached his son gingerly and with a certain fear. The only
thing he had discovered about this admirable machine of his was that
it went better when you left it alone. It had not been going quite so
well lately though, and this morning it seemed decidedly out of order.
He took a seat at the table and busied himself with a catalogue.
Presently he rose and touched the boy gently on the shoulder.

"Come into the office a minute, will you?" he said, with a glance at
the cashier. And Keith, wondering what on earth he wanted with him,
followed into a recess shut on from the shop by a plate-glass and
mahogany screen. Isaac hunted among the papers on his writing-table
for a letter he could not find.

"You remember your old friend, Sir Joseph Harden, don't you?"

"Yes." Keith was in fact devoted to Sir Joseph's memory. He had often
wondered what it was, that mysterious "something" which Sir Joseph
would have done for him, if he had lived, and whether, if he had done
it, it would have made a difference.

"Well, I got a letter from his place in Devonshire this morning.
They've asked me to send them some one down to catalogue his library.
They want an expert, and he must go at once and finish by the
twenty-seventh, or it's no use. Dear me, where is that letter?"

Keith goaded his brain to an agonizing activity. It seemed to him
that some such proposal had been made to him before. But where or when
he couldn't for the life of him remember.

"Pilkington says he told you something about it, last night. I've
heard from him this morning, too."

Pilkington--he remembered now. Dicky had bothered him about a library
last night; and he had wished Dicky at the devil. He beat his brains
till he struck from them an illuminating flash (Lord, how it hurt
too!).

"He didn't say it was the Harden Library."

"It is, though." Isaac's coarse forehead flushed with triumph. "He's
promised me the refusal of it when it comes into the market."

At any other time Keith would have been interested; but his head ached
too much now. Still he was not too far gone to recognize the magnitude
of the affair.

"You'll have to go down and look at it," continued Isaac persuasively,
"and here's the opportunity. You go on their business, and do mine at
the same time, and get well paid for it, too."

"I don't quite like going that way. If the thing's got to be sold why
do they want it catalogued?"

"That's their business, not mine."

"It looks like 'their' mistake, whoever they are. Where's the letter?"

"I've mislaid it. That's not my business either. My business is to
send you off before they find out their mistake. You can catch the
eleven express from Waterloo if you look sharp."

Sharp? Never had he looked less so. Still, with his aching head he
dimly perceived that his Easter was being tampered with.

"And supposing they want me to stay?"

"Stay then. The longer the better."

"I'll go after Easter then. I can't go before. I can't possibly.
It's--it's out of the question."

His brain was clear enough on that point. He had suffered many things
from the brutality of Rickman's; but hitherto its dealings had always
been plain and above-board. It had kept him many an evening working
overtime, it had even exacted an occasional Saturday afternoon; but
it had never before swindled him out of a Bank holiday. The thing was
incredible; it could not be. Rickman's had no rights over his Easter;
whatever happened, that holy festival was indubitably, incontestably
his.

"Don't be afraid. You'll get your holiday, my boy, when you come back.
I'll make it worth your while."

"It isn't money--damn my head! It's so confoundedly inconvenient. You
see, I'd made no end of engagements."

"It's a foolish thing to make engagements so long beforehand. We never
know the day or the hour--"

"I knew both."

"Well, in any case you couldn't be going to any place of amusement on
the Sunday."

Isaac and his conscience had agreed together to assume that young
Keith walked habitually and of his own fancy in the right way.

"Come," he continued, "you're not going to fling up a chance like this
without rhyme or reason."

"I don't know," said Keith, with a queer little one-sided smile, "I'd
fling up a good many chances for a really good rhyme."

As for reason, there were at least two reasons why the present chance
should not lightly be let go. One was the Harden Library. If the
Harden Library was not great, it was almost historic, it contained the
Aldine Plato of 1513, the Neapolitan Horace of 1474, and the _Aurea
Legenda_ of Wynkyn de Worde. The other reason was Dicky Pilkington,
the Vandal into whose hands destiny had delivered it. Upon the Harden
Library Pilkington was about to descend like Alaric on the treasures
of Rome. Rickman's was hand in glove with Pilkington, and since the
young barbarian actually offered them the chance of buying it outright
for an old song, no time was to be lost. It would not do to trust too
long to Dicky's ignorance. At any moment knowledge might enter into
him and corrupt his soul.

No; clearly, he would have to go; he didn't see how he was to get out
of it.

Isaac became uneasy, for the spirit of imprecation sat visibly on his
son's brow. "When I said I'd make it worth your while I meant it."

"I know. It isn't that--"

"Wot is it? Wot is it then? Wot's the matter with you? Wot tomfoolery
are you up to? Is it--" (Isaac's gross forehead flushed, his speech
came thick through his stern lips.) "Is it a woman?"

He had also been young; though he had denied his youth.

The boy's white face quivered with a little wave of heat and pain. He
clasped his forehead with his hands.

"Let me think."

His fingers tightened their hold, as if to grasp thought by holding
the dizzy aching head that contained it. He could think of nothing but
Poppy. He had seen his father's point quite steadily and clearly a
minute ago; but when he thought of Poppy his brain began to turn round
and round again. He gripped his forehead harder still, to stop it.

His thinking drifted into a kind of moody metaphysics instead of
concentrating itself on the matter in hand. "It takes a poet," he said
to himself, "to create a world, and this world would disgrace a Junior
Journalist." Was it, he wondered, the last effort of a cycle of
transcendental decadence, melancholy, sophisticated? Or was it a cruel
young jest flung off in the barbarous spring-time of creative energy?
Either way it chiefly impressed him with its imbecility. He saw
through it. He saw through most things, Himself included. He knew
perfectly well that he had developed this sudden turn for speculative
thought because he was baulked of an appointment with a little variety
actress. That he should see through the little variety actress was not
to be expected. Poppy was in her nature impenetrable, woman being the
ultimate fact, the inexorable necessity of thought. Supposing the
universe to be nothing more than a dance of fortuitous atoms, then
Poppy, herself a fortuitous atom, led the dance; she was the whirligig
centre towards which all things whirled. No wonder that it made him
giddy to think of her.

Suddenly out of its giddiness his brain conceived and instantly
matured a plan. A practical plan. He would catch that eleven-thirty
express all right. He would go down into Devonshire, and stay in
Devonshire till Saturday. If necessary, he would sit up with those
abominable books all Thursday night and Friday night. And on Saturday
he would return. At the worst he would only have to go down again on
Monday. He would have missed the Junior Journalists' dinner, he would
be lucky if he saw the ghost of an idea on this side Whit Sunday, but
he would have torn the heart out of his holiday.

He rose abruptly. "All right. It's a most awful nuisance, as it
happens, but I'll go."

"I'm glad you're willing to oblige me. You'll not regret it."

Isaac was really meditating something very handsome in the way of a
commission. As he looked benignly into his son's face and saw its deep
misery and repugnance, he answered his own question.

"It _is_ a woman."




BOOK II

LUCIA'S WAY




CHAPTER XIV


He wondered how much longer they were going to keep him waiting. His
head still ached, and every nerve was irritable. He began to suspect
the servant of having failed to report his arrival; he thought of
ringing for him and announcing himself a second time. Then he
remembered that he was only the man who had come about the books; he
was there on the Hardens' business, and their time was his time. And
there were worse places to wait in than the library of Court House.

He found himself in a long low room that seemed to him immense. It was
lighted by four deep-set windows, one to the south, one (a smaller
side lattice) to the east, two to the west, and still the corners were
left in gloom. The bookcases that covered the length and height of the
walls were of one blackness with the oak floor and ceiling. The
scattered blues and crimsons of the carpets (repeated in duller tones
in the old morocco bindings), the gilded tracery of the tooling, and
here and there a blood-red lettering-piece, gave an effect as of some
dim rich arabesque flung on to the darkness. At this hour the sunlight
made the most of all it found there; it washed the faded carpet with a
new dye; it licked every jutting angle, every polished surface, every
patch of vellum; it streamed out of the great golden white busts on
their pedestals in the windows, it lay in pale gleams over the eastern
walls till it perished in the marble blackness of the roof and floor,
sucked in as by an upper and nether abyss. This blackness intensified
the glory of the April world outside whose luminous greens and blues
were held like blazonry in the leaded lozenge panes. The two western
windows thrown open looked over the valley to the hills; Castle Hill
with its black battlement of pines, and round-topped Core; to Harmouth
Gap, the great doorway of the west wind, and the straight brown flank
of Muttersmoor, stretching to the sea. He seated himself by one of
these open lattices, looked at the view, one of the loveliest in south
Devon, and thought of Miss Poppy Grace. The vision of her that had
still attended him on his journey down faded as if rebuked by the
great tranquil presence of the hills. He was left supremely, magically
alone.

Now it may have been prescience, it may have been merely the
deplorable state of his nerves, but, as he continued to look out upon
that unfamiliar landscape, the beauty of it, in growing on him, became
almost intolerable. It affected him with an indescribable uneasiness,
a yearning, a foreboding, a terror. He gave a deep sigh and turned his
back on it abruptly.

He picked up a book that lay on the window seat; it was the _History
of Harmouth_, and the history of Harmouth was the history of the
Hardens of Court House. Court House was older than Harmouth and the
Hardens were older than Court House. In early Tudor times, the
chronicler informed him, the house was the court of justice for east
Devon. Under Elizabeth it and the land for miles around it passed to
the Hardens as a reward for their services to the Crown. The first
thing they did was to pull down the gibbet on the north side and build
their kitchen offices there. Next they threw out a short gable-ended
wing to the east, and another to the west, enclosing a pleasant
courtyard on the south. The west wing was now thrown into one with the
long room that held the Harden Library.

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

     16 INVICTUS 20;

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

To a vision thus inflamed book-collecting was simply a quaint
hereditary freak, and scholarship a distinction wholly superfluous in
a race that owned half the parish, and had its arms blazoned on the
east windows of a church and the sign-board of a public-house. And
with the last generation the hereditary passion had apparently
exhausted itself. "The present owner, Sir Frederick Harden," said the
chronicler, "has made no addition to the library of his ancestors."
What he had done was not recorded in the history of the Hardens. It
was silent also as to the ladies of that house, beyond drawing
attention to the curious fact that no woman had ever been permitted to
inherit the Harden Library. The inspired pen of the chronicler evoked
the long procession of those Hardens whose motto was _Invictus_;
crossed-legged crusading Hardens, Hardens in trunk hose, Hardens in
ruff and doublet, in ruffles and periwig; Hardens in powder and
patches, in the loosest of stocks and the tightest of trousers; and
never a petticoat among them all. It was just as well, Rickman
reflected, that Poppy's frivolous little phantom had not danced after
him into the Harden library; those other phantoms might not have
received it very kindly, unless indeed Sir Thomas, the maker of
madrigals, had spared it a shadowy smile.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You have been very prompt."

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

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

Most certainly Mr. Rickman understood.

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

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

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

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

"You are Mr. Rickman then?"

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

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

"Have you been waiting long?"

"Not more than half an hour or so."

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

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

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

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

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

"Quite so."

She continued with the same swiftness and serenity, mistress of his
time and intelligence, as of her own luminous and elaborate plan.
"Their size will have to be given, the edition, the place and date of
publication, the number of their shelf, and their place on the
shelves."

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

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

He wondered more and more, and ended by wondering whether Dicky
Pilkington were really so sure of his game?

"I see. You want a catalogue _raisonné_."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Are you a quick worker?"

"Yes, I can be pretty quick."

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

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

"There are fifteen thousand."

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

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

"Couldn't I go on with it in your absence?"

"No, that would hardly do."

"If you could only give me another week--"

"I couldn't possibly. I have to join my father at Cannes on the
twenty-seventh."

So she was Sir Frederick Harden's daughter then, not his wife. Her
last words were illuminating; they suggested the programme of a family
whose affairs were in liquidation. They also revealed Sir Frederick
Harden's amazing indifference to the fate of the library, an
indifference that argued a certain ignorance of its commercial value.
His father who had a scent keen as a hound's for business had taken in
the situation. And Dicky, you might trust Dicky to be sure of his
game. But if this were so, why should the Hardens engage in such a
leisurely and expensive undertaking as a catalogue _raisonné_? Was the
gay Sir Frederick trying to throw dust in the eyes of his creditors?

"I see," he said, "Sir Frederick Harden is anxious to have the
catalogue finished before you leave?"

"No, he isn't anxious about it at all. He doesn't know it's being
done. It is entirely my affair."

So Sir Frederick's affairs and his daughter's were separate and
distinct; and apparently neither knew what the other was about.
Rickman's conscience reproached him for the rather low cunning which
had prompted him to force her hand. It also suggested that he ought
not to take advantage of her ignorance. Miss Harden was charming, but
evidently she was a little rash.

"If I may make the suggestion, it might perhaps be wiser to wait till
your return."

"If it isn't done before I go," said Miss Harden, "it may never be
done at all."

"And you are very anxious that it should be done?"

"Yes, I am. But if you can't do it, you had better say so at once."

"That would not be strictly true. I could do it, if I worked at it
pretty nearly all day and half the night. Say sixteen hours out of the
twenty-four."

"You are thinking of one person's work?"

"Yes."

"But if there are two persons?"

"Then, of course, it would take eight hours."

"So, if _I_ worked, too--"

"In that case," he replied imperturbably, "it would take twelve
hours."

"You said eight just now."

"Assuming that the two persons worked equally hard."

She crossed to a table in the middle of the room, it was littered with
papers. She brought and showed him some sheets covered with delicate
handwriting; her work, poor lady.

"This is a rough catalogue as far as I've got. I think it will be some
help."

"Very great help," he murmured, stung by an indescribable compunction.
He had not reckoned on this complication; and it made the ambiguity of
his position detestable. It was bad enough to come sneaking into her
house as his father's agent and spy, and be doing his business all the
while that this adorably innocent lady believed him to be exclusively
engaged on hers. But that she should work with him, toiling at a
catalogue which would eventually be Rickman's catalogue, there was
something in the notion extremely repulsive to his sense of honour.
Under its muffling of headache his mind wrestled feebly with the
situation. He wished he had not got drunk last night so that he could
see the thing clearly all round. As far as he could see at present the
only decent course was to back out of it.

"What I have done covers the first five sections up to F."

"I see," he said with a faint interest, "you are keeping the classical
and modern sections distinct."

"Yes, I thought that was better."

"Much better."

"I haven't begun the classical section yet. Can I leave that to you?"

"Certainly." He felt that every assent was committing him to he knew
not what.

"You see a great deal of the work is done already. That makes a
difference, doesn't it?"

"Oh, yes; it makes all the difference." And indeed it did.

"In this case you can undertake it?"

"No. I think that in this case I couldn't undertake it at all."

"But--why not?" she asked, as well she might.

Why not, indeed? He walked two or three paces from her, trying to
think it out. If only his head didn't ache so abominably! To refuse to
share the work with her was of course to lay himself open to a most
disgusting suspicion.

He paced back again. Did she suspect him of mercenary motives? No; she
suspected nothing. Her face expressed disappointment and bewilderment,
so far as she allowed it to express anything. One more turn. Thank
Goodness, she was not looking at him; she was giving him time. Only a
second, though. She had seated herself, as much as to say she was now
waiting for an explanation. He mustn't keep her waiting; he must say
something, but what on earth was he going to say?

And as he looked at the lady so serenely seated, there rose up before
him a sudden impertinent, incongruous vision of Miss Poppy Grace's
legs. They reminded him that certain affairs of his own imperatively
called him back to town. Happy thought--why not say so?

"I ought to have said that in any case I couldn't undertake it. I
couldn't make time without giving up some very important engagements."

"Could you not have thought of that before you came?"

"I did think of it. I thought I could fit everything in by going up to
town from Saturday to Monday. But if I'm to finish by the
twenty-seventh, even--even with your help, I oughtn't to lose a day,
much less three days."

"I see. You are afraid of not being able to finish?"

He wavered, selecting some form of expression that might shadow forth
what was passing in his mind.

"I'm afraid of making any promises I mightn't be able to keep."

Man's vacillation is Fate's determination, and Miss Harden was as firm
as Fate. He felt that the fine long hands playing with the catalogue
were shaping events for him, while her eyes measured him with their
meditative gaze.

"I must risk that," she said. "I should lose more than three days in
finding a substitute, and I think you will do the work as I want it
done."

"And supposing I can't do it in time?"

"Will you do your best--that's all?"

"Certainly; whatever I do, I shall do my best. And if I fail you--"

Left unfinished, hanging in mid air, the phrase suggested the vague
phantasmal contingencies for which he could find no name.

"I am willing to take the risk."

Her phrase too was satisfying. Its generous amplitude covered him like
a cloak.

"But we haven't arranged anything about terms."

No, they had not. Was it in her adorable simplicity, or in the mere
recklessness of her youth, that she engaged him first and talked about
terms afterwards? Or did she know an honest man when she saw one? He
took his note-book and pencil and made out an estimate with the
rapidity of happy inspiration, a fantastic estimate, incredibly and
ludicrously small.

"Then," said she, "there will be your expenses."

He had not thought of that difficulty; but he soared above it, still
reckless and inspired.

"Expenses? Oh, expenses are included."

She considered the estimate with the prettiest pucker of her
meditative brows.

"I don't understand these things; but--it seems very little."

"Our usual charge."

So swiftly did the wings of his inspiration carry him into the blue
ideal, high above both verbal verity and the gross material fact.

She acquiesced, though with some reluctance. "Well, and when do you
think you can begin?"

"Whenever it's most convenient to you. I shall have to take a look
round first."

"You can do that at once."

By this time he had forgotten that whatever he might have drunk he had
eaten nothing since the dinner of last night. He had ceased to feel
faint and headachy and hungry, having reached that stage of faintness,
headache and hunger when the body sheds its weight and seems to walk
gloriously upon air, to be possessed of supernatural energy. He went
up and down library steps that were ladders, and stood perilously on
the tops of them. He walked round and round the walls, making
calculations, till the library began to swing slowly round too, and a
thin circle of grey mist swung with it. And all the time he was
obscurely aware of a delicate grey-clad figure going to and fro in the
grey mist, or seated intent at the table, doing his work. He felt that
her eyes followed him now and then.

Heroism sustained him for an hour. At the end of the hour his progress
round the room grew slower; and in passing by the table where she sat,
he had to steady himself with one hand. A cold sweat broke on his
forehead. He mopped it furtively. He had every reason to believe that
his appearance was repulsive; and, in the same painful instant in
which this conviction sank into him, she raised her head and he saw
that she was beautiful. The upward look revealed her. It was as if
some veil, soft but obscuring, had dropped from her face. As her eyes
scanned him gently, it occurred to him that she had probably never
before had an opportunity of intimately observing a gentleman
suffering from the remoter effects of intoxication.

"You look tired," she said. "Or are you ill?"

He stood shame-faced before her; for her eyes were more disconcerting
than when they had looked down on him from their height. They were
tranquil now, full of kind thought and innocence and candour. Of
innocence above all, a luminous innocence, a piercing purity. He was
troubled by her presence; but it was not so much her womanhood that
troubled him as the deep mystery of her youth.

He could not look at it as it looked at him; for in looking at it he
remembered last night and many nights before. Somehow it made him see
the things it could not see, his drunkenness, his folly, his passion,
the villainous naked body of his sin. And it was for their work, and
their marks upon him, that she pitied him.

"Have you had anything to _eat_?" said she.

"Oh, yes, thanks," he answered vaguely.

"When?"

"Well--as far as I can remember it was about eight o'clock last
night."

"Oh--how very thoughtless of me. I am so sorry."

"It's my own fault entirely. I wouldn't have mentioned it, except to
account for my stupidity."

She crossed the room with a quick movement of distress and rang the
bell. With horror he perceived her hospitable intention.

She was actually ordering his dinner and his room. He heard every word
of her soft voice; it was saying that he was to have some soup, and
the chicken, and the tart--no, the jelly, and a bottle of burgundy, in
the morning-room. He saw the young footman standing almost on tip-toe,
winged for service, fired with her enthusiasm and her secrecy.

Coming on that sinister and ambiguous errand, how could he sleep under
her roof? How could he eat her chicken, and drink her burgundy, and
sit in her morning-room? And how could he explain that he could not?
Happily she left him to settle the point with the footman.

With surprise and a little concern Lucia Harden learnt that the rather
extraordinary young man, Mr. Savage Keith Rickman, had betaken himself
to an hotel. It appeared, that courteously, but with an earnestness
that admitted of no contradiction, he had declined all hospitality
whatever.




CHAPTER XV


It was Friday morning, and Mr. Rickman lay in bed, outwardly beholding
through the open window the divinity of the sea, inwardly
contemplating the phantoms of the mind. For he judged them to be
phantoms (alcoholic in their origin), his scruples of last night.
Strictly speaking, it was on Wednesday night that he had got drunk;
but he felt as if his intoxication had prolonged itself abnormally, as
if this were the first moment of indubitable sobriety.

And as he lay there, he prepared himself to act the part of the cold,
abstracted, supercilious man of business, the part already too
horribly familiar to him as young Mr. Rickman of Rickman's. He
reflected how nearly he had wrecked his prospects in that character.
He bade himself beware of woman and of drink, the two things most
fatal to stability of judgement. He recalled, painfully, the events of
last evening. He was not quite sure what he had done, or hadn't done;
but he believed he had all but flung up the chance of securing for
Rickman's the great Harden Library. And he had quite a vivid and
disturbing recollection of the face, the person that had inspired him
with that impulse of fantastic folly.

In the candid light of morning this view of his conduct presented
itself as the sane thinking of a regenerated intellect. He realized,
as he had not realized before, how colossal was the opportunity he had
so narrowly let slip. The great Harden Library would come virgin into
the market, undefiled by the touch of commerce, the breath of
publicity. It had been the pure and solitary delight of scholar lovers
who would have been insulted by the suggestion that they should
traffic in its treasures. Everything depended on his keeping its
secret inviolate. Heavens! supposing he had backed out of that
catalogue, and Miss Harden had called in another expert. At this
point he detected in himself a tendency to wander from the matter in
hand. He reminded himself that whatever else he was there for, he was
there to guard the virginal seclusion of the Aldine Plato, the
Neapolitan Horace and the _Aurea Legenda_ of Wynkyn de Worde. He tried
to shut his eyes against his vivid and disturbing vision of the lady
of the library. It suggested that he was allowing that innocent person
to pay fifteen pounds for a catalogue which he had some reason to
believe would be of no earthly use to her. He sat up in bed, and
silenced its suggestions with all the gravity of his official
character. If the young lady insisted on having a catalogue made, he
might as well make it as any one else; in fact, a great deal better.
He tried to make himself believe that he regretted having charged her
fifteen pounds when he might have got fifty. It was more than
unbusiness-like; it was, even for him, an incredibly idiotic thing to
do; he would never have done it if he had not been hopelessly drunk
the night before.

He got out of bed with a certain slow dignity and stepped into his
cold bath solemnly, as into a font of regeneration. And as he bathed
he still rehearsed with brilliance his appointed part. No criticism of
the performance was offered by his actual self as revealed to him in
the looking-glass. It stared at him with an abstracted air,
conspicuous in the helpless pathos of its nakedness. It affected
absorption in the intricate evolutions of the bath. Something in its
manner inspired him with a vague distrust. He noticed that this
morning it soaped itself with a peculiar care, that it displayed more
than usual interest in the trivial details of dress. It rejected an
otherwise irreproachable shirt because of a minute wine stain on the
cuff. It sniffed critically at its coat and trousers, and flung them
to the other end of the room. It arrayed itself finally in a brand-new
suit of grey flannel, altogether inexpressive of his rôle. He could
not but feel that its behaviour compromised the dignity of the
character he had determined to represent. It is not in his best coat
and trousers that the book-dealer sets out on the dusty quest of the
Aldine Plato and the Neapolitan Horace and the _Aurea Legenda_ of
Wynkyn de Worde.

He could no longer conceal the fact that he had dressed himself
elaborately for an interview with Miss Harden. But he endeavoured to
adjust his mind to a new and less disturbing view of the lady. He had
seen her last night through a flush of emotion that obscured her; he
would see her to-day in the pure and imperturbable light of the
morning, and his nerves should not play the devil with him this time.
He would be cool, calm, incorruptibly impersonal, as became Rickman,
the man of business, Rickman of Rickman's.

Unfortunately, though the rôle was rehearsed with ease in the privacy
of his bedroom, it proved impossible to sustain it under Miss Harden's
candid eyes. At the first sight of them he lost all grasp and memory
of his part; he broke down disgracefully, miserably. The sound of her
voice revived his agony of the previous night. True, the flush of
emotion had subsided, but in the fierce intellectual light that
followed, his doubts and scruples showed plainer than ever. They even
acquired a certain logical order and cohesion.

He concealed himself behind the projecting wing of a bookcase and
wrestled with them there. Dispassionately considered, the situation
stood thus. He was possessed of certain knowledge relating to Sir
Frederick Harden's affairs. That was neither bad nor good. He had
allowed Sir Frederick Harden's daughter to engage him in a certain
capacity, knowing perfectly well that she would not have done so had
she herself possessed that knowledge. That was bad--distinctly bad. He
was going to take advantage of that engagement to act in another
capacity, not contemplated by his employer, namely, as valuer of said
employer's property and possibly as the agent for its purchase, well
knowing that such purchase would be effected without reference to its
intrinsic or even to its market value. That was worse.

These were the simple data of his problem. The problem (seen with
excruciating lucidity) stated itself thus. Assuming, first of all,
Miss Harden's ignorance and his own knowledge, what was the correct
attitude of his knowledge to her ignorance? In other words, was it his
business to enlighten her as to the state of her father's finances?

No; it might be somebody else's business, but most decidedly it was
not his. His business, as far as he could see it, was simply to
withdraw as gracefully as possible from a position so difficult to
occupy with any decency.

He must then make another attempt to back out of it. No doubt it would
be an uncommonly awkward thing to do. The lady had already shown a
very pretty little will of her own, and supposing she insisted on
holding him to his bargain? There was that estimate, too; it seemed to
have clinched things, somehow, between him and Miss Harden. He did not
exactly know how to deal with that high-handed innocence, but he would
ask her to allow him to re-consider it.

He approached her with his head tossed up a little more than usual,
his way when he was about to do something disagreeable, to drive a
bargain or to ask a favour.

"Miss Harden, may I speak to you one moment?"

She looked up. Her face and figure were radiant in the light from the
south window.

"What is it?" she asked.

She was busy at one of the bookcases with a note-book and pencil,
cataloguing on an absurd but independent plan of her own. He gave a
rueful glance at her.

"I'm not sure that I ought to have let you engage me last night. I
wonder if I might ask you--"

"To release you from your engagement?"

"You must think I'm behaving very badly."

She did not contradict him; neither did she assent. She held him for
the moment under her long penetrating gaze. Her eyes were not of the
detective sort, quick to penetrate disguises. They were (though she
did not know it) eyes that possessed the power of spiritual seduction,
luring souls to confession. Your falseness might escape them; but if
there was any truth in you, she compelled you to be true.

She compelled Rickman to be impulsive.

"I'd give anything to know what I ought to do."

She did not help him out.

"I can't make up my mind about this work."

"Is it the question of time? I thought we had made that clear? You
didn't undertake to finish by the twenty-seventh."

"The question is whether I should have undertaken it at all."

"It might have been as well to have answered that question first."

"I couldn't answer it. There were so many things--"

"Do you want a longer time in town?"

"I want a longer time here, to think it over, to make up my mind
whether I can go on--"

"And in the meanwhile?"

"The work goes on just the same."

"And if you decide that you can't continue it?"

"I should find a substitute."

"The substitute might not be just the same. For instance, he might not
have so scrupulous a conscience."

"You mean he might not be so eager to back out of his engagements."

"I mean what I said. Your position seems to be a little difficult."

"I wish to goodness, Miss Harden, I could explain it."

"I don't suggest that you should explain it. It doesn't seem to be so
very clear to yourself."

"It isn't. I really _don't_ know what I ought to do."

"No more do I. But I can tell you what you ought to have done. You
ought to have made up your mind last night."

"Well, the fact is--last night--I hadn't very much mind left to make
up."

"No, I remember. You _were_ rather done up. I don't want to bind you
by last night, if it's at all unfair to you."

"It isn't in the least unfair to me. But I'm not sure that it mightn't
be very unfair to you; and, you see, I want to think it out."

"Very well, think it out, and let me know some time to-night. Will
that satisfy you?"

"It ought to."

And for the moment it did satisfy him. He felt that conscience, that
stern guardian of his conduct, was off duty for the day. He was free
(for the day) to abandon himself to the charm of Miss Harden's
society. The experience, he told himself, would be altogether new and
delightful.

New it undoubtedly was; but he remained a little uncertain as to the
delight; the immediate effect of Miss Harden's presence being an
intellectual disturbance amounting almost to aberration. It showed
itself, first of all, in a frightful exaltation of the consciousness
of self. To Mr. Rickman, striving to be noiseless, it seemed that the
sound of his boots, as he crossed the library, reverberated through
the immensity of space, while the creaking of his new braces
advertised in the most horrible manner his rising up and his sitting
down. Things were worse when he sat down; for then his breathing,
light but noticeably frequent, made him the unquiet centre of the
room. In the surrounding stillness the blowing of his nose became a
monstrous and appalling act. And no sooner was his attention
abstracted from his nose than it settled in his throat, producing a
series of spasmodic contractions which he imagined to be distinctly
audible. It was really as if his body had somehow detached itself, and
was rioting in a conspicuous and unseemly individuality of its own. He
wondered what Miss Harden thought of its behaviour.

This state of things was bad enough when he was separated from her by
the entire length of the room; but their work required a certain
collaboration, and there were occasions when he was established near
her, when deliberately, in cold blood and of his own initiative, he
was compelled to speak to her. No language could describe the anguish
and difficulty of these approaches. His way was beset by obstacles and
perils, by traps and snares; and at every turn there waited for him
the shameful pitfall of the aitch. He whose easy courtesy charmed away
the shyness of Miss Flossie Walker, whose conversation (when he
deigned to converse) was the wonder and delight of the ladies of his
boarding-house, now blushed to hear himself speak. The tones of his
voice were hateful to him; he detected in them some subtle and
abominable quality that he had not observed before. How would they
appeal to Miss Harden? For this miserable consciousness of himself was
pervaded, transcended by his consciousness of her.

Of her beauty he grew every minute more aware. It was not of the
conspicuous and conquering kind; it carried no flaming banner of
triumphant sex; indeed, it demanded a kindred fineness of perception
to discern it, being yet vague with the softness of her youth. Her
hair was mere darkness without colour or flame, her face mere
whiteness without a flush; all her colour and her light were, where
her soul was, in her mouth and eyes. These showed more vivid for that
toneless setting; they dominated her face. However he looked at her
his gaze was led up to them. For the long dim lines of her body flowed
upwards from her feet like the curves of a slender flame, mingling,
aspiring, vanishing; the edges of her features were indistinct as the
edges of a flame. This effect of an upward sweep was repeated in the
tilt of her vivid mouth and emphasised by the arch of her eyebrows,
giving a faintly interrogative expression to her face. All this he
noticed. He noticed everything about her, from the fine curling
flame-like edges of her mouth and the flawless rim of her ears, to her
finger-tips and the slope of her small imperious feet. He caught every
inflection of her voice; without looking at her, he was aware of every
turn of her head, every movement of her eyelids; he watched with
furtive interest her way of touching and handling things, of rising
and sitting, of walking and being still. It was a new way, unlike
Poppy's way, or Flossie's way, or the way of any woman he had yet
seen. What struck him most was the intense quiet of her presence; it
was this that made his own so noisy and obtrusive.

And yet, she didn't, she really didn't appear to notice it. She might
have been unaware that there was any such person as Mr. Savage Keith
Rickman in the room. He wondered how on earth she achieved that serene
unconsciousness; he came to the conclusion that it was not her own
achievement at all, but the achievement of her race. Theirs too that
something subtly imperious in her bearing, which seemed not so much
the attitude of her mind as the way her head was set on her shoulders.
He could not say that she betrayed any sense of his social
inferiority, unless it were in a certain courtesy which he gathered to
be rather more finished than any she would have shown to a man of her
own class.

It was not only finished, it was final. The thing was so perfect in
itself that obviously it could lead no further. She would say in her
exquisite voice, "Would you mind taking these five volumes back to
your shelf?" or, "I'm sorry to interrupt you, but can you tell me
whether this is the original binding?" Under no circumstances could he
imagine himself replying, "I wouldn't mind taking fifty volumes," or
"I like being interrupted." All this was a complete inversion of the
rules that Keith Rickman was acquainted with as governing polite
intercourse between the sexes, and he found it extremely
disconcerting. It was as if some fine but untransparent veil had been
hung between him and her, dividing them more effectually than a
barricade.

The wonder, which grew with the morning, was not so much in the things
she said as in the things she didn't say. Her powers of reservation
seemed to Rickman little short of miraculous. Until yesterday he had
never met a woman who did not, by some look or tone or movement of her
body, reveal what she was thinking about him. Whatever Miss Harden
thought about him she kept it to herself. Unfortunately the same high
degree of reticence was expected from him, and to Keith Rickman, when
not restrained by excess of shyness, reticence came hard. It was apt
to break down when a severe strain was put on it, as had been the case
that morning. And it was appointed that the same thing should happen
to him this afternoon.

As far as he could remember it happened in this way. He was busy
getting the Greek dramatists into their places, an enterprise which
frequently took him to her end of the room where Sir Joseph had
established his classical library. He was sitting on the top of the
steps, when she approached him carrying six vellum bound volumes in
her arms, Sir Joseph's edition of Euripides of which the notes
exceeded the text. He dismounted and took the books from her, turning
very red as he did so.

"You should let me do all the carrying. These books are too heavy for
you."

"Thank you, I think they ought to go with the others, on this shelf."

He did not answer all at once. He was absorbed in the Euripides. It
was an _édition de luxe_, the Greek text exquisitely printed from a
fount of semi-uncial type, the special glory of the Harden Classics.

He exclaimed, "What magnificent type!"

She smiled.

"It's rare too. I've never seen any other specimen--in modern
printing."

"There is no other specimen," said she.

"Yes, there is. One book at least, printed, I think, in Germany."

"Is there? It was set up from a new fount specially made for this
edition. I always supposed my grandfather invented it."

"Oh no, he couldn't have done that. He may have adapted it. In fact,
he must have adapted it."

This young man had set aside a cherished tradition, as lightly as if
he were blowing the dust off the leaves. She was interested.

"How can you tell that?"

"Oh, I know. It's very like a manuscript in the British Museum."

"What manuscript?"

"The Greek text of the Complutensian Polyglot." (He could not help
saying to himself, 'That ought to fetch her!') "But it doesn't follow
that it's the same type. Whatever it is, it's very beautiful."

"It's easier to read, too, than the ordinary kind."

He was still turning over the pages, handling the book as a lover
handles the thing he loves. The very touch of the vellum thrilled him
with an almost sensual rapture. Here and there a line flashed from a
chorus and lured him deeper into the text. His impulse was still to
exclaim, but a finer instinct taught him to suppress his scholarly
emotion. Looking up as she spoke he saw her eyes fixed on him with a
curious sympathy. And as he thought of the possible destiny of the
Euripides he felt guilty as of a treachery towards her in loving the
same book.

"Do you read Euripides?" he asked with naïve wonder.

"Yes."

"And Æschylus and Sophocles and Aristoph--?" Mr. Rickman became
embarrassed as he recalled certain curious passages, and in his
embarrassment he rushed upon his doom--"and--and 'Omer?"

It was a breakdown unparalleled in his history. Never since his
childhood had he neglected the aspirate in Homer. A flush made
manifest his agony. He frowned, and gazed at her steadily, as if he
defied her to judge him by that lapse.

"Yes," said the lady; but she was not thinking of Homer.

"By Jove," he murmured pensively. His eyes turned from her and
devoured the text. He was torn between abject admiration of the lady
and of the book.

"Which do you like best?" he asked suddenly. Æschylus or Sophocles?
But it's an absurd question."

"Why absurd?"

"Because they're so different."

"Are they?" To tell the truth she was not thinking of them any more
than she had been thinking of Homer.

He became perfectly hectic with excitement. "Rather! Can't you see the
difference? Sophocles carved his tragedies. He carved them in ivory,
polished them up, back and front, till you can't see the marks of the
chisel. And Æschylus jabbed his out of the naked granite where it
stood, and left them there with the sea at their feet, and the mist
round their heads, and the fire at their hearts."

"But--but he left the edges a little rough."

"He did. God leaves them so sometimes when he's making a big thing."

Something like a faint ripple of light passed over her face under the
obscuring veil it wore for him.

"But Sophocles is perfect," said she. She was not thinking of
Sophocles one bit; she was thinking that when God made Mr. Rickman he
had left the edges rough, and wondering whether it was possible that
he had made "a big thing."

"Oh yes, he's perfect." He began to quote softly and fluently, to her
uttermost surprise. His English was at times a thing to shudder at,
but his Greek was irreproachable, perfect in its modulation and its
flow. Freed from all flaws of accent, the musical quality of his voice
declared itself indubitably, marvellously pure.

The veil lifted. Her smile was a flash of intelligence, the sexless,
impersonal intelligence of the scholar. This maker of catalogues, with
the tripping tongue that Greek made golden, he had touched the
electric chain that linked them under the deep, under the social gulf.

"Did you ever hear such a chorus? Pure liquid gold, every line of it.
Still, you can read Sophocles with your hair on. I should have thought
most worn--most ladies would like Euripides best?"

"Why? Because they understand him best?"

"No. Because he understood them best."

"Did he understand them? Euripides," said the young lady with
decision, "was a decadent."

"Was he? How about the _Bacchæ_? Of course, it's worth all the rest of
his plays put together; they're not in the same street with it. It's a
thing to dream about, to go mad about."

"My grandfather says it's not Euripidean." "Good Lord! How do we know
it isn't the most Euripidean of the lot?"

"Well, it stands alone, doesn't it?"

"Yes. And he stands with it."

"Does he? My grandfather was judging him by his average."

"His average? Oh, I say, you know, you could reduce some very great
poets to mediocrity by striking their average. Wouldn't you allow a
man to be at least as great as his greatest achievement?"

"I wonder--"

"Anyhow, those are ripping good notes in that edition."

"They ought to be. They were by a good scholar--his greatest
achievement."

He put down the Harden Euripides; and it struck Lucia that if Sir
Joseph had been there this truthful young man would not have hesitated
to put him down too. She laid her hand on the book with an air of
possession and protection, which was a lesson in tact for the truthful
young man. He leaned up against the bookcase with his hands in his
pockets.

"I say," said he, "I hope you don't mind my talking like this to you?"

"No. Why shouldn't you?"

"Well, it isn't exactly what I'm here for."

That exciting conversation had lasted barely fifteen minutes; but it
had set him for the time being at his ease. He had at any rate proved
himself a scholar, and he was so far happier. He felt that he was
beginning to get on with Miss Harden, to see a little way across the
gulf, discerning the outlines of the further shore where that high
lady walked unveiled.

Then suddenly, owing to a most humiliating incident, the gulf yawned
again.

It was five o'clock, and he was left alone in the company of a
fascinating little tea-table, laid, as if for a guest, with fine white
linen, silk embroidered, with early Georgian silver and old china. It
was laid for him, that little tea-table. He had delayed a little
before beginning his repast, and it happened that when Miss Harden
appeared again she found him holding a tea-cup to his lips with one
hand, while the other groped in a dish of cream cakes, abstractedly,
and without the guidance of a selective eye. Both eyes indeed were
gazing dreamily over the rim of the tea-cup at her empty chair. He was
all right; so why, oh why did he turn brick-red and dash his cup down
and draw back his innocent hand? That was what he had seen the errand
boy at Rickman's do, when he caught him eating lunch in a dark
passage. He always had compassion on that poor pariah and left him to
finish his meal in privacy; and with the same delicacy Miss Harden,
perceiving his agony, withdrew. He was aware that the incident had
marked him.

He stood exactly where he stood before. Expert knowledge was nothing.
Mere conversational dexterity was nothing. He could talk to her about
Euripides and Sophocles till all was blue; he could not blow his nose
before her, or eat and drink before her, like a gentleman, without
shame and fear.

They talked no more that evening.




CHAPTER XVI


At seven he again refused Miss Harden's hospitality and withdrew to
his hotel. He was to return before nine to let her know his decision,
and as yet he had done nothing towards thinking it out.

A letter had come for him by the evening post. It had been forwarded
from his rooms and ran thus.

     "My dear Rickets:

     "I haven't forgotten about your little supper, so mind you turn
     up at our little pic-nic before Dicky drinks all the champagne.
     It's going to be awfully select.

     "Ever your own and nobody else's,

     "Poppy Grace.

     "P.S.--How is your poor head?"

There are many ways of being kind and that was Poppy's way. She wanted
to tell him not to be cut up about Wednesday night; that, whatever
Dicky Pilkington thought of his pretensions, she still reckoned him in
the number of the awfully select. And lest he should have deeper
grounds for uneasiness her postscript hinted in the most delicate
manner possible that she had not taken him seriously, attributing his
utterances to their true cause. And yet she was his own and nobody
else's. She was a good sort, Poppy, taking her all round.

He tried to think about Poppy and found it difficult. His mind
wandered; not into the realms of fancy, but into paths strange and
humiliating for a scholar and a poet. He caught himself murmuring,
"Harmouth--Harcombe--Homer--Harden." He had got them all right. He
never dreamed of--of dropping them when he wasn't excited. It was
only in the beaten tracks where his father had gone before him that he
was apt to slide. He was triumphant over Harmouth where he might have
tripped over Hammersmith. Homer and Hesiod were as safe with him as
with Horace Jewdwine. (He couldn't think how he had managed to come to
grief over Homer just now. It was nerves, or luck, or pure accident,
the sort of thing that might have happened to anybody.) Thank Heaven,
his tongue was almost virgin to the aitch in Harden.

Harden--Lucia Harden. He knew her name and how to pronounce it; for he
had seen it written in the fly-leaf of a book, and heard it spoken by
the footman who called her Miss Loocher. This he took to be a
corruption of the Italian form.

Here he again tried to evoke a vivid image of Poppy; but without
success. And then he remembered that he had still to think it out.

First of all, then, he would eliminate sentiment. Sentiment apart, he
was by no means sure that he would do well to act on the impulse of
the morning and decamp. After all, what _was_ he sure of? Was he sure
that Sir Frederick Harden's affairs, including his library, were
involved beyond redemption? Put it that there was an off-chance of Sir
Frederick's financial recovery.

From the bare, uninteresting, financial point of view that event would
entail some regrettable consequences for himself. He had been
extremely rash. He had undertaken to accomplish three weeks' expert
work to the value of fifty pounds for which he had charged fifteen, an
estimate that at Rickman's would have been considered ridiculous for a
man's bare time. He had not so much as mentioned his fare; he had
refused board and lodging; and on the most sanguine computation his
fees would only cover his expenses by about five pounds. The
difference between fifteen pounds and fifty would have to be refunded
out of his own private pocket. When it came to settling accounts with
Rickman's his position would be, to say the least of it, embarrassing.
It was difficult to unravel the mental process that had led him into
it; but it was not the first time that these luxurious subtleties of
conscience had caused him to run short of ready money. It was only
another of those innumerable occasions when he and his father failed
to see face to face, and when he had had to pay for the pleasure of
supporting a fantastic personal view. Only the view in this case was
so hideously complicated and--and exaggerated. And this time in order
to clear himself he would be compelled to borrow again from Dicky
Pilkington. There was no other way. No sooner did Sir Frederick's head
appear rising above water than he saw his own hopelessly submerged.

Nevertheless it was this prospect that he found himself contemplating
with all the ardour of desire. It justified not only his presence in
the Harden Library, but Miss Harden's presence as his collaborator.
With all its unpleasantness it was infinitely preferable to the other
alternative. He let his mind dwell on it until the off-chance began to
look like an absolute certainty.

Put it then that Sir Frederick recovered. In this case the Hardens
scored. Since he had charged Miss Harden fifteen where he was entitled
to fifty, the best part of his labour might be considered a free gift
to the lady. What was more, in the matter of commission, he stood to
lose a very considerable sum. Put it that the chances were even, and
the whole business resolved itself into a game of pitch and toss.
Heads, Miss Harden lost; tails, she won; and he wasn't responsible for
the tossing.

But put it that Sir Frederick did not recover. Then he, Keith Rickman,
was in a position most unpleasant for himself; but he could not make
things a bit pleasanter for Miss Harden by wriggling out of it. The
library would be sold whether he stayed there or not; and by staying
he might possibly protect her interests in the sale. It wasn't a nice
thing to have to be keeping his eye all the time on the Aldine Plato
and the Neapolitan Horace and the _Aurea Legenda_ of Wynkyn de Worde;
but he would only be doing what must be done by somebody in any case.
Conclusion; however unpleasant for him to be the agent for the sale,
it would be safer for Miss Harden.

And how about those confounded profits, represented by his commission?
That was easily settled. He would have nothing to do with the filthy
things. He wouldn't touch his commission with the end of the poker.
Unfortunately he would never be able to explain all this to her, and
Heaven only knew what she would think of him when it all came out in
the long-run, as it was bound to come. Well, it wouldn't matter what
she thought of him so long as he knew that his hands were clean.
Rickman's' hands might not be so presentable, but they were not human
hands as his were; they were the iron, irresponsible hands of a
machine.

There remained his arrangements for the Bank holiday. They seemed to
have been made so long ago that they hardly counted. Still, there was
that engagement to Poppy Grace, and he had promised to take poor
Flossie to the Hippodrome. Poor Flossie would be disappointed if he
did not take her to the Hippodrome. At the moment Flossie's
disappointment presented itself as considerably more vital than his
own.