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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes. There's the house, and her mother's money. Freddy couldn't get
at that. When it's all settled up she can't be so badly off, I fancy.
Still it's a beastly back-hander in the face, poor girl. By Jove, she
does stand up to it in form, too. Too d----d well bred to let you know
she's hit. You wouldn't think she'd be plucky, to look at her, would
you? It's queer how the breeding comes out in a woman."

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

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

"_I_ can't tell you."

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

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

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

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

Rickman left the table. If he had disliked Dicky when he was callous,
he loathed him when he was kind.

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

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

"Look," said Dicky, "at the Power it gives you. Now all you writing
chaps, you know, you're not in it, you're not in it at all. You're
simply 'opping and dodging round the outside--you 'aven't a chance of
really seeing the show. Whereas--look at _me_. I go and take my seat
plump down in the middle of the stage box. I've got my ear to the
heart of 'Umanity and my 'and on its pulse. I've got a grip of
realities. You say you want to por-tray life. Very well, por-tray it.
When all's said and done you've only got a picture. And wot's a
picture, if it's ever so lifelike? You 'aven't got a bit nearer to the
real thing. I tell you, you aren't in it with me. I'd have been a
writer myself if I'd thought it was good enough. I began that way; but
as to going back to it, you might just as well expect me to go back to
kissing a woman's photo when I can put my arm round her waist."

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

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

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

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

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

"H'm. Well, I will say the wind is not exactly tempered to that shorn
lamb. But it's an ill wind that blows nobody any good. Queer how
things are mixed up in this world. You wouldn't think there was much
connexion between Miss Harden and Miss Poppy Grace, would you? Well,
wot's Loocher's loss is Popsie's gain; if that's any consolation."

"I certainly don't see the connexion."

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

Dicky's voice came slightly muffled from the depths of his long
tumbler.

Rickman turned round. "What did you say about Bacchus?" He had turned
in anger, but at the spectacle presented by Pilkington he laughed
aloud in the insolence of his youth.

"Shut that window, can't you? I say, if you can get at any of the
papers and give them the tip--"

"Well?" Rickman's hand closed fiercely over the top of a soda-water
syphon. Pilkington followed the movement with an innocent, but by no
means unobservant eye.

Only the other day they had been rivals for the favour of Miss Poppy
Grace, which seemed to be very evenly divided between them. If Rickman
had her heart, he--Pilkington--held her by the power of the purse.
Jealous he might be, but jealousy counted for little in the great mind
of Pilkington. Human passions were the stuff he worked in. Where they
raged highest it was his to ride on the whirlwind and direct the
storm. If in Poppy's case they raged too high, his position as
creditor gave him a tight grip of young Rickman. On the other hand,
Rickman was now a full-fledged Junior Journalist, and Pilkington, amid
the wreck of morals and the crash of creeds, had preserved a simple
childlike faith in the omnipotence of the press. So, if it was madness
for Rickman to irritate Pilkington, it was not altogether expedient
for Pilkington to irritate him.

"Look here, Razors," said he, "you needn't go shying any syphons
about. There's nothing behind this show but business. What I do for
Miss Grace I do for cold cash. See? Of course, I take an interest in
the girl--"

"Interest at something like a hundred and fifty per cent., I suppose?"

"That's about the figure--With your permission, I'll remove that
fizz-gig out of your way--What do you think of it--my idea, I mean?"

"I think there's a d----d lot more interest than principle in it."

"You young goat! I'm out of it. Honour bright. So if you feel inclined
to slog away and boom the lady, there's no reason why you shouldn't."

"Is there any reason why I should?" inquired Rickman with treacherous
severity. So immense was his calm that Dicky was taken in by it and
blundered.

"Well, yes," said he, "in that case, we might consider our little
account settled."

"Our little account, Dicky, will be run up on the wrong side of the
paper if you don't take care."

"Wot d'you mean?"

"I mean that when you've got a particularly filthy job on hand, it's
as well to keep away from people who are not fond of dirt. At any
rate, I advise you not to come too near me."

Dicky for the first time that evening looked uncomfortable. It
occurred to Dicky that whisky and soda was not the very best drink to
talk business on.

"I've noticed, Rickman," said he, "that since you've been living down
in the country, you don't seem able to understand a joke."

But Rickman had got his legs on the other side of the window ledge,
and as Dicky approached him he slid down on to the esplanade and
slipped into the night.




CHAPTER XXXIII


Hardly knowing how he got there he found himself on the top of
Harcombe Hill. His head was bare and the soles of his thin slippers
were cut with the flints of the hillside lane. He had walked, walked,
walked, driven by a fury in his body and a fever in his feet.

His first idea had been to get as far away as possible from his
companion. He felt that he never could be clean again after his
contact with Dicky. How had the thing happened? Yesterday London
seemed as far away from Harmouth as Babylon from Arcadia, and Rickman
was not more infinitely removed from Lucia than Lucia was from Poppy;
yet here they were, all three tangled together in Dicky's complicated
draw-net. He held them all, Lucia by her honour, Poppy by her vanity,
and him, Rickman, by the lusts and follies of his youth. This was what
it had led him to, that superb triumphal progress of the passions. In
language as plain as he could put it, he--he--had been offered a bribe
to advertise Poppy Grace for the benefit of Dicky, who kept her. To
advertise a little painted--he disposed of poor Poppy in a powerful
word which would have given her propriety a fit if it could have heard
him. That he himself should ever have been infatuated with Poppy
seemed to him now incredible, monstrous. In the last three weeks he
had not only grown sober, but mature. That youth of his which once
seemed immortal, had then ceased to be a part of him. He had cut
himself loose from it and put it behind him with all its miseries and
tumults and pollutions. But he couldn't get rid of it. Like an unclean
spirit cast out of him it seemed to have entered into Dicky as into a
convenient herd of swine. And in Dicky's detestable person it rose up
against him and pursued him. For Dicky, though sensual as any swine,
was cautious. Dicky, even with an unclean spirit in him, was not in
the least likely to rush violently down any steep place into the sea
and so perish out of his life.

That Dicky should have appeared on his last night here seemed the
vilest stroke that fate had dealt him yet. But Dicky could not follow
him up Harcombe Hill.

He looked before him. The lights of Harmouth opened out a thin line to
the esplanade, dividing the sea from the land by fire instead of foam;
strewn in the bed of the valley they revealed, as through some pure
and liquid medium, its darkness and its depth. Above them the great
flank of Muttersmoor stretched like the rampart of the night. Night
itself was twilight against that black and tragic line.

And Rickman, standing bareheaded on the hillside, was lifted up out of
his immense misery and unrest. He remembered how this land that he
loved so passionately had once refused him the inspiration that he
sought. And now it seemed to him that it could refuse him nothing,
that Nature under cover of the darkness gave up her inmost ultimate
secret. And if it be true that Nature's innermost ultimate secret is
known only to the pure, it was a sign of his own cleansing, this sense
of comfort and reconciliation, of unspoiled communion, of profound
immeasurable peace. In that moment his genius seemed to have passed
behind veils upon veils of separation, to possess that tender and
tragic beauty, to become one with the soul of the divine illimitable
night.

He was not in the least deceived as to the true source of his
inspiration. In all this, if you went back far enough, his body
counted; his body which he had made a house of shame and hunger and
desire, shaken by its own shivering nerves and leaping desperate
pulses. But what of that now? What matter, since that tumult of his
blood had set throbbing such subtle, such infinite vibrations in his
soul. _That_ was what counted. He could tell by it the quality and
immensity of his passion, by just that spiritual resonance and
response. It was the measure of Lucia's power to move him, the measure
too of his nearness to her no less than of his separation.

She could not take away what she had given; and among his sources of
inspiration, of the unique and unforgettable secret that had passed
into him with the night, on Harcombe Hill, as he looked towards
Muttersmoor, she also counted. She would be always there, a part of
it, a part of him, whether she would or no--if that was any
consolation.




CHAPTER XXXIV


He had made no empty promise when he assured her that he would do his
best; for there was something that could still be done. He built great
hopes on the result of the coming interview with his father. His idea
was to go up to town by the early morning train and talk the whole
thing over as calmly as might be. He would first of all appeal to his
father's better feelings; he would make him see this thing as he saw
it, he would rouse in him the spirit of integrity, the spirit of mercy
and pity, the spirit of justice and chivalry and honour.

But if all the arts of persuasion failed to touch him, Rickman Junior
had in reserve one powerful argument against which Rickman Senior
would hardly be able to contend. There would no doubt be inspirations,
but as to the main lines of his pleading he was already clear. He felt
entirely confident and light-hearted as he rose at five the next
morning to catch that early train.

Rickman Senior was not in the shop when Rickman Junior arrived on the
scene. He was in a great bare room on an upper floor of the
second-hand department. He looked more than ever studious and ascetic,
having exchanged his soft felt hat for a velvet skull-cup, and his
frock coat for a thin alpaca. He was attended by a charwoman with
scrubbing brush and pail, a boy with ladder and broom, and a carpenter
with foot-rule, note-book and pencil. He moved among them with his
most solemn, most visionary air, the air, not so much of a Wesleyan
minister, as of a priest engaged in some high service of dedication.
He was in fact making arrangements for the reception of no less than
fifteen thousand volumes, the collection of the late Sir Joseph
Harden, of Court House, Harmouth. And as he looked around him his face
expressed the smooth and delicately voluptuous satisfaction of the
dreamer who has touched his dream.

This look of beatitude faded perceptibly when the message came that
Mr. Keith was in the front shop and wished to see him. Mr. Keith, it
appeared, had no time to spare. Isaac had, in fact, experienced a
slight shock at the earliness of Keith's return. His first thought was
that at the last moment there had been some serious hitch with
Pilkington. He found Keith sitting before the counter in the attitude
of a rather imperious customer; but the warm pressure of his son's
hand removed this disagreeable effect of superiority. Keith's face
wore signs of worry and agitation that confirmed Isaac's original
fear.

"Well," he said a little anxiously, "I didn't expect you back as early
as this."

"I haven't come to stop. I've got to catch the twelve-thirty back
again. I came up because I wanted to talk to you."

"Come," said Isaac, "into the office."

He laid his hand on Keith's shoulder as they went. He felt very kindly
towards him at that moment. His heart was big with trust in the
brilliant, impetuous boy. When he touched Keith's hand he had felt
that intellectual virtue had gone out of it. He guessed that there was
a crisis in the affairs of the House of Rickman, and that Keith had
come with warning and with help. He knew his power of swift and
effectual action in a crisis. Yes, yes; Keith's wits might go
wool-gathering; but he was safe enough when he had gathered his wool.

"Well?" he repeated, lifting grave interrogative eyebrows. He had
seated himself; but Keith remained standing, a sign with him of
extreme perturbation.

"I thought I could explain things better if I saw you," he began.

"Quite so; quite so. I hope you haven't come to tell me there's been
any 'itch."

"Well, I told you as much when I wrote."

"I understood you advised me to withdraw, because you thought
Pilkington wanted a big price."

"I didn't know what he wanted; I knew what we ought to give."

"That was settled by looking in the register. You don't mean to say
_he_'s going to back out of it?"

Keith was so preoccupied that he failed to see the drift of his
father's questioning. "You see," he continued, following his own
thoughts, "it's not as if we had only ourselves to consider. There's
Miss Harden."

"Ah, yes, Pilkington did make some mention of a young lady."

"She was good enough to say she'd rather we bought the library than
anybody. I think we're bound to justify her confidence."

"Certainly, most certainly, we are," said Isaac with solemnity. He was
agreeably flattered by this tribute to the greatness of his house.

"I thought I did right in promising that we would do our very best for
her."

"Of course you were. But that's all settled. Mr. Pilkington knows that
I'm prepared to meet his wishes."

"His wishes?"

"He gave me to understand that he was anxious to have a sum to hand
over to the young lady. In fact, he wrote me a most touching appeal."

"What d----d impertinence! He had no business to appeal!"

"Well, per'aps it wasn't strictly business-like. But I think, under
the circumstances, 'e was morally--_morally_--justified. And I think
he will consider I've responded very handsomely."

"You've made him an offer, then?"

"I made it three days ago, provisionally, and he's accepted it," said
Isaac, with some heat. "Why, he's got the cheque."

"For how much?"

"For twelve hundred."

"My dear father, you know, really, that won't do."

"Do you think it was foolish to pay the two hundred extra?"

Isaac gazed at him over his fine gold-rimmed spectacles; and as he
gazed he kept drawing his beard slowly through one lean and meditative
hand. It was thus that he grasped his son's argument and drew it to a
point.

"Foolish? It was--Don't you see? We--we simply can't do it."

"Why, you said yourself we could go as far as four thousand five, or
four thousand at the very least."

Keith looked steadily at his father, who was too deeply and solemnly
absorbed to perceive the meaning of the look. "That was not quite what
I said. I said--if we were _not_ prepared to go so far, it was our
duty to withdraw. I thought I had made that clear to you."

"You 'aven't made it clear to me why you're objecting to that two
hundred now."

Isaac was beginning to feel that stupidity was now his refuge.

"I'm not objecting to your reckless extravagance, as you seem to
think. I'm trying to suggest that twelve hundred is a ridiculously
small offer for a collection which can't be worth less than four
thousand."

"It may be worth that to a collector. It isn't worth it to me."

"It's worth it to any dealer who knows his business."

"Pretty business, if you have to buy at fancy prices and sell at a
risk."

"I allowed for the risk in the valuation--I always do. There's one
point where you _are_ extravagant, if you like. What's the use of
paying me for advice if you won't take it?"

Isaac's stupidity increased.

"'Ow do you mean--paying you for your advice?"

"Paying a valuer, then, if you won't accept his valuation."

So unwilling was he to admit the sharpness of his father's practice
that he tried to persuade himself that they had merely disagreed on a
point of connoisseurship. "My advice, if you remember, was to withdraw
decently, or pay a decent price."

"I've paid my price, and I'm certainly not going to withdraw."

"Well, but I'm afraid, if you won't withdraw, I must. You haven't paid
_my_ price, and I can't be responsible."

Isaac caressed his beard gently, and looked at Keith with a gaze so
clear that it might have passed for pure. He was saying to himself,
as he had said once before, "There's a woman in it."

"Don't you see," Keith broke out, "the atrocious position that I'm in?
I promised Miss Harden that we'd do our best for her, and now we're
taking advantage of the situation to drive an iniquitous bargain with
her."

As Keith made this powerful statement Isaac smiled, puzzled and
indulgent, as at some play of diverting but incomprehensible humour.
In fact, he never could clearly distinguish between Keith's sense of
humour and his sense of honour; both seemed equally removed from the
safe, intelligible methods of ordinary men. He wasn't sure but what
there was something fine in it, something in keeping with the
intellectual extravagance that distinguished his son from other
people's sons. There were moments when it amused and interested him,
but he did not care to have it obtruded on him in business hours.

"I'm driving no bargain with the lady at all. The books aren't hers,
they're Pilkington's. I'm dealing with him."

"And you refuse to consider her interests?"

"How can you say so when I'm paying two hundred more than I need do,
on her account alone? You must explain that clearly to her."

"Not I. You can explain it yourself. To me, you see, the whole thing's
simply a colossal fraud. I won't have anything to do with it."

"You _'aven't_ anything to do with it. I made the bargain, and I keep
to it."

"Very well, then, you must choose between your bargain and me."

"Wot do you mean, choose between my bargain and you?"

"I mean exactly what I say. I know (if you don't) that that two
hundred ought to be three thousand, and if it isn't paid I shall have
to shunt the business. I never meant to stay in it for ever, but in
this case I shall simply clear out at once, that's all. See?"

"No. I don't see. I don't see myself paying three thousand to a man
who's willing to take two hundred."

"See my point, I mean. If the three thousand isn't paid, I go. On the
other hand, if it is paid, I stay."

This was one of those inspirations on which he had counted, and it
presented itself to him as a "clincher." At the same instant he
realized that he was selling himself into slavery for three thousand
pounds. No, not for three thousand pounds, for his honour's sake and
Lucia Harden's.

Isaac looked graver, alarmed even; it struck him that Keith's peculiar
vein of extravagance was becoming dangerous.

"You can calculate the interest at four per cent., and knock a hundred
and twenty off my salary, if you like; but I'll stay. It's pretty
clear, isn't it? I think, on the whole, it might be as well for you to
close with the offer. It seems to me that if I'm worth anything at
all, I'm worth three thousand."

"I haven't priced your services yet." Isaac's gaze shifted. He was
beginning to feel something of that profound discomfort he had
experienced before in the presence of his son. "Now, when you spoke to
Miss 'Arden, had she any notion of the value of the library?"

"None whatever, till I told her."

"Do you mean to stand there and say that you were fool enough to tell
her?"

"Certainly; I thought it only fair to her."

"And did you think it was fair to me?"

"Why not? If you're not dealing with her what difference could it
make?"

He said to himself, "I've got him there!"

Isaac was indeed staggered by the blow, and lost his admirable
composure.

"Do you know wot you've done? You've compromised me. You've
compromised the honour and the reputation of my 'Ouse. And you've done
it for a woman. You can't 'ide it; you're a perfect fool where women
are concerned."

"If anybody's compromised, I think it's me. I pledged my word."

"And wot business had you to pledge it?"

"Oh, I thought it safe. I didn't think you'd dishonour my draft on
your reputation."

"Draft indeed! That's it. You might just as well 'ave taken my
cheque-book out of the drawer there and forged my signature at the
bottom. Why, it's moral forgery--that's wot it is. I can see it all.
You thought you were acting very generous and grand with this young
lady. I say you were mean. You did it on the cheap. You'd no expense,
or risk, or responsibility at all. I know you can't see it that way,
but that's 'ow it is."

Keith did not defend himself against this view of his conduct, and
Isaac preserved his attitude of moral superiority.

"I'm not blaming you, my boy. It's my own fault. I shouldn't 'ave sent
you out like that, _with_ cart blansh, so to speak, and without it. I
should 'ave given you some responsibility."

"Oh, thanks, I couldn't very well have done with more than I had."

"Ah--you don't know the kind of responsibility I mean. You seem very
ready to play fast and loose with my business. I daresay, now, you
think since you 'aven't much to lose, you 'aven't much to gain?"

"Well, frankly, I can't see that I have--much. But I've got to catch a
train in twenty minutes, and I want to know what you're going to do?
Am I worth three thousand, or am I not?"

"You're worth a great deal more to me. You've got an education I
'aven't got; you've got brains; you've got tact, when you choose to
use it. You've got expert knowledge, and I can't carry on my business
without that. I'm not unreasonable. I can see that you can't act to
advantage if you're not made responsible, if you haven't any direct
interest in the business." He fixed his son with a glance that was
nothing if not spiritually fine. Keith found himself struggling
against an infamous, an intolerable suspicion.

"And that," said Isaac, "is wot I mean to give you. I've thought it
well over, and I believe it's worth my while." He went on, joining his
finger-tips, like a man who fits careful thought to careful thought,
suggesting the final adjustment of a plan long ago determined and
approved, for something in Keith's face made him anxious that this
offer should not appear to be born of the subject under discussion.

"It was always my intention to take you into partnership. I didn't
mean to do it quite so soon, but rather than 'ear this talk of
flinging up the business, I'm prepared to do it now."

"On the same conditions?"

Now that Rickman's should eventually become Rickman and Son was a very
natural development, and in any ordinary circumstances Isaac could
hardly have made a more innocent and suitable proposal. But it was no
longer possible for Keith to ignore its significance. It meant that
his father was ready to buy his services at any price; to bribe him
into silence.

His worst misgivings had never included such a possibility. In fact,
before going down to Devonshire he had never had any serious
misgivings at all. His position in his father's shop had hitherto
presented no difficulties to a sensitive honour. He had not been sure
that his honour was particularly sensitive, not more so, he supposed,
than other people's. Acting as part of the machinery of Rickman's, he
had sometimes made a clever bargain; he had never, so far as he knew,
driven a hard one. He was expected to make clever bargains, to buy
cheap and sell dear, to watch people's faces, lowering the price by
their anxiety to sell, raising it by their eagerness to buy. That was
his stern duty in the second-hand department. But there had been so
many occasions on which he had never done his duty; times when he was
tempted to actual defiance of it, when a wistful calculating look in
the eyes of some seedy scholar would knock all the moral fibre out of
him, and a two and sixpenny book would go for ninepence or a shilling.
And such was his conception of loyalty to Rickman's, that he generally
paid for these excesses out of his own pocket, so that conscience was
satisfied both ways. Therefore there had been no moral element in his
dislike to Rickman's; he had shrunk from it with the half-fantastic
aversion of the mind, not with this sickening hatred of the soul.
After three weeks of Lucia Harden's society, he had perceived how
sordid were the beginnings from which his life had sprung. As his
boyish dreams had been wrought like a broidery of stars on the floor
of the back-shop, so honour, an unattainable ideal, had stood out in
forlorn splendour against a darker and a dirtier background. He had
felt himself obscurely tainted and involved. Now he realized, as he
had never realized before, that the foundations of Rickman's were laid
in bottomless corruption. It was a House built, not only on every vile
and vulgar art known to trade, but on many instances of such a day's
work as this. And it was into this pit of infamy that his father was
blandly inviting him to descend. He had such an abominably clear
vision of it that he writhed and shuddered with shame and disgust; he
could hardly have suffered more if he had gone down into it bodily
himself. He endured in imagination the emotions that his father should
have felt and apparently did not feel.

He came out of his shudderings and writhings unspeakably consoled and
clean; knowing that it is with such nausea and pangs that the soul of
honour is born.

Their eyes met; and it was the elder Rickman's turn for bitterness. It
had come, the moment that he had dreaded. He was afraid to meet his
son's eyes, for he knew that they had judged him. He felt that he
stood revealed in that sudden illumination of the boy's radiant soul.
An instinct of self-preservation now prompted him to belittle Keith's
character. He had found amazing comfort in the reflection that Keith
was not all that he ought to be. As far as Isaac could make out, he
was always running after the women. He was a regular young profligate,
an infidel he was. What right had he to sit in judgement?

Shrewd even in anger, he took refuge in an adroit misconstruction of
Keith's language. "I lay down _no_ conditions. I'm much too anxious
about you. I want to see you in a house of your own, settled down and
married to some good girl who'll keep you steady and respectable. It's
a simple straightforward offer, and you take it or leave it."

"I'll take it on two conditions. First, as I said before, that we
either withdraw or pay over that three thousand. Second, that in the
future no bargains are made without my knowledge--and consent. That
means giving me the entire control of my own department."

"It means reducing me to a mere cypher."

"Such bargains are questions for experts, and should be left to
experts."

"If I were to leave them to experts like you I should be bankrupt in a
fortnight."

"I'm sorry, but you must choose between your methods and mine. There's
ten minutes to do it in."

"It won't take ten minutes to see what will ruin me quickest. As I
told you before, I'm not going back on my bargain."

"Nor I on mine."

Isaac spent three minutes in reflection. He reflected first, that
Keith had been in the past "a young profligate"; secondly, that he was
at the present moment in love; thirdly, that in the future he would
infallibly be hungry. He would think very differently when he had
forgotten the lady; or if he didn't think differently he would behave
differently when his belly pinched him. Isaac was a firm believer in
the persuasive power of the primitive appetites.

"Only seven minutes," murmured Keith. "I'm sorry to hurry you, father,
but I really must catch that train."

"Wait--steady. Do you know wot you're about? You shan't do anything
rash for want of a clear understanding. Mind--as you stand there,
you're nothing but a paid shop-assistant; and if you leave the shop,
you leave it without a penny to your name."

"Quite so. My name will hardly be any the worse for that. You're sure
you've decided? You--really--do not--want--to keep me?"

After all, did he want to keep him, to be unsettled in his conscience
and ruined in his trade? What, after all, had Keith brought into the
business but three alien and terrible spirits, the spirit of
superiority, the spirit of criticism, the spirit of tempestuous youth?
He would be glad to be rid of him, to be rid of those clear young
eyes, of the whole brilliant and insurgent presence. Not that he
believed that it would really go. He had a genial vision of the hour
of Keith's humiliation and return, a vivid image of Keith crawling
back on that empty belly.

At that moment Keith smiled, a smile that had in it all the sweetness
of his youth. It softened his father's mood, though it could not
change it.

"I'm afraid I can't afford to pay your price, my boy."

He was the first to turn away.

And Keith understood too thoroughly to condemn. That was it. His
father couldn't pay his price. The question was, could he afford to
pay it himself?

As the great swinging doors closed behind him, he realized that
whatever price he had paid for it, he had redeemed his soul. And he
had bought his liberty.




CHAPTER XXXV


Really, as Miss Harden's solicitor pointed out to her in the presence
of Miss Palliser, things looked very black against the young man. It
was clear, from the letter Mr. Schofield had received from Mr.
Jewdwine that morning, that the library was worth at least three times
the amount these Rickmans had paid for it. Barring the fact that sale
by private contract was irregular and unsatisfactory, he completely
exonerated Mr. Pilkington from all blame in the matter. His valuation
had evidently been made in all good faith, if in some ignorance. But
the young man, who by Pilkington's account had been acting all along
as his father's agent, must have been perfectly aware of the nature of
the bargain he had made. There was every reason to suppose that he had
known all about the bill of sale before he came down to Harmouth; and
there could be no doubt he had made use of his very exceptional
opportunities to inform himself precisely of the value of the books he
was cataloguing. He must have known that they had been undervalued by
Mr. Pilkington, and seen his chance of buying them for a mere song.

So what does he do? He carefully conceals his knowledge from the
persons most concerned; obviously, that he and his father may keep the
market to themselves. Then at the last moment he comes and pretends to
give Miss Harden a chance of forestalling the purchase, knowing well
that before she can take a single step the purchase will be concluded.
Then he hurries up to town; and the next thing you hear is that he's
very sorry, but arrangements have unfortunately already been made with
Mr. Pilkington. No doubt, as agent of the sale, that young man would
pocket a very substantial commission. Clearly in the face of the
evidence, it was impossible to acquit him of dishonesty; but no
action could be brought against him, because the matter lay entirely
between him and Mr. Pilkington.

Lucia and Kitty had listened attentively to the masterly analysis of
Mr. Rickman's motives; and at the end Kitty admitted that appearances
were certainly against him; while Lucia protested that he was a poet
and therefore constitutionally incapable of the peculiar sort of
cleverness imputed to him. The man of law submitted that because he
was a poet it did not follow that he was not an uncommonly knowing
young man too. Whereupon Kitty pointed out one or two flaws in the
legal argument. In the first place, urged Kitty, the one thing that
this knowing young man did not know was the amount of security the
library represented.

Mr. Schofield smiled in genial forbearance with a lady's ignorance. He
_must_ have known, for such information is always published for the
benefit of all whom it may concern.

But Kitty went on triumphantly. There was nothing to prove it, nothing
to show that this knowing young man knew all the facts when he first
undertook to work for Miss Harden. So far from concealing the facts
later on, he had, to her certain knowledge, written at once to Mr.
Jewdwine advising him to buy in the library, literally over old
Rickman's head. That old Rickman's action had not followed on young
Rickman's visit to town was sufficiently proved by the dates. The
letter to Mr. Pilkington enclosing the cheque for twelve hundred had
been written and posted at least twelve hours before his arrival. What
the evidence did prove was that he had moved heaven and earth to make
his father withdraw from his bargain.

Mr. Schofield coldly replied that the better half of Miss Palliser's
arguments rested on the statements of the young man himself, to which
he was hardly inclined to attach so much importance as she did. If his
main assertion was correct, that he had written to inform Mr. Jewdwine
of the facts, it was a little odd, to say the least of it, that Mr.
Jewdwine made no mention of having received that letter. And that he
had _not_ received it might be fairly inferred from the discrepancy
between young Rickman's exaggerated account of the value and Mr.
Jewdwine's more moderate estimate.

Lucia and Kitty first looked at each other, and then away to opposite
corners of the room. And at that moment Kitty was certain, while Lucia
doubted; for Kitty went by the logic of the evidence and Lucia by the
intuition which was one with her desire. Surely it was more likely
that Rickman had never written to Horace than that Horace should have
failed her, if he knew? Meanwhile the cold legal voice went on to
shatter the last point in Kitty's defence, observing that if Rickman
had not had time to get up to town before his father wrote to Mr.
Pilkington he had had plenty of time to telegraph. He added that the
young man's moral character need not concern them now. Whatever might
be thought of his conduct it was not actionable. And to the legal mind
what was not actionable was irrelevant.

But for Lucia, to whom at the moment material things were unrealities,
the burning question was the honesty or dishonesty of Rickman; for it
involved the loyalty or disloyalty, or rather, the ardour or the
indifference of Horace. If Rickman were cleared of the grosser guilt,
her cousin was, on a certain minor count, condemned; and there could
be no doubt which of the two she was the more anxious to acquit.

"I suppose you'll see him if he calls?" asked Kitty when they were
alone.

"See who?"

"Mr. Savage Keith Rickman." Even in the midst of their misery Kitty
could not forbear a smile.

But for once Lucia was inaccessible to the humour of the name.

"Of course I shall see him," she said gravely.




CHAPTER XXXVI


He called soon after six that evening, coming straight from the
station to the house. Miss Palliser was in the library, but his face
as he entered bore such unmistakable signs of emotion that Kitty in
the kindness of her heart withdrew.

He was alone there, as he had been on that evening of his first
coming. He looked round at the place he had loved so well, and knew
that he was looking at it now for the last time. At his feet the long
shadow from the bust of Sophocles lay dusk upon the dull crimson; the
level light from the west streamed over the bookshelves, lying softly
on brown Russia leather and milk-white vellum, lighting up the
delicate gold of the tooling, glowing in the blood-red splashes of the
lettering pieces; it fell slant-wise on the black chimney piece,
chiselling afresh the Harden motto: _Invictus_. There was nothing
meretricious, nothing flagrantly modern there, as in that place of
books he had just left; its bloom was the bloom of time, the beauty of
a world already passing away. Yet how he had loved it; how he had
given himself up to it; how it had soothed him with its suggestion of
immortal things. And now, for this last time, he felt himself
surrounded by intelligences, influences; above the voices of his
anguish and his shame he heard the stately generations calling; they
approved; they upheld him in his resolution.

He turned and saw Lucia standing beside him. She had come in unheard,
as on that evening which seemed now so long ago.

She held out her hand. Not to have shaken hands with the poor fellow,
would, she felt, have been to condemn him without a hearing.

He did not see the offered hand, nor yet the chair it signed to him
to take. As if he knew that he was on his trial, he stood rigidly
before her. His eyes alone approached her, looking to hers to see if
they condemned him.

Lucia's eyes were strictly non-committal. They, too, seemed to stand
still, to wait, wide and expectant, for his defence. Her attitude was
so far judicial that she was not going to help him by a leading
question. She merely relieved the torture of his visible bodily
constraint by inviting him to sit down. He dropped into a chair that
stood obliquely by the window, and screwed himself round in it so as
to face her.

"I saw my father this morning," he began. "I went up by the early
train."

"I know."

"Then you know by this time that I was a day too late."

"Mr. Pilkington sent me your father's letter."

"What did you think of it?"

The question, so cool, so sudden, so direct, was not what she felt she
had a right to expect from him.

"Well--what did you think of it yourself?"

She looked at him and saw that she had said a cruel thing.

"Can't you imagine what I think of it?"

This again was too sudden; it took her at a disadvantage, compelling
her instantly to commit herself to a theory of innocence or
complicity.

"If you can't," said he, "of course there's no more to be said." He
said it very simply, as if he were not in the least offended, and she
looked at him again.

No. There was no wounded dignity about him, there was the tragic
irremediable misery of a man condemned unheard. And could that be her
doing--Lucia's? She who used to be so kind and just? Never in all her
life had she condemned anybody unheard.

But she had to choose between this man who a month ago was an utter
stranger to her, and Horace who was of her own blood, her own class,
her own life. Did she really want Mr. Rickman to be tainted that
Horace might be clean? And she knew he trusted her; he had made his
appeal to the spirit that had once divined him. He might well say,
"could she not imagine what he thought of it?"

"Yes," she said gently, "I think I can. If you had not told me what
the library was worth, of course I should have thought your father
very generous in giving as much for it as he has done."

"I did tell you I was anxious he--we--should not buy it; because I
knew we couldn't give you a proper price."

"Yes, you told me. And I wanted you to buy it, because I thought you
would do your best for me."

"I know. I know. If it wasn't for that--but that's the horrible part
of it."

"Why? You did your best, did you not?"

"Yes. I really thought it would be all right if I went up and saw him.
I felt certain he would see it as I did--"

"Well?"

He answered with painful hesitation. "Well--he didn't see it. My
father hasn't very much imagination--he couldn't realize the thing in
the same way, because he wasn't in it as I was. He'd seen nobody but
Pilkington, you see."

Something in her face told him that this line of defence was
distasteful to her, that he had no right to make a personal matter of
an abstract question of justice. It was through those personalities
that he had always erred.

"I don't see what that has to do with it," she said.

"He--he thought it was only a question of a bargain between Pilkington
and him."

"What you mean is that he wouldn't admit that I came into it at all?"

She saw that she was putting him to the torture. He could not defend
himself without exposing his father; but she meant that he should
defend himself, that he should if possible stand clear.

"Yes. He hadn't seen you. He wouldn't go back on his bargain, and I
couldn't make him. God knows I tried hard enough!

"Did you think you could do anything by trying?"

"I thought I could do a good deal. I had a hold on him, you see. I
happen to be extremely useful to him in this branch of his business. I
was trained for it; in fact, I'm hopelessly mixed up with it. Well, he
can't do very much without me, and I told him that if he didn't give
up the library I should give him up. It wasn't a nice thing to have to
say to your father--"

"And you said it?" Her face expressed both admiration and a certain
horror.

"Yes. I told him he must choose between me and his bargain."

"That must have been hard."

"He didn't seem to find it so. Anyhow, he hasn't chosen me."

"I meant hard for you to have to say it."

"I assure you it came uncommonly easy at the moment."

"Don't--don't."

"I'm not going to defend him simply because he happens to be my
father. I don't even defend myself."

"You? You didn't know."

"I knew quite enough. I knew he might cheat you without meaning to. I
didn't think he'd do it so soon or so infamously, but, to tell the
truth, I went up to town on purpose to prevent it."

"I know--I know that was what you went for." She seemed to be
answering some incessant voice that accused him, and he perceived that
the precipitancy of his action suggested a very different
interpretation. His position was odious enough in all conscience, but
as yet it had not occurred to him that he could be suspected of
complicity in the actual fraud.

"Why didn't I do something to prevent it before?"

"But--didn't you?"

"I did everything I could. I wrote to my father--if that's anything;
the result, as you see, was a cheque for the two hundred that should
have been three thousand."

"Did it never occur to you to write to anybody else, to Mr. Jewdwine,
for instance?"

She brought out the question shrinkingly, as if urged against her will
by some intolerable compulsion, and he judged that this time they had
touched what was, for her, a vital point.

"Of course it occurred to me. Haven't you heard from him?"

"I have. But hardly in time for him to do anything."

He reflected. Jewdwine had written; therefore his intentions had been
good. But he had delayed considerably in writing; evidently, then, he
had been embarrassed. He had not mentioned that he had heard from him;
and why shouldn't he have mentioned it? Oh, well--after all, why
should he? At the back of his mind there had crawled a wriggling,
worm-like suspicion of Jewdwine. He saw it wriggling and stamped on it
instantly.

There were signs of acute anxiety on Miss Harden's face. It was as if
she implored him to say something consoling about Jewdwine, something
that would make him pure in her troubled sight. A light dawned on him.

"Did you write to him?" she asked.

He saw what she wanted him to say, and he said it. "Yes, I wrote. But
I suppose I did it too late, like everything else I've done."

He had told the truth, but not the whole truth, which would have been
damaging to Jewdwine. To deny altogether that he had written would
have been a clumsy and unnecessary falsehood, easily detected.
Something more masterly was required of him, and he achieved it
without an instant's hesitation, and with his eyes open to the
consequences. He knew that he was deliberately suppressing the one
detail that proved his own innocence. But as their eyes met he saw
that she knew it, too; that she divined him through the web that
wrapped him round.

"Well," she said, "if you wrote to Mr. Jewdwine, you did indeed do
your best."

The answer, on her part, was no less masterly in its way. He could not
help admiring its significant ambiguity. It was both an act of
justice, an assurance of her belief in him, and a superb intimation of
her trust in Horace Jewdwine. And it was not only superb, it was
almost humble in that which it further confessed and implied--her
gratitude to him for having made that act of justice consistent with
loyalty to her cousin. How clever of her to pack so many meanings
into one little phrase!

"I did it too late," he said, emphasizing the point which served for
Jewdwine's vindication.

"Never mind that. You did it."

"Miss Harden, is it possible that you still believe in me?" The
question was wrung from him; for her belief in him remained
incredible.

"Why should it not be possible?"

"Any man of business would tell you that appearances are against me."

"Well, I don't believe in appearances; and I do believe in you. You
are not a man of business, you see."

"Thank goodness, I'm not, now."

"You never were, I think."

"No. And yet, I'm so horribly mixed up with this business, that I can
never think of myself as an honest man again."

She seemed to be considering whether this outburst was genuine or only
part of his sublime pretence.

"And I could never think of you as anything else. I should say, from
all I have seen of you, that you are if anything _too_ honest, too
painfully sincere."

("Yes, yes," her heart cried out, "I believe in him, _because_ he
didn't tell the truth about that letter to Horace." She could have
loved him for that lie.)

He was now at liberty to part with her on that understanding, leaving
her to think him all that was disinterested and honourable and fine.
But he could not do it. Not in the face of her almost impassioned
declaration of belief. At that moment he was ready rather to fall at
her feet in the torture of his shame. And as he looked at her, tears
came into his eyes, those tears that cut through the flesh like
knives, that are painful to bring forth and terrible to see.

"I've not been an honest man, though. I've no right to let you believe
in me."

Her face was sweeter than ever with its piteous, pathetic smile
struggling through the white eclipse of grief.

"What have you done?"

"It's not what I've done. It's what I didn't do. I told you that I
knew the library was going to be sold. I told you that yesterday, and
you naturally thought I only _knew_ it yesterday, didn't you?"

"Well, yes, but I don't see--"

She paused, and his confession dropped into the silence with an awful
weight.

"I knew--all the time."

She leaned back in her chair, the change of bodily posture emphasizing
the spiritual recoil.

"All the time, and you never told me?"

"All the time and I never told you. I'd _almost_ forgotten when you
offered me that secretaryship, but I knew it when I let you engage me;
I knew it before I came down. I never would have come if I'd realized
what it meant, but when I did know, I stayed all the same."

"What do you think you ought to have done?"

"Of course--I ought to have gone away--since I couldn't be honest and
tell you."

"And why" (she said it very gently but with no change in her
attitude), "why couldn't you be honest and tell me?"

"I'm not sure that I'd any right to tell you what I hadn't any right
to know. I'm only sure of one thing--as I did know, I oughtn't to have
stayed. But," he reiterated sorrowfully, "I did stay."

"You stayed to help me."

"Yes; with all my dishonesty I wouldn't have done it if I hadn't made
myself believe that. As it's turned out, I've helped to ruin you."

"Please--please don't. As far as I'm concerned you've nothing to
reproach yourself with. Your position was a very difficult one."

"I ought never to have got into it."

"Still, you did your best."

"My best! You can't say I did what an honourable man would have done;
I mean at the beginning."

"No--no. I'm afraid I can't say that."

He did not expect anything but sincerity from her, neither did he
desire that her sense of honour should be less fine than his. But he
longed for some word of absolution, some look even that should
reinstate him in his self-esteem; and it seemed to him that there was
none.

"You can't think worse of me than I think myself," he said, and
turned mournfully away.

She sat suddenly upright, with one hand on the arm of her chair, as if
ready to rise and cut off his retreat.

"Wait," she said. "Have you any idea what you are going to do?"

The question held him within a foot's length of her chair, where the
light fell full on his face.

"I only know I'm not going back to the shop."

"You were in earnest, then? It really has come to that?"

"It couldn't very well come to anything else."

She looked up at him gravely, realizing for the first time, through
her own sorrow, the precise nature and the consequences of his action.
He had burnt his ships, parted with his means of livelihood, in a
Quixotic endeavour to serve her interests, and redeem his own honour.

"Forgive my asking, but for the present this leaves you stranded?"

"It leaves me free."

She rose. "I know what that means. You won't mind my paying my debts
at once, instead of later?"

He stared stupidly, as if her words had stunned him. She was seated at
her writing table, and had begun filling in a cheque before he
completely grasped the horrible significance of what she had said.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"I'm writing thirty instead of fifteen, because that is what you ought
to have asked for in the beginning. You see I am more business-like
now than I was then."

He smiled.

"And do you really suppose I am going to take it?"

He meant his smile to be bitter, but somehow it was not. After all,
she was so helpless and so young.

"Of course you are going to take it."

"I needn't ask what you think of me."

This time the smile was bitterness itself.

"But it's yours--what I owe you. I'm only paying it to-day instead of
some other day."

"But you have not got to pay me anything. What do you think you're
paying me for?"

"For your work, for the catalogue, of course."

"That infamous catalogue ought never to have been made--not by me at
any rate."

"But you made it. You made it for me. I ordered it."

"You ordered it from my father. In ordinary circumstances you would
have owed him fifteen pounds. But even he wouldn't take it now. I
think he considers himself quite sufficiently paid."

"You are mixing up two things that are absolutely distinct."

"No. I'm only refusing to be mixed up with them."

"But you are mixed up with them."

He laughed at that shot, as a brave man laughs at a hurt.

"You needn't remind me of that. I meant--any more than I can help;
though it may seem to you that I haven't very much lower to sink."

"Believe me, I don't associate you with this wretched business. I want
you to forget it."

"I can't forget it. If I could, it would only be by refusing to
degrade myself further in connection with it."

His words were clumsy and wild as the hasty terrified movements of a
naked soul, trying to gather round it the last rags of decency and
honour.

"There is no connection," she added, more gently than ever, seeing how
she hurt him. "Don't you see that it lies between you and me?"

He saw that as she spoke she was curling the cheque into a convenient
form for slipping into his hand in the moment of leave-taking.

"Indeed--indeed you must," she whispered.

He drew back sharply.

"Miss Harden, won't you leave me a shred of self-respect?"

"And what about mine?" said she.

It was too much even for chivalry to bear.

"That's not exactly my affair, is it?"

He hardly realised the full significance of his answer, but he deemed
it apt. If, as she had been so careful to point out to him, her honour
and his moved on different planes, how could her self-respect be his
affair?

"It ought to be," she murmured in a tone whose sweetness should have
been a salve to any wound. But he did not perceive its meaning any
more than he had perceived his own, being still blinded by what seemed
to him the cruelty and degradation of the final blow.

She had stripped him; then she stabbed.

To hide his shame and his hurt, he turned his face from her and left
her. So strangely and so drunkenly did he go, with such a mist in his
eyes, and such anguish and fury in his heart and brain, that on the
threshold of the Harden library he stumbled past Miss Palliser without
seeing her.

She found Lucia standing where he had left her, looking at a little
roll of pale green paper that her fingers curled and uncurled.

"Lucia," she said, "what have you done to him?"

Lucia let the little roll of paper fall from her fingers to the floor.

"I don't know, Kitty. Something horrible, I think."




BOOK III

THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE




CHAPTER XXXVII


Mrs. Downey's boarding-house was the light of Tavistock Place,
Bloomsbury. In the brown monotony of the street it stood out splendid,
conspicuous. Its door and half its front were painted a beautiful, a
remarkable pea-green, while its door knob and door-knocker were of
polished brass. Mrs. Downey's boarding-house knew nothing of
concealment or disguise. Every evening, at the hour of seven, through
its ground-floor window it offered to the world a scene of stupefying
brilliance. The blinds were up, the curtains half-drawn, revealing the
allurements of the interior.

From both sides of the street, the entire length of the dinner-table
was visible. Above it, a handsome gilt gaselier spread out its
branches, and on this gaselier as many as three gas-jets burned
furiously at once. In the intense illumination the faces of the
boarders could be distinctly seen. They sat, as it were, transfigured,
in a nebulous whorl or glory of yellow light. It fell on the high
collars, the quite remarkably high collars of the young gentlemen, and
on those gay, those positively hilarious blouses which the young
ladies at Mrs. Downey's wear. Beside the water-bottles and tumblers of
red glass it lay like a rosy shadow on the cloth. It gave back their
green again to the aspidistras that, rising from a ruche of pink
paper, formed the central ornament of the table. It made a luminous
body of Mrs. Downey's face. The graver values were not sacrificed to
this joyous expenditure of gas-light, for the wall-paper (the design
was in chocolate, on a ground of ochre) sustained the note of
fundamental melancholy. At the back of the apartment, immediately
behind Mrs. Downey, an immense mahogany sideboard shone wine-dark in a
gorgeous gloom. On the sideboard stood a Family Bible, and on the
Family Bible a tea-urn, a tea-urn that might have been silver. There
was design in this arrangement; but for the Bible the tea-urn would
have been obliterated by Mrs. Downey; thus elevated, it closed, it
crowned the vista with a beauty that was final, monumental and
supreme.

You had only to glance through those windows to see that Mrs. Downey's
combined the splendid publicity of an hotel with the refinements of a
well-appointed home. That it offered, together with a luxurious table,
the society of youthful persons of both sexes. And if everything
around Mrs. Downey was on a liberal scale, so was Mrs. Downey herself.
She was expansive in her person, prodigal in sympathy, exuberant in
dress. If she had one eye to the main chance, the other smiled at you
in pure benignity. On her round face was a festal flush, flooding and
effacing the little care-worn lines and wrinkles which appeared on it
by day. It wore the colour of the hour which, evening after evening,
renewed for her the great drama and spectacle of the Dinner.

Her table was disposed with a view to scenic effect. It was not by
accident that Mrs. Downey herself was seated at the obscure or
sideboard end, and that she gathered round her there the older and
less attractive members of her circle. This arrangement was flattering
to them, for it constituted an order of precedence and they were in
the seats of honour. It had also the further advantage of giving
prominence to the young people whose brilliant appearance of an
evening was as good as an advertisement for Mrs. Downey's.

First then, at the top of the table, sat two elderly ladies,
dishevelled birds of passage, guests of a day and a night. Next, on
Mrs. Downey's right, came old Miss Bramble, with old Mr. Partridge
opposite on the left. The young gentleman at the extreme bottom or
public end of the table was Mr. Spinks. He was almost blatantly
visible from the street. At Mr. Spinks's side sat Miss Ada Bishop,
the young lady in the fascinating pink blouse; and opposite him, Miss
Flossie Walker, in the still more fascinating blue. To the left of
Miss Bishop in the very centre of the table was a middle-aged
commercial gentleman, Mr. Soper (not specially conspicuous); and
facing him and on Miss Walker's right came Miss Roots, who might be
any age you please between thirty and forty. Between them at the
present moment, there was an empty chair.

Miss Roots was the link between the melancholy decadence above the
aspidistras and the glorious and triumphant youth below. As far as
could be inferred with any certainty she had leanings to the side of
youth. Her presence was no restraint upon its glad and frolicsome
humour. It felt that it could trust her. She had never been known to
betray any of the secrets that passed at the risk of their lives from
Miss Bishop's side of the table to Miss Walker's. There was reason to
suppose that Miss Roots was aware of the surreptitious manufacture of
bread pellets by Mr. Spinks (Mr. Spinks being the spirit of youth
incarnate); but when one of these missiles struck Miss Roots full in
the throat, when it should have just delicately grazed the top of Miss
Flossie's frizzled hair, Miss Roots not only ignored the incident at
the time, but never made the faintest allusion to it afterwards.
Therefore Mr. Spinks voted Miss Roots to be a brick, and a trump, and
what he called a real lady.

Very curious and interesting was the behaviour of these people among
themselves. It was an eternal game of chivy or hide-and-seek, each
person being by turn the hunter and the hunted. Mrs. Downey tried to
talk to the birds of passage; but the birds of passage would talk to
nobody but each other. Miss Bramble took not the slightest notice of
Mr. Partridge. Mr. Partridge did everything he could to make himself
agreeable to Miss Bramble; but she was always looking away over the
aspidistras, towards the young end of the table, with a little air of
strained attention, at once alien and alert. Mr. Spinks spent himself
in perpetual endeavours to stimulate a sense of humour in Miss Walker,
who hadn't quite enough of it, with very violent effects on Miss
Bishop, who had it in excess; while Mr. Soper was incessantly trying
to catch the eye of Miss Roots around the aspidistras, an enterprise
in which he was but rarely successful; Miss Walker finally making no
attempt to bridge over the space between her chair and Miss Roots.