The Divine Fire Part 40

"Oh, that's nothing. You would have been of great use to me. If I thought of helping you at all, my idea was simply--how shall I put it?--to make up in some way for the harm I've done you."

"What harm have you ever done me?"

For one moment he thought that she had discovered his preposterous pa.s.sion, and reproached herself for being a cause of pain. But she explained.

"I ought to say the harm the catalogue did you. I'm afraid it was responsible for your illness."

He protested. But she stuck to it. "And after all I might just as well have let you go. For the library will have to be sold. But I did not know that."

"I knew it, though."

"You knew it? How did you know it?"

"I know Mr. Pilkington, who knows my father. He practically gave him the refusal of the library. Which is exactly what I want to speak to you about."

He explained the situation to her as he had explained it to Miss Palliser, only at greater length and with considerably greater difficulty. For Lucia did not take it up as Miss Palliser had done, point by point, she laid it down, rather, dismissed it with a statement of her trust in the integrity of Rickman's.

"If," she said, "the library must be sold, I'm very glad that it's your father who is going to buy it."

He tried to make her see (without too deeply incriminating his father) that this was not the destiny most to be desired for it.

It was in approaching this part of his subject that he most diverged from his manner of treating it before Miss Palliser.

Miss Palliser had appreciated the commercial point of view. Her practical mind accepted the a.s.sumption that a dealer was but human, and that abnegation on his part in such a matter would amount to nothing less than a moral miracle. But Miss Harden would have a higher conception of human obligation than Miss Palliser; at any rate he could hardly expect her sense of honour to be less delicate than his own, and if _he_ considered that his father was morally bound to withdraw from the business she could only think one thing of his remaining in it. Therefore to suggest to Miss Harden that his father might insist upon remaining, const.i.tuted a far more terrible exposure of that person than anything he had said to Miss Palliser.

"Why shouldn't he buy it?" she asked.

"Because, I'm afraid, selling it in--in that way, you won't make much money over it."

"Well--it's not a question of making money, it's a question of paying a debt."

"How much you make--or lose--of course, depends on the amount of the debt--what it was valued at."

Lucia, unlike Kitty, was neither suspicious nor discreet. She had the required fact at her fingers' ends and instantly produced it. "It was valued at exactly one thousand pounds."

"And it should have been valued at four. My father can't give anything like that. We ought to be able to find somebody who can. But it might take a considerable time."

"And there is no time. What do you advise me to do then?"

"Well, if we could persuade Mr. Pilkington to sell by auction that would be all right. If we can't, I advise you to buy it back, or a part of it, yourself. Buy back the books that make it valuable. You've got the Aldine Plato and the Neapolitan Horace and the _Aurea Legenda_ printed by Wynken de Worde." (He positively blushed as he consummated this final act of treachery to Rickman's.) "And heaps of others equally valuable; I can give you a list of fifty or so. You can buy them for a pound a-piece and sell the lot for three thousand. If Pilkington collars the rest he'll still be paid, and there may be something over."

She considered a moment. "Has Mr. Pilkington any idea of the value of those books?"

"I'm certain he hasn't. Only an expert could have."

"Would it be perfectly fair to him?"

"To _him_? Perfectly fair. You buy them at his own valuation."

"I see. I should like to do that--if--if it can be managed."

"I think it can be managed. My father isn't likely to settle with Mr.

Pilkington without consulting me. If he _has_ settled we must try and get him to withdraw."

"Oh, surely there would be no difficulty about that?"

He said nothing. It was really terrible the way she took integrity for granted. To be sure his father had a reputation with the family. He remembered how Sir Joseph used to praise him to his face as the only honest dealer in London. But Sir Joseph was in the habit of buying books, not selling them.

He rose and turned away, evading her innocent eyes.

"I hope not. I'll see Mr. Pilkington about it. By the way, here _is_ Mr. Pilkington. Did you expect him?"

"No, I--" Her voice died away, extinguished in her horror.

CHAPTER x.x.xI

There could be no mistake about it.

Mr. Pilkington was coming by the private way, stepping softly over a fair green lawn. The low golden light before sunset flooded the lawn so that Mr. Pilkington walking in it was strangely and gloriously illuminated. Everything about him shone, from his high silk hat to the tips of his varnished boots. His frock coat and trousers of grey summer suiting clung to his figure like a warm and sunny skin. All over Mr. Pilkington and round about him there hung the atmosphere of the City. Not of the actual murky labyrinth, roofed with fog, but of the City as she stands transfigured before the eyes of the young speculator, in her orient golden mood.

Lucia had seen him. The light died out of her face, her lips straightened. She stood motionless, superb, intent. With such a look and in such an att.i.tude a Roman maiden might have listened to the feet of the Vandal at the gate.

He was coming very swiftly, was d.i.c.ky, as if borne by an impetus of conquest. As he caught sight of Miss Harden through the open window, though he kept his head rigidly averted, his eyes slewed round towards her, and at the same moment his fingers rose instinctively to his little fair moustache. It was the gesture of the irresistible male.

"_Must_ I see him?" she asked helplessly. She had realized everything in that moment.

"Not unless you like. Shall I deal with him?"

"If you would be so good. But no--it doesn't matter. I shall have to see him later."

She sat down again and waited. The silence was so tense that it seemed to bear the impact of her pulses; it throbbed and quivered with pain.

Outside, the sound of the pebbles, crunched under Pilkington's footsteps, became a concert of shrieks.

Rickman did not offer to go as Mr. Pilkington advanced; for, Heaven knew how, in some obscure and subtle way she had managed to convey to him that his presence was a protection.

Mr. Pilkington entered the room with the air of a man completely a.s.sured as to his reception. He bowed to Miss Harden; an extraordinary bow. No words could have conveyed the exquisite intimations of Mr.

Pilkington's spine. It was as if he had said to her, "Madam, you needn't be afraid; in your presence I am all deference and chivalry and restraint." But no sooner had d.i.c.ky achieved this admirable effect of refinement than he spoilt it all by the glance he levelled at young Rickman. _That_ expressed nothing but the crude emotion of the insolent male, baulked of his desire to find himself alone on the field. It insulted her as brutally as any words by its unblus.h.i.+ng a.s.sumption of the att.i.tude of s.e.x.

"I must introduce myself, Miss 'Arden," he said, ignoring Rickman. "I think I have _not_ had the pleasure--" His large mouth closed reluctantly on the unfinished phrase.

He seated himself with circ.u.mstance, parting the tails of his coat very carefully. He had chosen a seat opposite the window. As if conscious of the glory of his appearance, he offered himself liberally to the light. He let it play over his figure, a figure that youth subdued to sleekness that would one day be corpulence; it drew out all the yellow in his moustache and hair; it blazed in his gold-rimmed eye-gla.s.s; thence it alighted, a pale watery splendour, on the bridge of his nose. It was a bridge where two nationalities met and contended for mastery. Mr. Pilkington's nose had started with a distinctly Semitic intention, frustrated by the Anglo-Saxon in him, its downward course being docked to the proportion of a snub. n.o.body knew better than Mr. Pilkington that it was that snub that saved him. He was proud of it as a proof of his descent from the dominant race. a.s.sisted by his reluctantly closing mouth and double eye-gla.s.s it inspired confidence, giving to Mr. Pilkington's face an expression of extreme openness and candour. He was proud of his eye-gla.s.s too. He considered that it made him look like a man of science or of letters.

But it didn't. It did much better for him than that. It took all the subtlety out of his face and endowed it with an earnest and enormous stare. And as that large mouth couldn't and wouldn't close properly, his sentences had a way of dying off in a faint gasp, leaving a great deal to the imagination. All these natural characteristics were invaluable for business purposes.

But if you had asked Mr. Pilkington for the secret of his success, he would have told you that he owed it to his possession of two qualities, "bounce" and "tact." To both, mind you; for tact without bounce will carry a man neither far nor high; while bounce without tact will elevate him occasionally to his own perdition.