d.i.c.ky's voice came slightly m.u.f.fled 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 un.o.bservant 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 pa.s.sions 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 d.i.c.ky was taken in by it and blundered.

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

"Our little account, d.i.c.ky, 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."

d.i.c.ky for the first time that evening looked uncomfortable. It occurred to d.i.c.ky 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 d.i.c.ky approached him he slid down on to the esplanade and slipped into the night.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

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 d.i.c.ky. 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 d.i.c.ky's complicated draw-net. He held them all, Lucia by her honour, Poppy by her vanity, and him, Rickman, by the l.u.s.ts and follies of his youth. This was what it had led him to, that superb triumphal progress of the pa.s.sions. In language as plain as he could put it, he--he--had been offered a bribe to advertise Poppy Grace for the benefit of d.i.c.ky, 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 d.i.c.ky as into a convenient herd of swine. And in d.i.c.ky's detestable person it rose up against him and pursued him. For d.i.c.ky, though sensual as any swine, was cautious. d.i.c.ky, 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 d.i.c.ky should have appeared on his last night here seemed the vilest stroke that fate had dealt him yet. But d.i.c.ky 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 pa.s.sionately 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sion, 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 pa.s.sed 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 x.x.xIV

He had made no empty promise when he a.s.sured 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 beat.i.tude 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. .h.i.tch with Pilkington. He found Keith sitting before the counter in the att.i.tude 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."