The Divine Fire
May Sinclair
CHAPTER XXVIII Page 2
"Still, I don't wonder you got no answer to your very remarkable proposal."
"It seemed to me a very simple and obvious proposal."
"I don't know much about business," said Kitty, "but I can think of a much more simple and obvious one. Why can't your people buy in the library and sell it again for Miss Harden on commission?"
"Do you suppose I haven't thought of that? It would be very simple and obvious if it rested with me, but I'm afraid my father mightn't see it in the same light. You see, the thing doesn't lie between Miss Harden and me, but between my father and Mr. Pilkington."
"I don't understand."
"It's this way. My fatwon't be buying the library from Miss Harden, but from Mr. Pilkington. And--my father is a man of business."
"And you most certainly are not."
"So he isn't likely to give any more for it than he can help."
"Of course not."
"Well, but--do you know what the library was valued at?"
Kitty did, and she would have blurted it out had not an inner voice told her to be discreet for once. He took her silence for a confession of ignorance.
"Would you think a thousand pounds an absurdly high valuation?"
"I don't know."
Kitty tried to banish all expression from her face. She really knew very little about business and was as yet unaware of the necessary publicity of bills of sale. The suspicion crossed her mind that Rickman, in his father's interests, might be trying to pump her as to the smallest sum that need be offered.
"Because," he added, "it isn't. Miss Harden stands to lose something like three thousand pounds by it."
Kitty's evil surmises vanished utterly. "Good Heavens!" she exclaimed, "how do you make that out?"
"It's only the difference between what the library ought to fetch and what will be given for it. Of course no dealer could give the _full_ value; still, between one thousand and four thousand there's a considerable difference."
"And who pockets it?"
"My fa--the dealer, if he succeeds in selling again to the best advantage. He might not, and my father, as it happens, considers that he's taking a great risk. But I know more about it than he does, and I don't agree with him. That's why I don't want him to get hold of those books if I can help it."
Kitty was thoughtful.
"You see," he continued, "I know he'd like to do what he thinks generous under the circumstances, but he isn't interested in Miss Harden, and he _is_ interested in the Harden library. It's a chance that a dealer like him only gets once in a lifetime and I'm afraid it isn't in human nature to let it go."
"But," said Kitty wildly, "he _must_ let it go. You must make him. Do you mean to say you're going to sit and look on calmly while Miss Harden loses three thousand pounds?"
"I'm not looking on calmly. On the contrary, I've lost my head."
"What's the good of losing your head, if Miss Harden loses her money? What do you propose to do _besides_ losing your head? Lose time I suppose? As if you hadn't lost enough already."
"I wrote to Mr. Jewdwine as soon as I heard of Sir Frederick Harden's death. Still, you're right, I did lose time; and time was everything. You can't reproach me more than I reproach myself."
"My dear man, I'm not reproaching you. I only want to know what you're going to _do_?"
"Do? Is there anything left for me to do?"
"Not much, that I can see."
"Do you mean to her?"
"To her." He whispered the pronoun so softly that it sounded like a sigh.
"Why didn't you?"
"Why didn't I? I can see it was the one honest thing to do. But I thought I'd no business to know about her father's affairs she didn't; and certainly no business to talk about them."
"No. I don't see you could have done it."
"You were well out of it. You don't know what an awful thing it would have been to do. She worshipped her father. Is this what you've been making yourself ill about?"
"I suppose so. You know how adorably kind she was to me?"
"I can guess. She is adorably kind to every one," said Kitty, gentle but astute.
"And, you see, I've behaved dishonourably to her."
"No. I don't see that."
"Don't you? Don't you? Why, my father sent me partly as his agent, and all the time she believed I was only working for her."
"Did you behave as your father's agent?"
"No. But I let her slave from morning till night over that catalogue."
"Which she would have done in any case."
"Ah yes--if everybody did what they ought."
"I tried twice, but it was no good. I suppose I didn't try hard enough."
"What good would you have done by going, if she wanted you to stay?"
"That's how I argued. But the fact is, I stayed because I couldn't go away. Of course, it was an abominable position, but I assure you it felt like heaven when it didn't feel like 'ell."
His anguish, mercifully, was too great for him to feel the horror of his lapse. And Kitty hardly noticed it; at any rate she never felt the smallest inclination to smile, not even in recalling it afterwards.
It was, if you came to think of it, an unusual, a remarkable confession. But she remembered that he had had a nervous fever; it was his nerves, then, and his fever that had cried out, a cry covered, made decent almost, by the clangour of the sea.
She wondered how it came that, when her mind was as full as it could be of Lucia and her affairs, it could give such concentrated attention to him and his. If he had been what the tortoiseshell eye-glass took him for, a common man, it ought to have been easy and natural to dismiss him. But she could not dismiss him. There was some force in him, not consciously exerted, which held her there on that conspicuous seat beside him under the gaze of the tortoiseshell eye-glass. Kitty was by no means deficient in what she had called "profane fancy," and she felt to finger tips that she was making a spectacle of herself at the end of the esplanade. Their backs at this moment she knew must be standing out very clear and bold against the sky-line. But she herself was losing the keen sense she had once had of his inappropriateness to the scenes he moved in. Wherever he was he was natural; he was (she had it in one word) sincere, as few people are sincere nowadays. He was not a common man. That was it. All along it had been the justification of their strange proceedings, this fact that he was not common, that he was indeed unique. On that ground Lucia had always met him, and she had ignored the rest. Kitty was trying to sympathize with Lucia.
"But," he went on, simply, "I can't tell her that."
"No, you can't tell that, but you can tell her everything else. Look here, supposing that instead of sitting here tearing your nervous system to tatters you go straight away and do it."
"Think of you? If she thinks of you at all, she'll bless you for having spared her father's memory up to the last possible minute."
"Has it occurred to you that my motives are open to the worst construction?"
"Well, frankly, it has. But it won't occur to Miss Harden. Go to her and tell her everything."
"After all, am I to tell her?"
"Oh, it doesn't matter much what you tell her now."
"It matters a great deal to me. I don't want her to think me more dishonourable than I am."
"Oh, she won't do that."
"Perhaps she can't?"
"Well, you see, I don't know how dishonourable you've been. I only know if I'd done a dishonourable thing--if I'd done--oh, the most disgraceful thing I can imagine, a thing I couldn't _possibly_ tell to anybody else, I wouldn't mind telling Lucia Harden. I should _have_ to tell her. It wouldn't matter. She's so perfectly good, that your own little amateur efforts in that line simply aren't in it; so when it comes to telling her things, you may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. And wait a minute; you're not likely to make a lamb of your sheep; but don't go to the other extreme, and make a full-grown sheep of your lamb."
"I shall not deceive her."
"You couldn't. She's not only a good woman, but a very clever one, though she doesn't let you see it. Mind you, you won't find her clever about stupid things. I doubt if you'll be able to make her understand all this library affair. But she'll understand _your_ business."
They rose, and walked together, forgetful of the eagerly observant group.
"Could she see me to-day--this evening? I'm going to-morrow."
"Yes, I'll tell her you're coming. When you _do_ see her, don't be afraid--speak out."
"I'm not afraid of speaking to her--I'm afraid--"
"Of what?"
"Simply of _seeing_ her."
"You mean you are afraid of seeing her changed?" She understood him; for it was what she herself had been afraid of.
"Horribly afraid."
"My dear Mr. Rickman, people in great trouble don't change to otpeople. They only change to themselves."
He raised his hat and turned from her without speaking.
Kitty felt remorseful as she looked after him, for she had not scrupled to sacrifice him to her idea. Kitty's idea was to get as high a price as possible out of Rickman Senior, and Rickman Junior was the only man who could get it. If the object was to shunt Rickman Senior altogether, Rickman Junior could be depended on for that, too. She could see that under the influence of his unhappy passion he had absolutely detached himself from his father's interests and his own. Kitty was profoundly sorry for him, and if she had yielded to her impulses of mercy and pity she would have kept him from Lucia as she would have kept a poor insane moth from the candle. It might be necessary to turn the moth out of doors in order to save it, and--well, she would have turned him out of doors, too, in sheer mercy and pity. But Kitty had a practical mind, and that practical mind perceived the services that might be rendered by a person so suicidally inspired. If she had read him aright, fire and water were nothing to what Mr. Rickman was prepared to go through for Lucia. Therefore she sent him to Lucia.
But it was on his own account, for his healing and his consolation, that she advised him to make a clean breast of it.