The Divine Fire
May Sinclair
CHAPTER XLVIII Page 2
"Well--an intelligent bookseller has a good deal of influence with customers; and you your reputation, there's nothing you couldn't do. You could make the business anything you chose. In a few years we should be at the very head of the trade. I don't deny that the house has been going down. There's been considerable depression. Still, I should be in a very different position now, Keith, if you hadn't left me. And in the second-hand department--_your_ department--there are still enormous--e_nor_mous--profits to be made."
"That's precisely why I object to my department, as you call it. I don't approve of those enormous profits."
"I object, because in nine cases out of ten they're got by trading on another person's ignorance."
"Of course they are. Why not? If he's ignorant, it's only fair he should pay for his ignorance; and if I'm an expert, it's fair I should get an expert's profits. It's all a question of buying and selling. He can't sell what he hasn't got; and I can't sell what I haven't got. Supposing I've got knowledge that he hasn't--if I can't make a profit out of _that_, what can I make a profit out of?"
"I can't say. My own experience of the business was unfortunate. It struck me, if you remember, that some of your profits meant uncommonly sharp practice."
"Talk of ignorance! Really, for a clever fellow, Keith, you talk a deal of folly. There's sharp practice in every trade--in your own trade, if it comes to that. Supposing you write a silly book, and some of your friends boom it high and low, and the Public buys it for a work of genius--well--aren't you making a profit out of other people's ignorance? Of course you are."
"I haven't made _much_ profit that way--yet."
"Because you're unbusiness-like. Well. I'm perfectly willing to believe your objections are conscientious. But look at it another way. I'm a God-fearing, religious-minded man" (unconsciously he caressed his soft hat, the hat of a Methodist parson, as he spoke), "is it likely I'd continue in any business I couldn't reconcile to my conscience?"
"I've no doubt you've reconciled it to your conscience. That's hardly a reason why I should reconcile it to mine."
"That means that you'll let me be ruined for want of a little advice which I'd 'ave paid you well for?"
"If my advice is all you want, you can have it any day for nothing."
"Wot you get for nothing is worth just about wot you get it for. No. Mine was a fair business proposal, and either you come into it or you stay out."
"Most decidedly I prefer--to stay out."
"Then," said Isaac suddenly, "I shall have to give up the shop."
"I'm most awfully sorry."
"There's no good your being sorry if you won't help me."
"I would help you--if I could."
"If you could!" He paused. Prudence plucked him by the sleeve, whispering that never while he lived must he breathe the word Insolvency; but a wilder instinct urged him to disclosure. "Why--it rests with you to keep me out of the Bankruptcy Court."
Keith said nothing. He had held out against the appeal to his appetites; it was harder to withstand this call on his finer feelings. But if the immediate effect of the news was to shock and distress him, the next instant he was struggling with a shameful reflection. For all his shame it was impossible not to suspect his father of some deeper, more complicated ruse.
Isaac sat very still, turning on his son a look of concentrated resentment. Keith's youth was hateful to him now; it withheld pitilessly, implacably, the life that it was in its hands to give. Meanwhile Keith wrestled with his suspicion and overcame it.
"Look here, father, I'll do what I can. I'll come round to-morrow and look into things for you, if that's any good."
The instant he had made the offer he was aware of its futility. It was not for his business capacity that he was valued; and he never had been permitted to interfere with the finances of the shop. The suggestion roused his father to a passion that partook of terror.
"Perhaps not," said Keith sorrowfully. "I don't understand it myself."
He walked with his father to Holborn, silently, through the drizzling rain. He held an umbrella over him, while they waited, still silently, for the Liverpool Street omnibus. He noticed with some anxiety that the old man walked queerly, shuffling and trailing his left foot, that he had difficulty in mounting the step of the omnibus, and was got into his seat only after much heaving and harrying on the part of the conductor. His face and attitude, as he sank crouching into his seat, were those of a man returning from the funeral of his last hope.