CHAPTER LXII
After all, the wedding did not take place on the twenty-fifth; for on the twentieth Keith was summoned to Ilford by a letter from his stepmother. Mrs. Rickman said she thought he ought to know (as if Keith were seeking to avoid the knowledge!) that his father had had a slight paralytic seizure. He had recovered, but it had left him very unsettled and depressed. He kept on for ever worrying to see Keith. Mrs. Rickman hoped (not without a touch of asperity) that Keith would lose no time in coming, as his father seemed so uneasy in his mind.
Very uneasy in his mind was Isaac, as upstairs in the big front bedroom, (which from its excess of glass and mahogany bore a curious resemblance to the front shop,) he lay, a strangely shrunken figure in the great bed. His face, once so reticent and regular, was drawn on one side, twisted into an oblique expression of abandonment and agony.
Keith was not prepared for the change; and he broke down completely as the poor right hand (which Isaac would use) opened and closed in a vain effort to clasp his. But Isaac was intolerant of sympathy, and at once rebuked all reference to his illness. Above the wreck of his austere face, his eyes, blood-shot as they were and hooded under their slack lids, defied you to notice any change in him.
"I sent for you," he said, "because I wanted to talk over a little business." His utterance was thick and uncertain; the act of speech showed the swollen tongue struggling in the distorted mouth.
"Oh, don't bother about business now, father," said Keith, trying hard to steady his voice.
His father gave an irritable glance, as if he were repelling an accusation of mortality, conveyed in the word "now."
"And why not now as well as any other time?"
Keith blew his nose hard and turned away.
"What's the matter with you? Do you suppose I'm ill?"
"Oh no, of course not."
"No. I'm just lying here to rest and get up my strength again; God willing. But in case anything should happen to me, Keith, I want you to be clear as to how you stand."
"Oh, that's all right," said Keith cheerfully.
"It's not all right. It's not as I meant it to be. Between you and me, my big house hasn't come to much. I think if you'd stayed in it—well—we won't say any more about that. But Paternoster Row—now—that's sound. Mrs. Rickman always 'ad a fancy for the City 'ouse, and she's put money into it. You'll have your share that was settled on you when I married your poor mother. You stick to the City 'ouse, Keith, and it'll bring you in something some day. And the Name'll still go on." It was pathetic, his persistent clinging to the immortality of his name. Pathetic, too, his inability to see it otherwise than as blazoned for ever and ever over a shop-front. His son's fame (if he ever achieved it) was a mere subsidiary glory. "But Pilkington'll get the Strand 'ouse. Whatever I do I can't save it. I don't mind owning now, the Strand 'ouse was a mistake."
"A very great mistake."
"And Pilkington'll get the 'Arden library."
"You don't know. You may get rid of him—before that time."
Isaac seemed to be torn by his thoughts the more because they found no expression in his face that was bound, mouth, eye, and eyelid in its own agony. Before what time? Before the day of his death, or the day of redemption? "The mortgage," he said, "'as still three years to run. But I can't raise the money."
Keith was silent. He hardly liked to ask, though he would have given a great deal to know, the amount of the sum his father could not raise. A possibility, a splendid, undreamed of possibility, had risen up before him; but he turned away from it; it was infamous to entertain it, for it depended on his father's death. And yet for the life of him he could not help wondering whether the share which would ultimately come to him would by any chance cover that mortgage. To be any good it would have to come before the three years were up, though—He put the splendid horrible thought aside. He could not contemplate it. The wish was certainly not the father of that thought. But supposing the thought became the father of a wish?
"That reminds me," said Isaac, "that there was something else I 'ad to say to you."
He did not say it all at once. At the very thought of it his swollen tongue moved impotently without words. At last he got it out.
"I've been thinking it over—that affair of the library. And I've been led to see that what I did was wrong. Wrong, I mean, in the sight of God."
There was a sense he could not get rid of, in which it might still be considered superlatively right.
"And wot you did—"
"Oh, never mind what I did. That's all right."
"You did the righteous and the Christian thing."
"Did I? I'm sure I don't know why I did it."
"Ah—if you'd done it for the love of God, there's no doubt it'd 'ave been more pleasing to 'im."
"Well, you know I didn't do it for the love—of God."
"You did it for the love of woman? I was right then, after all."
Isaac felt inexpressibly consoled by Keith's cheerful disclaimer of all credit. His manner did away with the solemnity of the occasion; but it certainly smoothed for him the painful path of confession.
"Well, yes. If it hadn't been for Miss Harden I don't suppose I should have done it at all."
He said it very simply; but not all the magnificent consolations of religion could have given Isaac greater peace. It was a little more even, the balance of righteousness between him and Keith. He had never sinned, as Keith had done, after the flesh. Of the deeds done in the body he would have but a very small account to render at the last.
"And you see, you haven't got anything for it out of her."
There was a certain satisfaction in his tone. He saw a mark of the divine displeasure in Keith's failure to marry the woman he desired.
"And if I could only raise that money—"
He meant it—he meant it. The balance, held in God's hands, hung steady now.
"How much is it?" asked Keith; for he thought, "Perhaps he's only holding on to that share for my sake; and if he knew that I would give it up now, he might really—"
"Four thousand nine with th' interest," said Isaac.
"Do you think, Keith, it would have sold for five?"
"Well, yes, I think it very possibly might."
"Ah!" Isaac turned his face from his son. The sigh expressed a profound, an infinite repentance.