CHAPTER XLVIII
Isaac Rickman stood in his front shop at the close of a slack winter day. He looked about him with a gaze uncheered by the contemplation of his plate-glass and mahogany; and as he looked he gathered his beard into a serious meditative hand, not as of old, but with a certain agitation in the gesture.
Isaac was suffering from depression; so was the book-trade. Every year the pulse of business beat more feebly, and in the present year, eighteen ninety-six, it was almost standing still. Isaac had seen the little booksellers one by one go under, but their failure put no heart into him; and now the wave of depression was swallowing him up too. He had not got the grip of the London book-trade; he would never build any more Gin Palaces of Art; he had not yet freed himself from the power of Pilkington; and more than all his depression the mortgage of the Harden Library weighed heavily on his soul. The Public in which he trusted had grown tricky; and he found that even capital and incomparable personal audacity are powerless against the malignity of events.
For his own part Isaac dated his decline from the hour of his son's defection. He had not been brought to this pass by any rashness in speculation, or by any flaw whatever in his original scheme. But his original scheme had taken for granted Keith's collaboration. He had calculated to a nicety what it would cost him to build up his fortunes; and all these calculations had been based on the union of his own borrowed capital with Keith's brilliant brains. And Keith with unimaginable perfidy had removed himself and his brilliant brains at the crisis of the start. Isaac thought he had estimated pretty accurately the value of his son's contribution; but it was only in the actual experiment of separation that he realized the difference it had made.
The immediate effect of the blow was to paralyse the second-hand department. As far as new books went Isaac was fairly safe. If the Public was tricky he was generally up to its tricks. But with second-hand books you never knew where you were, not unless you had made a special study of the subject. Owing to his defective education he had always been helpless in the second-hand shop; liable at any moment to be over-reached by one of those innocent, lantern-jawed student fellows who go poking their noses everywhere.
And in buying he was still more at a disadvantage. He had grown nervous in the auction-room; he never knew what to do there, and when he did it, it was generally wrong. He would let himself be outbidden where Keith would have carried all before him by a superb if reckless persistence.
But if business was at its worst in the second-hand department, in the front shop there was a sense of a sadder and more personal desolation. Rickman's was no longer sought after. It had ceased to be the rendezvous of affable young men from Fleet Street and the Temple. The customers who came nowadays were of another sort, and the tone of the business was changing for the worse. The spirit, that something illuminating, intimate, and immortal, had perished from the place.
At first Isaac had not been able to take its departure seriously. He had never really grasped the ground of that disagreement with his son; he had put it all down to "some nonsense about a woman"; and certain hints dropped by Pilkington supported him in that belief. Keith, he had said to himself, would come back when his belly pinched him. Every day he looked to see him crawling through the big swinging doors on that empty belly. When he did it, Isaac meant to take him back instantly, unquestioned, unreproved and unreproached. His triumph would be so complete that he could afford that magnanimity. But Keith had not come back; he had never put his nose inside the shop from that day to this. He called to see his father now and again on a Sunday (for Isaac no longer refused to admit him into his house); and then, as if in obedience to the holy conventions that ruled in the little villa at Ilford in Essex, no allusion was made to the business that had driven them apart. In the same spirit Isaac sternly refrained from inquiring into the state of Keith's finances; but from his personal appearance he gathered that, if Keith returned to the shop, it would not be hunger that would send him there. And if the young man's manner had not suggested the unlikelihood of his return, a hint to that effect was conveyed by his clothes. They were the symbols of prosperity, nay more, of a social advance that there could be no going back upon. Isaac had only to look at him to realize his separation. The thing was monstrous, incomprehensible, but certain. But it was in Keith's gaze (the gaze which he could never meet, so disturbing was it in its luminous sincerity) that he read the signs of a more profound and spiritual desertion.
Isaac stood pondering these things in the front shop, at the hour of closing. As he moved drearily away, the lights were turned out one by one behind him, the great iron shutters went up with a clang, and it was dark in Rickman's.
That evening, instead of hailing a Liverpool Street 'bus, he crossed the Strand and walked up Bow Street, and so into Bloomsbury. It was the first time for four years that he had called in Tavistock Place. He used to go up alone to the boarding-house drawing-room, and wait there till Keith appeared and took him into his bedroom on the second floor. Now his name brought an obsequious smile to the maid's face; she attended him upstairs and ushered him with ceremony into a luxurious library. Keith was writing at a table strewn with manuscripts, and he did not look up all at once. The lamp-light fell on his fair head and boyish face, and Isaac's heart yearned towards his son. He held out his hand and smiled after his fashion, but said no word.
The grip of the eager young hand gave him hope.
Keith drew up two chairs to the fire. The chairs were very deep, very large, very low, comfortable beyond Isaac's dreams of comfort. Keith lay back in his, graceful in his abandoned attitude; Isaac sat up very straight and stiff, crushing in his knees the soft felt hat that made him look for ever like a Methodist parson.
His eyes rested heavily on the littered table. "Well," he said, "how long have you been at it?"
"Oh, ever since nine in the morning—"
(Longer hours than he had in the shop); "—and—I've two more hours to put through still." (And yet he had received him gladly.)
"It doesn't look quite as easy as making catalogues."
"It isn't."
Isaac had found the opening he desired. "I should think all this literary work was rather a 'eavy strain."
"It does make you feel a bit muzzy sometimes, when you're at it from morning to night."
"Is the game worth the candle? Is it worth it? Have you made your fortune at it?"
"Not yet."
"Well—I gave you three years."
Keith smiled. "What did you give me them for? To make my fortune in?"
"To learn common-sense in."
Keith laughed. "It wasn't enough for that. You should have given me three hundred, at the very least!"
The laugh was discouraging, and Isaac felt that he was on the wrong tack.
"I'd give you as many as you like, if I could afford to wait. But I consider I've waited long enough already."
"What were you waiting for?"
"For you to come back—"
Keith's face was radiant with innocent inquiry.
"—To come back into the business."
The light of innocence died out of the face as suddenly as it had kindled.
"My dear father, I shall never come back. I thought I'd made that very clear to you."
"You never made it clear—your behaviour to me. Not but what I 'ad an idea, which perhaps I need not name. I've never asked what there was at the bottom of that foolish business, and I've never blamed you for it. If it made you act badly to me, I've reason to believe it kept you out of worse mischief."
Keith felt a queer tightening at the heart. He understood that his father was referring darkly to Lucia Harden. He was surprised to find that even this remote and shadowy allusion was more than he could bear. He must call him off that trail; and the best way of doing it was to announce his engagement.
"As you seem to be rather mixed, father, I ought to tell you that I'm engaged to be married. Have been for the last eighteen months."
"Married?" Isaac's face was tense with anxiety; for he could not tell what this news meant for him; whether it would remove his son farther from him, or bring him, beyond all expectation, near.
"May I ask who the lady is? Any of your fine friends in Devonshire?"
Keith was silent, tongue-tied with presentiment of the coming blow. It came.
"I needn't ask. It's that—that Miss 'Arden. I've heard of her."
"As it happens it's somebody you haven't heard of. You may have seen her, though—Miss Flossie Walker."
"No. I've never seen her, not to my knowledge. How long have you known her?"
"Ever since I came here. She's one of the boarders."
"Ah-h. Has she any means?"
"None."
Isaac's heart leapt high.
"Aren't you going to congratulate me?"
"How can I, when I haven't seen the lady?"
"You would, if you had seen her."
"And when is it to be? Like most young people, you're a bit impatient, I suppose?"
Keith betrayed the extremity of his impatience by a painful flush. This subject of his marriage was not to be approached without a certain shame.
"I suppose so; and like most young people we shall have to wait."
Isaac's eyes narrowed and blinked in the manner of a man uncertain of his focus; as it happened, he was just beginning to see.
"Ah—that's what's wearing you out, is it?"
"I'm beginning to get a bit sick of it, I own."
"What's she like to look at it, this young lady? Is she pretty?"
"Very."
A queer hungry look came over the boy's face. Isaac had seen that look there once or twice before. His lips widened in a rigid smile; he had to moisten them before they would stretch. He was profoundly moved by Keith's disclosure, by the thought of that imperishable and untameable desire. It held for him the promise of his own continuance. It stirred in him the strange fury of his fatherhood, a fatherhood destructive and malign, that feeds on the life of children. As he looked at his son his sickly frame trembled before that embodiment of passion and vigour and immortal youth. He longed to possess himself of these things, of the superb young intellect, of the abounding life, to possess himself and live.
And he would possess them. Providence was on his side. Providence had guided him. He could not have chosen his moment better; he had come at a crisis in Keith's life. He knew the boy's nature; after all, he would be brought back to him by hunger, the invincible, implacable hunger of the flesh.
"Your mother was pretty. But she lost her looks before I could marry her. I had to wait for her; so I know what you're going through. But I fancy waiting comes harder on you than it did on me."
"It does," said Keith savagely. "Every day I think I'll marry to-morrow and risk it. But," he added in a gentler tone, "that might come hard on her."
"You could marry to-morrow, if you'd accept the proposal I came to make to you."
Keith gave a keen look at his father. He had been touched by the bent figure, the wasted face; the evident signs of sickness and suffering. He had resolved to be very tender with him. But not even pity could blind him to the detestable cunning of that move. It revolted him. He had not yet realized that the old man was fighting for his life.
"I'm not open to any proposals," he said coldly. "I've chosen my profession, and I mean to stick to it."
"That's all very well; but you should 'ave a solid standby, over and above."
"Literature doesn't leave much room for anything over and above."
"That's where you're making a mistake. Wot you want is variety of occupation. There's no reason why you shouldn't combine literature with a more profitable business."
"I can't make it combine with any business at all."
"Well, I can understand your being proud of your profession."
"Can you understand my profession being proud of me?"
Isaac smiled. Yes, he could well understand it.
"And," said he, "I can understand your objection to the shop."
"I haven't any objection to the shop."
"Well—then there's no reason why we shouldn't come to an agreement. If I don't mind owning that I can't get on without your help, you might allow that you'd get on a bit better with mine."
"Why, aren't you getting on, father?"
"Well, considering that my second-'and business depended on you entirely—and that that's where the profits are to be made nowadays—That's where I'm 'andicapped. I can't operate without knowledge; and from hour to hour I've never any seecurity that I'm not being cheated."
Isaac would gladly have recalled that word. Keith met it with silence, a silence more significant than any speech; charged as it was with reminiscence and reproof.
"Now, what I propose—"
"Please don't propose anything. I—I—I can't do what you want."
Keith positively stammered in his nervous agitation.
"Wait till you hear what I want. I'm not going to ask you to make catalogues, or stand behind the counter, or," he added almost humbly, "to do anything a gentleman doesn't do." He looked round the room. The materials of the furnishing were cheap; but Keith had appeased his sense of beauty in the simplicity of the forms and the broad harmony of the colours. Isaac was impressed and a little disheartened by the refinement of his surroundings, a refinement that might be fatal to his enterprise. "You shall 'ave your own private room fitted up on the first floor, with a writing table, and a swivel chair. You needn't come into contact with customers at all. All I want is to 'ave you on the spot to refer to. I want you to give me the use of those brains of yours. Practically you'd be a sleeping partner; but we should 'alve profits from the first."
"Thanks—thanks" (his voice seemed to choke him)—"it's awfully good and—and generous of you. But I can't."
"Why not?"
"I've about fifteen reasons. One's enough. I don't like the business, and I won't have anything to do with it."
"You—don't—like—the business?" said Isaac, with the air of considering an entirely new proposition.
"No. I don't like it."
"I am going to raise the tone of the business. That's wot I want you for. To raise the tone of the business."
"I should have to raise the tone of the British public first."
"Well—an intelligent bookseller has a good deal of influence with customers; and you with 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—enormous—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."
"Now look 'ere. Let's have a quiet talk. We never have 'ad, for you were always so violent. If you'd stated your objections to me in a quiet reasonable manner, there'd never have been any misunderstanding. Supposing you explain why you object to those 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.
"Look into things?" He rose trembling. "You mind your own business. I can look into things myself. There'd 'ave been no need to look into them at all if you 'adn't robbed and deceived me. Robbed and deceived me, I said. You took your education—which I gave you to put into my business—you took it out of the business, and set up with it on your own account. And I tell you you might as well 'ave made off with a few thousands out of my till. Robbing's wot you've been guilty of in the sight of God; and you can come and talk to me about your conscience. I don't understand your kind of conscience—Keith." There was still a touch of appeal in his utterance of his son's name.
"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.
And in Keith's heart there was sorrow, too, as for something dead and departed.