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--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."
"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.