"Your character, I think, or you wouldn"t have adopted it."
"H"m. Supposing it adopts me?"
"It couldn"t--against your will."
"No. But my will in this instance might not be the expression of my character as a whole. Why, I may be doing violence to my character as a whole by--by the unique absurdity that dishes me. That"s destiny, if you like, but it"s not character--not my character, anyhow."
Personalities again. Whither could he flee from their presence? Even the frigid realm of abstractions was shaken by the beating of his own pa.s.sionate heart. Her eyes had the allurements of the confessional; he hovered, fascinated, round the holy precincts, for ever on the brink of revelation. It was ungovernable, this tendency to talk about himself. In another minute--But no, most decidedly that was not what he was there for.
If it came to that, what _was_ he there for? It was so incredible that he should be there at all. And yet there he was going to stay, for three weeks, and more. He had come to tell her so.
Miss Harden received the announcement as if it had been a foregone conclusion.
"It is settled, then?" said she, "you will have no more scruples?"
"None."
"There"s only one thing. I must ask you not to give anybody any information about the library. We don"t want to be bothered with dealers and collectors. Some of the books are so valuable that we should never have any peace if their whereabouts became known. Can you keep the secret?"
His heart sank as he remembered the Aldine Plato and the Neapolitan Horace and the _Aurea Legenda_ of Wynkyn de Worde. But he pledged himself to absolute discretion, an inviolable secrecy. Why not? He was a dealer himself and obviously it was his interest to keep other dealers in the dark. It was an entirely sensible and business-like pledge. And yet in giving it he felt that he was committing himself to something unique, something profound, and intimate and irrevocable. He had burnt his ships, severed himself body and soul from Rickman"s. If it were Miss Harden"s interest that he should defend that secret from his own father, he would have to defend it. He had given his word; and for the life of him he could not tell why.
In the same way he felt that in spite of his many ingenious arguments his determination to stay had in it something mysterious and unforeseen. He had said to her, "Your character may be my destiny."
And perhaps it was. He felt that tremendous issues hung upon his decision, and that all along he had been forced into it somehow from outside himself, rather than from within. And yet, as he sat there feeling all this, while he worked at the abominable catalogue _raisonne_, he decided further that he would not go away at all.
He would not go back to town to-morrow. He could not afford the time.
He must and would finish that catalogue _raisonne_ by the twenty-seventh. He had as good as pledged his word to Miss Harden.
Supposing the pledge had a purely ideal, even fantastic value, he was none the less bound by it, in fact considerably more. For he and she could only meet in an ideal and fantastic region, and he served her in an ideal and fantastic capacity, on the wholly ideal and fantastic a.s.sumption that the library was hers. Such a pledge would, he imagined, be held supreme in the world where honour and Miss Harden met face to face. And on him it was conceivably more binding than the promise to take Flossie to the Hippodrome on Sat.u.r.day, or to intoxicate himself on Sunday with champagne in the society of Miss Poppy Grace. Its sovereignty cancelled the priority of the more trivial and the grosser claim. His word to Miss Harden was one of those fine immortal things that can only be redeemed at the cost of the actual. To redeem it he was prepared for sacrifice, even the sacrifice of the great three days.
He worked late that night and she told him of a short cut to the town by the river path at the bottom of the garden. Half-way to the river he stopped and looked back. The beech tree dreamed, silent on a slope of glimmering lawn. The house loomed in the background, a grey ma.s.s with blurred outlines. From a window open in the east wing he could hear the sound of a piano.
He stood still and listened. All around was the tender, indescribable Devonshire night; it hung about him with warm scented breath; he felt its heart beat in the innumerable pulses of the stars. Behind the blue transparent darkness the music throbbed like a dawn; it swayed and sank, piano, pianissimo, and streamed out again into the night, dividing the darkness. It flowed on in a tumult, a tremendous tumult, rhythmic and controlled. What was she playing? If he stayed till midnight he must hear it through. Night sheltered him, and he drew nearer lest he should lose a note. He stretched himself on the lawn, and, with his head on his arms, he lay under the beech-tree, under the stars, dreaming, while Lucia Harden played to him the Sonata Appa.s.sionata.
It was good to be there; but he did not know, and the music did not tell him why he was there and what he was there for.
And yet it was the Sonata Appa.s.sionata.
CHAPTER XVIII
It was the afternoon of Sat.u.r.day the fourth that Mr. Rickman, looking up from his table, saw a brilliant apparition coming across the lawn.
He dreaded afternoon callers, he dreaded the post, he dreaded every person and every thing which reminded him that Lucia Harden had a life that he knew not and that knew not him.
"Lucia--Lucia!" Mr. Rickman looked up and saw the brilliant apparition standing in the south window. "Lu-chee-a!--" it pleaded. "You can"t say you"re out when I can see perfectly well that you"re in."
"Go away Kitty, I"m busy."
"You"ve no business to be busy at five o"clock in the afternoon."
Miss Kitty Palliser"s body was outside the window, but her head, crowned with a marvellous double-peaked hat of Parma violets, was already within the room.
"I"m dying of thirst," she said; "take me in and be kind to me and give me tea."
Lucia rose and went to the window, reluctant but resigned. Sc.r.a.ps of their conversation floated down to Mr. Rickman"s end of the room.
"Yes, you may well look at my hat."
"I wasn"t looking at it, I was looking through it."
"Well, if you can see through my hat, Lucia, you can see through me.
What do you think of it?"
"Of the hat? Oh, the hat is a poem."
"Isn"t it? Did you ever see anything so inspired, so impa.s.sioned?"
"Inspired, but--don"t you think--just a little, a little meaningless?"
"Meaningless? It"s _packed_ with meaning."
"I should like to know what it means."
"If it means nothing else it means that I"ve been going to and fro the whole blessed afternoon, paying calls in Harmouth for my sins."
"Poor Kitty."
"The last three times I paid calls in Harmouth," said poor Kitty, "I sported a cycling skirt, the blousiest of blouses, and a tam-o"shanter over my left ear. Of course everybody was in. So I thought if I went like this--brand new frock--swagger hat--white gloves--that everybody would be out."
"And were they?"
"No. Just like my luck--they were all--all in!"
"And yet you have the audacity to come here and ask for tea?"
"For Goodness" sake, don"t talk of tea."
"I thought you were so thirsty."
"So I am. I thirst for amus.e.m.e.nt."
"Kitty! You"ve been amusing yourself all afternoon--at other people"s expense."
"Yes. It"s cheap--awfully cheap, but fatiguing. I don"t want to amuse myself; I want to be amused."
Mr. Rickman took a longer look at the brilliant apparition.
Now, at a little distance, Miss Palliser pa.s.sed as merely an ordinary specimen of a brilliant but conventional type. This effect was an illusion produced by her irreproachably correct attire. As she drew nearer it became apparent that convention could never have had very much to do with her. Tailor and milliner were responsible for the general correctness of Miss Palliser"s appearance, Miss Palliser herself for the riot and confusion of the details. Her coat, flung open, displayed a tangle of laces disposed after her own fancy. Her skirts, so flawless and sedate, swept as if inspired by the storm of her long-legged impetuous stride. Under her too, too fashionable hat her brown hair was twisted in a way entirely her own; and fashion had left untouched the wild originality of her face. b.u.mpy brows, jutting eyebrows, and nose long in the bridge, wide in the nostril, tilted in a gentle gradient; a wide full-lipped nervous mouth, and no chin to speak of. A thin face lit by restless greenish eyes; stag-like, dog-like, humorous and alert.