If he had only told her!

CHAPTER XXVIII

He did not go back to town on the seventh, after all.  He stayed to finish roughly, brutally almost, with the utmost possible dispatch, the disastrous catalogue, which would now be required, whatever happened.  Until every book in the library had passed through his hands he was hardly in a position to give a just estimate of its value.  His father had written again in some perturbation.  It seemed that the old song for which he might obtain the Harden library went to the tune of one thousand pounds; but Pilkington was asking one thousand two hundred.  “It’s a large sum,” wrote Isaac, “and without more precise information than you’ve given me yet, I can’t tell whether we should be justified in paying it.”

That confirmed his worst misgivings.  He answered it very precisely indeed.  “We shouldn’t be morally justified in paying less than four thousand for such a collection; and we should make a pretty big profit at that.  But if we can’t afford the price we must simply withdraw.  In fact I consider that we ought to hold back in any case until we see whether Miss Harden or any of her people are going to come forward.  It’s only fair to give them the chance.  You can expect me on the twentieth.”

Beside writing to his father, he had done the only honest and straightforward thing that was left for him to do.  He had written to Horace Jewdwine.  That was indeed what he ought to have done at the very first.  He could see it now, the simple, obvious duty that had been staring him in the face all the time.  He hardly cared to think what subtle but atrocious egoism of passion had prevented him from disclosing to Jewdwine the fact of his presence at Court House; even now he said nothing about the two weeks that he had spent working with Jewdwine’s cousin.  The catalogue raisonne was so bound up with the history of his passion that the thing had become a catalogue raisonne of its vicissitudes.  Some instinct, not wholly selfish, told him that the least said about that the better.  He wrote on the assumption that Jewdwine knew (as he might very well have done) the truth about the Harden library, briefly informing him that they, Rickman’s, had been or rather would be in treaty with Mr. Pilkington for the purchase; but that he, Savage Keith Rickman, considered it was only fair to suggest that Mr. Jewdwine or some other member of Sir Frederick Harden’s family should have the option of buying it, provided it could be so arranged with Mr. Pilkington.  As Jewdwine was probably aware, the library represented security for one thousand pounds; whereas Rickman estimated its market value at four or even five times as much.  But as Mr. Pilkington was not inclined to let it go for less than one thousand two hundred, Jewdwine had better be prepared to offer a little more than that sum.  If Jewdwine felt inclined to act on this suggestion Rickman would be glad if he would let him know within the next ten days; as otherwise his father would be obliged to close with Mr. Pilkington in due form after the twenty-seventh.  Would he kindly wire an acknowledgement of the letter?