At nine o'clock in the morning it was more real to him
than any real thing; it even assumed an abominable personality; it was
an all-compelling, all-consuming power that sucked from him his time,
his life, his energy, and for six days out of the seven required of
him his soul. That at the same time it provided him with the means of
bodily subsistence only added to the horror of the thing. It was as if
"Rickman's", destroyer and preserver, renewed his life every quarter
day that it might draw in, devour, annihilate it as before. There was
a diabolical precision in the action of the machine that made and
unmade him.
And yet, with its rhythm of days and weeks, it was in its turn part
of a vaster system, whose revolutions brought round a longer
pause--when for three days his soul would be given back to him. The
only thing that kept him up at this moment was the blessed hope of the
Bank holiday.
While young Keith was still lying very sick and miserable in his bed,
the elder Rickman, in his villa residence at Ilford in Essex, was up
and eager for the day. By the time Keith had got down to breakfast
Isaac had caught the early train that landed him in the City at nine.
Before half-past he was in the front shop, taking a look round.
And as he looked round and surveyed his possessions, his new stock on
the shelves, his plate-glass and his mahogany fittings, his
assistants, from the boy in shirt sleeves now washing down the great
front window to the gentlemanly cashier, high collared and
frock-coated, in his pew, he rubbed his hands softly, and his heart
swelled with thankfulness and pride.
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