He looked at her. Did she realize how far Fielding's youth, if report
spoke truly, had belonged to, or in her own words, "been a part of"
other women? Did she resent their part in him? He thought not. It was
not so much that she was jealous of Fielding's youth, as that she
shrank from any appearance of disloyalty to his age.

"And yet," she said, "I feel that no one has a right to be young when
he is old. I hate young poets because they are young. I hate my own
youth--"

Her youth? Yes, it was youth that leapt quivering in her tragic face,
like a blown flame. Her body hardly counted except as fuel to the
eager and incessant fire.

"Don't hate it," he said. "It is the most beautiful thing you have to
give him."

"Ah--if I _could_ give it him!"

He smiled. "You have given it him. He isn't old when he can inspire
such devotion. He is to be envied."

He rose and held out his hand. As she took it, Miss Gurney's
flame-like gaze rested on him a moment and grew soft.

"If you want to know, it was Lucia Harden who sent me your poems,"
said she. And he knew that for once Miss Gurney had betrayed a secret.

He wondered what had made her change her mind. He wondered whether
Lucia had really made a secret of it. He wondered what the secret had
to do with Fielding. And wondering he went away, envying him the love
that kept its own divine fire burning for him on his hearth.




CHAPTER LI


There were times when Rickman, harassed by his engagement, reviewed
his literary position with dismay. Of success as men count success, he
had none. He was recognized as a poet by perhaps a score of people; to
a few hundreds he was a mere name in the literary papers; to the great
mass of his fellow-countrymen he was not even a name. He had gone his
own way and remained obscure; while his friends, Jewdwine and Maddox,
had gone theirs and won for themselves solid reputations. As for
Rankin (turned novelist) he had achieved celebrity. They had not been
able to impart to him the secret of success. But the recognition and
something more than recognition of the veteran poet consoled him for
the years of failure, and he felt that he could go through many such
on the strength of it.

The incident was so momentous that he was moved to speak of it to
Jewdwine and to Maddox. As everything that interested him interested
Maddox, he related it to Maddox in full; but with Jewdwine (such was
his exceeding delicacy) he observed a certain modest reticence. Still
there was no diminution in his engaging candour, his innocent
assumption that Jewdwine would be as pleased and excited as Maddox and
himself.

"He really seemed," said he, selecting from among Fielding's
utterances, "to think the things were great."

Jewdwine raised his eyebrows. "My dear Rickman, I congratulate you."
He paused for so long that his next remark, thoughtfully produced,
seemed to have no reference to Rickman's communication. "Fielding is
getting very old." If Rickman had been in a state of mind to attend
carefully to Jewdwine's manner, he might have gathered that the
incident had caused him some uneasiness.

It had indeed provided the editor of _The Museion_ with much matter
for disagreeable thought. As it happened (after months of grave
deliberation), he had lately had occasion to form a very definite
opinion as to the value of Rickman the journalist. He knew that
Rickman the journalist had no more deadly enemy than Rickman the poet;
and at that particular moment he did not greatly care to be reminded
of his existence. Jewdwine's attitude to Rickman and his confidences
was the result of a change in the attitude of _The Museion_ and its
proprietors. _The Museion_ was on the eve of a revolution, and to
Jewdwine as its editor Rickman the journalist had suddenly become
invaluable.

The revolution itself was not altogether sudden. For many months the
behaviour of _The Museion_ had been a spectacle of great joy to the
young men of its contemporary, _The Planet_. The spirit of competition
had latterly seized upon that most severely academic of reviews, and
it was now making desperate efforts to be popular. It was as if a
middle-aged and absent-minded don, suddenly alive to the existence of
athletic sports in his neighbourhood, should insist on entering
himself for all the events, clothed, uniquely, if inappropriately, in
cap and gown. He would be a very moving figure in the eyes of
hilarious and immortal youth. And such a figure did _The Museion_ in
its latter days present. But the proprietors were going to change all
that. _The Museion_ was about to be withdrawn from circulation and
reissued in a new form under the new title of _Metropolis_. As if
aware of the shocking incongruity it was going to fling off its cap
and gown. Whatever its staying power might be, its spirit and its
outward appearance should henceforth in no way differ from those of
other competitors in the race for money and position.

While the details of the change were being planned in the offices of
_The Museion_, the burning question for the proprietors was this:
would their editor, their great, their unique and lonely editor, be
prepared to go with them? Or would he (and with him his brilliant and
enthusiastic staff) insist on standing by the principles that had been
the glory of the paper and its ruin? Mr. Jewdwine had shown himself
fairly amenable so far, but would he be any use to them when it really
came to the point?

To Jewdwine that point was the turning-point in his career. He had
had to put that burning question to himself. Was he, after all,
prepared to stand by his principles? It was pretty certain that if he
did, his principles would not stand by him. Was there anything in them
that _would_ stand at all against the brutal pressure that was
moulding literature at the present hour? No organ of philosophic
criticism could (at the present hour) exist, unless created and
maintained by Jewdwine single-handed and at vast expense. His position
was becoming more unique and more lonely every day, quite intolerably
lonely and unique. For Jewdwine after all was human. He longed for
eminence, but not for such eminence as meant isolation. Isolation is
not powerful; and even more than for eminence he longed for power. He
longed for it with the passion of a weak will governed despotically by
a strong intellect. It amounted to a positive obsession, the tyranny
of a cold and sane idea. He knew perfectly well now what his position
as editor of _The Museion_ was worth. Compared with that great, that
noble but solitary person, even Maddox had more power. But the editor
of _Metropolis_, by a few trifling concessions to the spirit of
modernity, would in a very short time carry all before him. He must
then either run with the race or drop out of it altogether; and
between these two courses, Jewdwine, with all his genius for
hesitation, could not waver. After much deliberation he had consented
(not without some show of condescension) to give his name and
leadership to Metropolis; and he reaped the reward of his plasticity
in a substantial addition to his income.

This great change in the organization of the review called for certain
corresponding changes in its staff. And it was here that Rickman came
in. He had been retained on _The Museion_ partly in recognition of his
brilliance, partly by way of satisfying the claims of Jewdwine's
magnanimity. On _The Museion_ he had not proved plastic either as
sub-editor or as contributor. He did not fit in well with the
traditions of the paper; for he was, to Jewdwine, modernity incarnate,
the living spirit of revolt, to be bound down with difficulty by the
editorial hand. Looking back on the record of the past four years
Jewdwine marvelled how and why it was that he had kept him. A score
of times he had been tempted to dismiss him after some fresh enormity;
and a score of times Rickman had endeared himself by the seductive
graces of his style. But Rickman on the staff of _Metropolis_ was,
Jewdwine considered, Rickman in the right place. Not only could he now
be allowed to let loose his joyous individuality without prejudice to
the principles of that paper (for the paper strictly speaking would
have no principles), but he was indispensable if it was to preserve
the distinction which its editor still desired. Jewdwine had no need
of the poet; but of the journalistic side of Rickman he had endless
need. It was a baser faculty, but his care must be to develop it, to
train it, to handle it judiciously, until by handling he had made it
pliable to all the uses of his paper. Jewdwine had a genius for
licking young men into shape. He could hardly recognize that band of
awkward and enthusiastic followers in his present highly disciplined
and meritorious staff. None of them were like Rickman; none of them
had done anything to rouse an uneasy suspicion of their genius. Still,
none of them were precisely fitted for his present purpose. Rickman
the poet, of course, you could not lick into shape. His shape, plastic
only under the divine fire, was fashioned by the fingers of the god.
But Rickman the journalist, once get him on to the right journal,
would prove to be made of less unmanageable stuff. If he had not
hitherto proved manageable, that was no doubt because hitherto he had
been employed on the wrong journal.

And yet, when he came to discuss the change of programme with the
different members of his staff (some of whom he was giving their
dismissal), it was with Rickman (whom he proposed to retain) that he
felt the most acute embarrassment. Rickman, although at the moment
dining with Jewdwine, was so abominably direct.

"I see," he said, after listening to a lengthy exposition of the
proprietors' view; "they want to popularize the thing."

Jewdwine winced perceptibly. "Well, hardly," said he. "In that case
they would have been obliged to change their editor. We certainly want
to draw a rather larger public than we have done; and to do that we
must make _some_ concessions to modernity. There's no doubt that the
paper's interests have suffered from its tradition. We have been too
exclusive, too detached. We can no longer afford to be detached. We
propose to abandon the tradition in favour of--well--of a somewhat
broader attitude." He looked keenly at Rickman, as if he defied him to
put it any other way.

"I see. We've either got to take a more genial view of our
contemporaries--or scoot."

"You may put it that way if you like. It simply means that if we are
to appeal to a wider public, we must take a wider view. It's surely in
the interests of the public, _and_ of literature, that we should not
narrow the influence of the paper any more than we can help. Not make
the best criticism inaccessible." He continued to take the lofty and
the noble view. The habit was inveterate. But his last remark started
him on the way of self-justification. "Of course I couldn't go on with
the paper if I hadn't come to see this for myself. The fact is, you
cannot run a leading review on abstract principles."

Rickman forbore to smile at the fulfilment of his prophecy. Jewdwine's
"Absolute" had been obliged to "climb down."

"Not," said Jewdwine, "if that review is really to lead public
opinion."

"And certainly not," said Rickman, "if public opinion is to lead the
review."

"In either case," said Jewdwine nobly, "the principles remain."

"Only they're not applied?"

"They are not applied, because there is nothing to apply them to. In
the present state of literature a review like _The Museion_ has no
reason for its existence."

"I don't know. It was a very useful protest against some forms of
modernity."

"My dear fellow, modernity simply means democracy. And when once
democracy has been forced on us there's no good protesting any
longer."

"All the same, you'll go on protesting, you know."

"As a harmless private person, yes. As a critic I must accept a
certain amount of defeat at the hands of the majority."

"But you don't happen to believe in the majority?"

"I do believe in it," said he, bitterly. "I believe that it has
destroyed criticism by destroying literature. A critic only exists
through the existence of great men. And there are no great men
nowadays; only a great number of little men."

"I see. Othello's occupation's gone."

"Not at all. Othello's occupation's only beginning. You can't
criticize these people, but you must review them. And I assure you it
means far more labour and a finer discrimination to pick out your
little man from a crowd of little men than to recognize your great man
when you see him."

"When you see him--"

"Ah yes--_when_ I see him. But where is he? Show me," said Jewdwine,
"one work of unmistakable genius published any time in the last five,
the last ten years."

Rickman looked at him and said nothing. And to Jewdwine his silence
was singularly uncomfortable. He would have been more uneasy still but
for his conviction that the serenity in Rickman's eyes was reflected
from the eyes of Fielding. Rickman, he thought, was rather too
obviously elated at the great man's praise; and the exhibition of
elation was unpleasant to him. Worse than all, he realized that
Rickman, in spite of his serenity, was hurt. On the top of that came a
miserable misgiving as to the worthiness of his own attitude to his
friend.

As for Rickman, he had no feeling that he could have put into words,
beyond owning in his heart that he was hurt. He had never before had
any occasion for such a confession; he felt it to be humiliating both
to Jewdwine and himself. Sometimes, in moments of depression he had
suspected that it was Jewdwine's coldness that preserved his
incorruptibility; but he had so sincere a desire for purity in their
relations, that he had submitted without resentment to the freezing
process that ensured it. He had in reserve his expectation of the day
when, by some superlative achievement, he would take that soul,
hitherto invincible, by storm. But now, in his inmost heart he owned
that he was hurt.

Jewdwine changed the subject.




CHAPTER LII


When Jewdwine changed the subject, it was to intimate that his friend
might now expect a salary rising steadily with the fortunes of
_Metropolis_.

That promise to marry Flossie in the autumn had made Rickman very
uneasy on this head. The sources of his income had been hitherto
uncertain; for _The Planet_ might at any moment cease to be, and only
indomitable hope could say that _The Museion_ would be long for this
world.

The amount of his income, too, depended on conditions which were, to
some extent, beyond his own control. It had never sunk below a hundred
and fifty, and had never risen above three hundred, even in the years
when he wrote more articles than poems. Whereas, if he wrote more
poems than articles, two hundred was the highest figure it had yet
attained. And supposing the poems came and the articles didn't? For in
these things he was in the hands of the god. Therefore he had long
been a prey to devastating anxiety. But he hoped great things from the
transformation of _The Museion_. It certainly promised him a larger
and more certain revenue in the future, almost justifying his marriage
in the autumn. It had been expressly understood that his promise to
Flossie was to be fulfilled only if possible. But meanwhile he had got
to make it possible, for Flossie (in spite of _her_ promise) kept the
terror of her wine-merchant perpetually dangling above his head. He
had visited Messrs. Vassell & Hawkins' detestable establishment; and
it made him shudder to think of his pretty Beaver shut up in a little
mahogany cage, with her bright eyes peeping sad and shy through the
brass netting, and her dear little nostrils sniffing the villainous
alcoholic air.

But as the time approached and their marriage grew every day more
certain and more near, the joy and excitement of the bridegroom were
mingled with an inexplicable terror and misgiving. He had been
disagreeably impressed by the manner of Flossie's insistence on his
poverty. He had not missed the fine contempt conveyed by all her
references to his profession, which she not unjustly regarded as the
cause of the poverty. He was well aware that his genius was a heavy
burden for so small a thing to bear; and his chivalry had determined
that it should lie lightly on her lest it should crush or injure her.
It was part of her engaging innocence that she knew nothing of the
world in which his supremacy began and hers ended, that she had not
even suspected its existence. If he had any illusions about her it was
his own mind that created and controlled them. He delighted in them
deliberately, as in a thing of his creating; seeing through them with
that extraordinary lucidity of his, yet abandoning himself all the
more. Flossie's weakness made him tender, her very faults amused him.
As for his future, he could not conceive of his marriage as in any way
affecting him as a poet and a man of letters. While the little
suburban Eros lit his low flame upon the hearth, his genius would
still stand apart, guarding with holy hands the immortal fire. For
those two flames could never mingle. In that dream he saw himself
travelling with ease and rapidity along two infinite lines that never
touched and never diverged; a feat only possible given two Rickmans,
not one Rickman. There used to be many more of him; it was something
that he had reduced the quantity to two. And in dreams nothing is
absurd, nothing impossible.

Pity that the conditions of waking life are so singularly limited. At
first it had been only a simple question of time and space. Not that
Flossie took up so very much space; and he owned that she left him
plenty of time for the everyday work that paid. But where was that
divine solitude? Where were those long days of nebulous conception?
Where the days when he removed himself, as it were, and watched his
full-orbed creations careering in the intellectual void? The days when
Keith Rickman was as a god? He was hardly aware how fast they were
vanishing already; and where would they be in two months' time? It
was on his tragedy that he based his hopes for his future; the future,
in which Flossie had no part. He knew that the plea of art sounded
weak before the inexorable claims of nature; he felt that something
ought to be sacrificed to the supreme passion; but he couldn't give up
his tragedy. He was consumed by two indomitable passions; and who was
to say which of them was supreme? Still, tragedies in blank verse were
a luxury; and Flossie had more than once pointed out to him he
couldn't afford luxuries. He would sit up working on the tragedy till
long past midnight; and when he woke in the morning his sense of guilt
could not have been greater if he had been indulging in the most
hateful orgies. But you can't burn even genius at both ends; and his
paying work began to suffer. Jewdwine complained that it was not up to
his usual level. Maddox had returned several articles. So at last he
stuffed his tragedy into a drawer to wait there for a diviner hour.
"That would have been a big expensive job," he said to himself. "I
suppose it's possible to put as good work into the little things that
pay; but I shall have to cut myself in pieces." That was what he was
doing now; changing his gold into copper as fast as he could, so many
pennies for one sovereign. Nobody was cheated. He knew that in his
talent (his mere journalistic talent) there was a genius that no
amount of journalism had as yet subdued. But he had an awful vision of
the future, when he saw himself swallowed up body and soul in
journalism. The gods were dead; but there were still men and columns.

That would be the inevitable surrender to reality. To have no part in
the triumph of the poetic legions; but to march with the rank and
file, to a detestable music not his own; a mere mercenary ingloriously
fighting in a foreign cause.

To Jewdwine, Jewdwine once incorruptible, it seemed that Rickman was
preparing himself very suitably for the new campaign. But Maddox
mourned as he returned those articles; and when he heard of the
approaching marriage which explained them he was frantic. He rushed up
on Sunday afternoon, and marched Rickman out into the suburbs and on
to a lonely place on Hampstead Heath. And there, for the space of one
hour, with his arm linked in Rickman's, he wrestled with Rickman for
his body and his soul. Jewdwine's cry had been, "Beware of the
friendship of little men"; the burden of Maddox was, "Beware of the
love of little women."

"That's all you know about it, Maddy. The love of great women absorbs
you, dominates you. The little women leave you free."

Maddox groaned.

"A fat lot of freedom you'll get, Ricky, when you're married." Rickman
looked straight before him to the deep blue hills of the west, as if
freedom lay on the other side of them. "Good God," he said, "what am I
to do? I must marry. I can't go back to Poppy Grace, and her sort."

"If that's all," said Maddox, "I don't see much difference. Except
that marriage is worse. It lasts longer." Whereupon Rickman blushed,
and said that wasn't all, and that Maddox was a brute. He would change
his opinion when he knew Miss Walker.

Before very long he had an opportunity of changing it.

Rickman had been in error when he told Flossie that if she would
consent to marry him he would never again be ill. For he was ill the
first week in September, not two years after he had made that
ill-considered statement. The Fielding episode, when the first fine
stimulus was over, had left him miserable and restless. It was as if
he had heard the sound of Lucia Harden's voice passing through the
immeasurable darkness that divided them. And now he seemed to be
suffering from something not unlike the nervous fever that had
attacked him once before at Harmouth; complicated, this time, by a
severe cold on the chest, caught by walking about through pouring rain
in great agony of mind.

For Flossie (who may have felt latterly that she had chanced upon
another season of depression in her woman's trade) that illness was a
piece of amazing good luck, coming as it did at the moment of Keith's
misgivings. It not only drew them together, just as they were drifting
insensibly apart, but it revealed them to each other in a tenderer and
serener light. There was a little hard spot in Flossie which was
impervious to the subtler charm of Rickman when he was well. But
Rickman ill and at her mercy, confined to the bed where (so long as
Flossie waited on him) he lay very quietly, with the sheet drawn tight
up to his chin, in a state of touching dependence and humiliation, was
a wholly different person from the stormy and incomprehensible Rickman
who for more than two years had struggled so madly in her toils. And
if, to the eye of Mrs. Downey, Flossie appeared untouched by the
really heartrending pathos of his attitude in sleep; beholding unmoved
his huddled boyish form under the blankets, one half-naked arm laid
slack along the bed, the other thrust out straight into the cold
outside it; if she left Mrs. Downey to cover the poor fellow up,
wondering why on earth the girl could sit there and never do it; if,
when he woke, she missed the extreme poignancy of appeal in the
murmurs that followed her as she went Beaver-like about her business
in the room, it may be that in that unaccustomed service the hidden
prescient motherhood in her was awakened and appeased (Flossie being
still under the dominion of her dream). As yet it struggled blindly
with her invincible propriety; a struggle poor Rickman was made aware
of by the half-averted manner of her approaches, the secrecy and
hesitation of her touch. But the little clerk undoubtedly found that
patting pillows, straightening coverlets, and making mustard plasters,
was an employment more satisfying to her nature than the perpetual
handling of bank notes. And to Rickman lying there with his hungry
heart filled for the time quite full with its own humility and
gratitude, lying in a helplessness that had in it something soothing
and agreeable, feeling the soft shy woman's hands about his bed,
following with affectionate, remorseful eyes her coming and going, or
watching as she sat patiently mending his socks, it came with the
freshness of a new discovery that she was, after all, a very engaging
little Beaver. He had never for one instant glorified his love for
her; he understood it too thoroughly. It was love as Nature loves to
have it; honest enough, too, but of its kind singularly devoid of any
inspiring quality. Flossie had never moved him to the making of
sonnets or of songs. Moreover, he had discovered in her a certain
lack of tenderness, or of the outward signs of tenderness. Not but
what Flossie commanded all the foolish endearing language of young
love; only she was apt to lavish it on little details of attire, on
furniture, on things seen in shop-windows and passionately desired.
But there was something very transfiguring in the firelight of his
bedroom hearth. As he lay in it, enjoying the pure sweet foretaste of
domestic felicity, it was as if he saw more clearly into himself and
her and the life that would so soon make them one. If it was not the
best life, he told himself that of its kind it would be very good. He
had no doubt now that Flossie loved him. He was led to this certainty
by the maternal quality in her present dealings with him, when perhaps
it should have warned him rather that these cares were not for him.

Flossie had somewhat elaborated her dream. Bearing the fascinating
name of Muriel Maud, it had grown softer and rosier than ever. She
could not any longer deny its mysterious association with Keith
Rickman, though she would have died rather than that Keith should have
suspected it. And now as she sat mending Keith's socks her fancy all
the time was busy fashioning delicious garments for her dream. Flossie
never pursued her vision of Muriel Maud beyond the period of
enchanting infancy; when it outgrew the tender folly of those
garments, it was dismissed from Flossie's fancy with unmaternal
harshness. Therefore it appeared eternally innocent and young, mortal
in a delicate immortality. In fact, viewing her life too in the light
of the bedroom firelight, Flossie was herself deceived.

They were both blissfully unaware that Nature cares nothing about
love, but was bent upon using them for the only end she does care
about, the end that gives to love the illusion of its own eternity.

But Maddox saw through it in a minute. It was in the earlier stages of
the poet's illness, and Maddox had happened to put his head into
Rickman's room at the moment when Flossie, compelled by Mrs. Downey,
was helping to put a stinging mustard plaster on his chest. They
shrieked, and Maddox instantly withdrew.

He painted the scene afterwards for Rankin in the lurid and symbolic
colours of his Celtic fancy. "Talk of Samson among the Philistines,
it's nothing to Ricky-ticky in that d----d boarding-house. There was a
woman on each side of his bed. They'd got him down on it; they were
pinning the poor little chap in his blankets. I could just see
Ricky-ticky's face between their shoulders; it was very red; and I
shall never forget the expression on it, never. The agony, Rankin, the
hopeless, unutterable agony."

"What were they doing to him?"

"I couldn't see properly. But I think they were cutting his hair off."

He declared later that he had distinctly heard the squeaking of that
young Delilah's scissors. "We're not told whether Delilah was Samson's
wife," said he. "But the Scriptures were never wrong on a point of
human nature."

At which Rankin looked depressed; for he too was thinking of getting
married; though, as Maddox reminded him for his comfort, not to Miss
Flossie Walker.

"Is our Ricky-ticky," urged Rankin, "the man to show wisdom in
choosing a wife?"

"He isn't the man to marry at all."

"Did you expect him to live like an anchorite, then?"

"I didn't expect anything. He might have lived as he liked, provided
he didn't ruin himself as he's doing now."

And though Maddox now saw that young Delilah frequently, and always at
her prettiest and her best, he did not change his opinion.




CHAPTER LIII


It was now the third week in September, and the wedding was fixed for
the twenty-fifth of October. Everything was fixed, even Flossie's
ideas on the subject of her trousseau. There never was a little woman
so unwavering in her choice of such things as clothes and furniture.
To be married in ivory white, and to go away in powder blue; to have a
drawing-room furnished in imitation rosewood and tapestry, and a
dining-room in stamped velvet and black oak (imitation, too), had been
Flossie's firm determination from the first. It saves endless time and
contention when a young woman so absolutely knows her own mind.

Not but what she required approval and support in her decisions;
otherwise she would have been hardly recognizable as a young woman.
And for Rickman to go shopping with the Beaver in Tottenham Court
Road, to follow her undeviating course through the furniture
galleries, to note the infallible instinct by which she made for and
seized upon the objects of her choice, to see the austerity with which
she resisted the seductions of the salesman who sought to entangle her
with a more expensive article, the calmness of her mind in dealing
with the most intricate problems of measurement and price, was to be
led a helpless captive in a triumph of practical ability. Ability,
good Lord! was there ever anything like Flossie's grasp of all facts
that can be expressed in figures? His brain reeled before the
terrifying velocity of her mental arithmetic. What a little woman it
was to do sums in the top of its head!

Not that she dragged him on the chain for ever. There were idyllic
resting-places, delicious, thrilling pauses in her progress; when she
tried every chair in succession in the drawing-room suite; when she
settled herself in the tapestry one, before the little rosewood
tea-table (spread, for the heightening of the illusion, with a
tea-service all complete); when she pretended to pour out tea, smiling
over the tea-pot in the prettiest delight. With such a smile she would
welcome him, with such a smile she would pour out his tea when he came
back from Fleet Street to the home that was to be. (It did not occur
to him that at the moment Flossie was only smiling at the tea-pot.)
Though he stood aloof from the anticipatory scene, as he looked at her
he grew positively weak with tenderness. In everything Flossie had her
way. When they climbed (as they inevitably did) to the upper galleries
he indeed offered some show of resistance when she insisted on
choosing a terrible bedstead of brass with mother-o'-pearl ornaments.
But to do him justice, it was sheer nervous terror which prompted the
brutal remark that, "Really, mother-o'-pearl ornaments were more than
he could stand"; for he melted and gave in at once at the sight of
Flossie feeling the rosy down coverlet with her little hands. When
their eyes met, Flossie's face was as rosy as the coverlet; so that
the attendant spirit of commerce himself turned from them abashed.
That there would, that there must be, such a moment Keith had had a
horrible foreboding as he followed up the stairs.

Nobody could have been more happy than Flossie following the dream in
Tottenham Court Road; and Rickman was happy because she was. Happy for
a whole fortnight; and then for the first time they quarrelled.

And this was how it happened. They were going to live at Ealing; not
because they liked it, but because the neighbourhood was cheap.
Flossie had said, "When we're rich, we'll go to Kensington"; and he
had answered with an odious flippancy, "Yes, and when we die we'll go
to heaven"; but for the present, Flossie (wise Flossie who loved
economy even more than Kensington) was content with Ealing. That she
was obliged to be content with it made her feel, naturally, that she
was entitled to gratification on every other point. It was not over
Ealing, then, that they quarrelled, but over the choosing of the
house. Flossie was all for a gay little brand-new, red-brick villa,
with nice clean white paint about it, only two minutes from the tram;
he for a little old-fashioned brown-brick house with jasmine all over
it, and a garden all grass and lilac bushes at the back. He said the
garden would be nice to sit in. She said, what was the good of sitting
in a garden when you had to walk ever so far to the tram? He retorted
that walking was a reason for sitting; and she that if it came to that
they could sit in the house. She wouldn't hear of the old brown house,
nor he of the brand-new villa. He was peculiarly sensitive to his
surroundings.

"The villa," said he, "is a detestable little den."

"It isn't," said she, "it's got a lovely bay window in the drawing
room, and a _dear_ little balcony on the top."

"But there isn't a quiet place in it, dear, where I could write."

"Oh, that's all you're thinking of--"

"Well, there isn't, really. Whereas here" (they were going now through
the little brown house), "there's a jolly big room at the back, where
you can see miles away over the fields towards Harrow."

"Oh, you've got time to look out of the window, have you, though you
_are_ so busy?"

"Never mind the window, let's look at the house. What's wrong with
it?"

"What's wrong with the house? It won't suit the furniture, that's
what's wrong with it."

"You mean the furniture won't suit it?"

"The furniture's chosen and the house isn't. There's no good going
back on that."

"Look here, this is the room I meant." They had climbed to the top of
the little brown house, and Flossie had hardly condescended to glance
through the doors he had opened on their way. He opened one now at the
head of the stairs, and this time she looked in.

"It would make all the difference to me, Floss," he said humbly, "if I
had a place like this when I want to get away to write."

"When you want to get away from me, you mean." Her lips shook; she
looked round her with angry eyes, as if jealous of the place, and all
that he meant to do in it.

It was a large room, with a wide window looking on to the garden and
away across meadows and cornfields to Harrow Hill with its thin church
spire. The window was guarded with iron bars. The wall-paper was
designed in little circles; and in each circle there were figures of
little boys and girls, absurd and gay. So many hundreds of little
figures, and so absurd and gay, that to sit in that room surrounded by
them, to look at them and endeavour to count them, was to go mad. But
those figures fascinated Flossie.

"Oh, Lord, what a beastly wall-paper," said he.

"I think it's sweet," said she. And though she wasn't going to let him
have the house, she was ready to quarrel with him again about the
wall-paper. And then, in the corner by the window they came upon a
child's toy, a little wooden horse, broken. He pointed it out to her,
half-smiling. "Some kiddy must have left that there."

"Of course," said she, "it's been a nursery. And, I say, Keith, I
think it must have _died_."

"How do you make that out?"

"It couldn't have been long here. Don't you see, the wall-paper's all
new." (He thought that was rather sharp of her, the practical Beaver!)
"And yet," she said continuing her train of induction; "it couldn't.
If it had, they'd never have left _that_ here."

Ah, that was not sharp; it was something better. There was, after all,
about his Beaver a certain poetry and tenderness.

She picked up the little wooden horse, and held it in her hands, and
adjusted its loosened mane, and mended its broken legs, fitting the
edges delicately with her clever fingers. And it seemed to him that as
she bent over the toy her face grew soft again. When she lifted her
head her eyes rested on him, but without seeing him. Never had Flossie
had so poignant a vision of Muriel Maud.

He looked at her with a new wonder in his heart. For the first time he
was made aware of the change that two years had worked in her. She had
grown, he thought, finer in growing firmer; her body in its maturity
was acquiring a strength and richness that had been wanting in its
youth; as if through that time of waiting it were being fashioned for
the end it waited for. But that was not all. She had clothed herself
unconsciously with poetry. She stood for a moment transfigured before
him; a woman with sweet eyes beholding her desired destiny from far.
Her soul (for a moment) rose in her face like a star--a dim prophetic
star that trembled between darkness and dawn. He knew that she saw
herself now as the possible mother of his children.

The anger and the jealousy were over; and all of a sudden she gave in.

"You can have the house, if you like, Keith."

"All right; I do like it. That's a dear little Beaver."

As he approached her her glance fled. "I didn't say you could have the
room. I want to keep it empty."

He put his arm round her and led her to the window. "What do you want
to keep it empty for, Flossie?"

Her poor little thoughts, surprised and dismayed, went scurrying
hither and thither, trying to hide their trail.

"Oh," she said, still looking away from him. "To store things in." He
drew her closer to him and kissed her tenderly.

It seemed to him that a serene and happy light rested on the garden,
on the empty house, and on the empty room that she had peopled already
with her innocent dream. It seemed to him that in that remote gaze of
her woman's eyes, abstracted from her lover, unconsciously desirous of
the end beyond desire, he saw revealed the mystery, the sanctity, the
purity of wedded love. And seeing it he forgave her that momentary
abstraction.

But the Beaver never dreamed; she was far too practical. She was
building, that was all.




CHAPTER LIV


That evening as they sat down to dinner, it might have been noticed
that Mrs Downey's face was more flushed and festal than it had been
since the day was fixed for Mr. Rickman's wedding and departure. She
seated herself expansively, with a gay rustling of many frills, and
smiled well pleased upon the arrangements of her table. From these
signs it was evident that Mrs. Downey was expecting another boarder, a
boarder of whom she had reason to be proud. Rickman noticed with
dismay that the stranger's place was laid beside his own. He knew them
so well, these eternal, restless birds of passage, draggled with their
flight from one boarding-house to another. The only tolerable thing
about them was that, being here to-day, they were gone to-morrow.

The new boarder was late, culpably late. But Mrs. Downey was proud of
that too, as arguing that the poor bird of passage had stayed to
smooth her ruffled plumage. Mrs. Downey approved of all persons who
thus voluntarily acknowledged the high ceremonial character of the
Dinner. She was glad that Mr. Rickman would appear to-night in full
evening dress, to rush away in the middle of the meal, a splendour the
more glorious, being brief. She was waiting for the delightful moment
when she would explain to the visitor that the gentleman who had just
left the room was Mr. Rickman, "the reviewer and dramatic critic." She
would say it, as she had said it many times before, with the easy
accomplished smile of the hostess familiar with celebrity.

But that moment never came. The very anticipation of it was lost in
the thrill of the visitor's belated entrance. Yet nothing could have
been quieter than the manner of it. She (for it _was_ a lady) came
into the room as if she had lived at Mrs. Downey's all her life, and
knew her way already from the doorway to her chair. When she said,
"I'm so sorry, I'm afraid I'm rather late," she seemed to be taking
for granted their recognition of a familiar personal characteristic.
Perhaps it was because she was so tall that her voice sounded like
music dropped downward from a height.

There was a stir, a movement down each side of the table; it was
subtle, like the flutter of light and wind, and sympathetic, answering
to her footfall and the flowing rhythm of her gown. As it passed, Mrs.
Downey's face became if possible more luminous, Miss Bramble's figure
if possible more erect. A feeble flame flickered in Mr. Partridge's
cheeks; Mr. Soper began feeling nervously in his pocket for the box of
bon-bons, his talisman of success; while Mr. Spinks appeared as if
endeavouring to assume a mental attitude not properly his own. Miss
Bishop searched, double-chinned, for any crumbs that might have lodged
in the bosom of her blouse; and Flossie, oh, Flossie became more
demure, more correct, more absolutely the model of all propriety. Each
was so occupied with his or herself that no one noticed the very
remarkable behaviour of Mr. Rickman. He rose to his feet. He turned
his back on Flossie. There was a look on his face as of a man seized
with sudden terror, and about to fly.

In turning he found himself face to face with Lucia Harden.

He had the presence of mind to stand back and draw her chair from the
table for her; so that his action appeared the natural movement of
politeness.

Though she held out her hand by an instinct of recognition, there was
a perceptible pause before she spoke. He had known that it was she
before he saw her. She had to look at him twice to make quite sure.

And then, being sure, she smiled; not the slow, cold smile of
politeness that dies downwards on the lips, but the swift smile of
pleasure that leaps to the eyes and forehead.

"Mr. Rickman--? I think I should have known you anywhere else; but I
didn't expect to meet you here."

He looked at her courageously.

And as he looked there fell from him the past five years, the long
estranging years of bitterness and misery and vain desire, and the
years, still more estranging, of his madness and his folly; and not
the thinnest phantom shadow of time divided him from the days of
Harmouth, That moment of recognition annihilated all between; a lustre
of his life swept away in one sweep of her eyelids, dropped fathom
deep and forgotten in the gaze of her pure and tender eyes. It was not
the Lucia of their last meeting; the tragic and terrible Lucia who had
been so divided from him by her suffering and her grief. As she had
appeared to him on that evening, the last of his brief, incredible
happiness, when he sat with her alone in the drawing-room at Court
House, and she had declared her belief in him, so she appeared to him
now. The unforgettable movements of her face, the sweet curve of her
mouth (the upper lip so soft and fine that it seemed to quiver
delicately with the rhythm of her pulses and her breath), the turn of
her head, the lifting of her eyebrows, told him that she had kept no
memory of his part in the things that had happened after that.

And he too forgot. With Lucia sitting at his right hand, he forgot the
woman sitting at his left; he forgot the house of bondage, and he
forgot that other house where the wedding chamber yet waited for the
bride.

"I should have known you anywhere." His eyes dropped and he said no
more.

That act of recognition had only lasted a second; but it had made its
mark. Over the dim, fluttering table was the hush of a profound
astonishment. He neither saw nor felt it; nor did he hear Mrs. Downey
scattering the silence with agitated apologies.

"You'll excuse us beginning, Miss Harden; but it's Mr. Rickman's night
at the theatre."

Miss Harden looked at him again, lifting her eyebrows with that air of
interested inquiry that he knew so well. And yet, beyond those first
half dozen words he said nothing.

"Silly boy," said Mrs. Downey to herself, "why can't he say he's sorry
he has to go. I'm sure I gave him his opportunity." She was annoyed at
his rudeness.

Whether he were sorry or not, he went at his appointed time. He never
knew how he got out of the room, nor how he had behaved before going.
He had simply looked at her, held her hand and left her. And he had
not said a word; or none at least that he could remember.

Miss Harden was, it seemed, the guest, or the ostensible guest, of
Miss Roots. And Miss Roots enjoyed herself, delighting openly in the
recovery of the friend she had lost sight of for so many years. But
from Mrs. Downey's point of view the Dinner that night was not exactly
a success. Mr. Rickman had behaved in an extraordinary manner. Mr.
Soper and Miss Bishop had never looked so--well, so out of place and
common. And she could see that Mr. Spinks had taken advantage of the
general consternation to help himself outrageously to ginger.

Lucia took her friend aside when it was over. "You might have told me
he was here," said she.

"My dear, I didn't know you knew him."

"Then, did he never--" Whatever Lucia was going to say she thought
better of it.

She did not see him till the next night, after dinner, when he came to
her as she was sitting in a corner of the back drawing-room alone. And
as he came, she looked at him with a curiously intent yet baffled
gaze, as if trying to fit a present impression to one past. And yet
she could hardly have had any difficulty in recognizing him; for his
face was unforgettable, unique; but she missed something in it which
used to be familiar. And now she saw that what she had missed was the
restless look of youth; the sensuous eagerness that had helped to make
it so irregular. It had settled into the other look that she had found
there more rarely; the look that strengthened and refined the mobile
features, and brought them into harmony with the clean prominent lines
of the chin and of the serious level brows. Of all his looks it was
the one that she used to like best.

"So you've come back again?" he said.

"But I never was away."

"I thought you were abroad?"

"Who told you that?"

"I don't know. I suppose I must have dreamt it."

"I think you must. I've been in town for the last six weeks."

"In town?"

"Yes, if Hampstead's town. I've been staying with the Jewdwines.
Didn't he tell you?"

"No, he never told me anything."

She was silent for a moment. "So _that's_ why you never came to see
me."

"To see you? I didn't know--and if I had I shouldn't have thought--"
He hesitated.

"Of what? Of coming to see me?"

"No, that you would have cared for me to come."

"I think that's not a thing you ought to say. Of course I cared."

"Well, but I couldn't take that for granted, could I?"

"Couldn't you? Not after the messages I sent you?"

"But I never got any messages."

"Didn't you?" Her upper lip quivered; it was as if she winced at some
thought that struck her like a blow. "Then my cousin must have
forgotten to give them to you. Just like him; he is shockingly
careless."

Now Rickman knew it was not just like him; Jewdwine was not careless,
he was in all things painfully meticulous; and he never forgot.

"I don't think I can forgive him for that."

"You must forgive him. He is overwhelmed with work. And he isn't
really as thoughtless as you might suppose. He has given me news of
you regularly. You can't think how glad I was to hear you were getting
on so well. As for the latest news of all--" She lifted her face and
looked at him with her sweet kind eyes. "It _is_ true that you are
going to be married?"

"Quite true."

"I was so glad to hear that, too."

"Thanks." There was a slight spasm in his throat. That thick difficult
word stuck in it and choked him for the moment.

"I hope I shall meet your wife some day."

"You have met her." Lucia looked puzzled and he smiled, a little sadly
for a bridegroom. "You sat next her at dinner. She's here somewhere."

Lucia turned her head to where Flossie was sitting by a table, sitting
very upright, with her little air of strained propriety.

"Is it--is it that pretty lady? Do you think I might go up and speak
to her? I would so like to know her."

"I'll bring her to you. There's rather a crowd just now in the other
room."

He went to her, hardly knowing how he went.

"Flossie," he said, "I want to introduce you to Miss Harden."

Flossie's eyes brightened with surprise and pleasure; for she had
learnt from Mrs. Downey that the visitor was the daughter of Sir
Frederick Harden; and Lucia's distinction subdued her from afar.
Keith, being aware of nothing but Lucia, failed to perceive, as he
otherwise might have done, that he had risen in Flossie's opinion by
his evident intimacy with Miss Harden. She came blushing and smiling
and a little awkward, steered by Keith. But for all her awkwardness
she had never looked prettier than at that moment of her approach.

If Keith had wanted to know precisely where he stood in the order of
Lucia's intimacies, he might have learnt it from her reception of Miss
Walker. By it he might have measured, too, the height of her belief in
him, the depth of her ignorance. She who had divined him was ready to
take his unknown betrothed on trust; to credit her, not with vast
intellect, perhaps (what did that matter?), but certainly with some
rare and lovely quality of soul. He loved her; that was enough. Lucia
deduced the quality from the love, not the love from the quality. His
pretty lady must be lovable since he loved her. He had noticed long
ago that Lucia's face had a way of growing more beautiful in the act
of admiration; as if it actually absorbed the loveliness it loved to
look upon. And now, as she made a place for Flossie at her side, it
wore that look of wonder, ardent yet restrained, that look of shy and
tentative delight with which five years ago she had approached his
_Helen_. It was as if she had said to herself, "He always brought his
best to show me. Five years ago he brought me his dream, to read and
care for. Now he brings me the real thing, to read and care for too."
She was evidently preparing to read Flossie as if she had been a new
and beautiful poem.

He was unaware of all this; unaware of everything except the mingled
beatitude and torture of the moment. He sat leaning forward, staring
over his clasped hands at Lucia's feet, where he longed to fall down
and worship. He heard her telling Flossie how glad she was to meet
her; how unexpected was her finding of him here, after fire years; how
five years ago she had known him in Devonshire; and so on. But in his
ears the music of her voice detached itself wholly from the meaning of
her words. Thus he missed the assurance which, if he had only listened
intelligently, they might have had for him; the assurance of an
indestructible friendship that welcomed and enfolded his pretty lady
for his sake.

But whatever her almost joyous acceptance of the pretty lady promised
for the future, it could not be said that, conversationally, Lucia was
getting on very fast with Flossie in the present; and Rickman's
abstraction did not make things easier. Therefore she was a little
relieved when Miss Roots joined them, and Rickman, startled into
consciousness, got up and left the room. He feared that lady's
sympathy and shrewdness. Nothing could be hidden from her clever eyes.

And now, perceiving that the conversation flagged, Miss Roots
endeavoured to support it.

"Have you seen _Metropolis_?" she asked in her tired voice.

Lucia shook her head. "I don't know that I want to see it."

"You'd better not say so before Miss Walker."

"Oh, never mind me," said Miss Walker. "I haven't been yet. Is it
good?"

"Some people seem to think so. It depends."

"Yes; there's such a difference in the way they put them on the stage,
too."

Miss Roots' face relaxed, and her fatigued intelligence awoke.

"Who's on in it?" asked Flossie, happy and unconscious; and the spirit
of mischief seized upon Miss Roots.

"I can't tell you. I'm not well posted in these things. But I think
you'd better not ask Mr. Rickman to take you to see _Metropolis_."

Flossie was mystified, and a little indignant. If the play was so
improper, why had Miss Roots taken for granted that she had seen it?

"That wasn't at all nice of her, was it?" said Lucia, smiling as Miss
Roots went away. Her look was a healing touch laid on Flossie's
wounded vanity. "That's the sort of little trap she used to lay for
me."

"I suppose you mean she was rotting me. I always know when other
people are rotting. But that's the worst of her; you never can tell,
and she makes you look so ignorant, doesn't she?"

"She makes me _feel_ ignorant, but that's another thing."

"But whatever did she mean just now?"

"Just now she meant that you knew all about _Metropolis_."

"Why should I? Do _you_ know anything about it?"

"Not much; though it is my cousin's paper. But as Mr. Rickman writes
for it, you see--"

"Well, how was I to know that? He's always writing for something; and
he'd never think of coming to _me_ every time. I never talk shop to
him, and he never talks shop to me. Of course he told me that he'd got
on to some better paying thing," she added, anxious to show that she
was not shut out from the secrets of his heart; "but when you said
_Metropolis_ I didn't take it in."

Lucia made no further attempt to converse. She said good-night and
followed Sophie Roots to her tiny room.

"That was rather dreadful," she said to herself. "I wonder--" But if
she did not linger long over her wondering neither did she stop to
find out why she was so passionately anxious to think well of the
woman who was to be Keith Rickman's wife, and why it was such a relief
to her to be angry with Sophie for teasing the poor child.




CHAPTER LV


He asked himself how it was that he had had no premonition of the
thing that was about to happen to him; that the supreme moment should
have come upon him so casually and with so light a step; that he went
to meet it in a mood so commonplace and unprepared? (Good Heavens! He
remembered that he had been eating pea soup at the time, and wishing
it were artichoke.)

Had he not known that she would come back again, and in just that way?
Had he not looked for her coming five years ago? And what were five
years, after all? How was it that he had heard no summons of the
golden and reverberant hour?

And what was he going to do with it, or it with him, now that it had
come? That was a question that he preferred to leave unanswered for
the present.

It seemed that Lucia was going to stay for a week as Miss Roots'
guest; and it was Mrs. Downey's hope that she would be with them for a
much longer period on her own account. This hope Rickman judged to be
altogether baseless; she would never be able to bear the place for
more than a week. He inquired of Miss Roots early the next morning on
this subject; and at the same time he found out from her what Lucia
had been doing in the last five years. She had not been (as Jewdwine
had allowed him to suppose) abroad all the time with Kitty Palliser.
She had only lived with Miss Palliser in the holidays. The rest of the
year, of the five years, she had been working for her living as music
mistress in a Women's College somewhere in the south of England. To
his gesture of horror Miss Roots replied that this was by no means the
hideous destiny he conceived it to be.

"But--for _her_--" he exclaimed.

"And why not for her?" Miss Roots, B.A., retorted, stung by his
undisguised repugnance. If Lucia _had_ got her post merely by interest
(which Miss Roots seemed to consider as something of a blot on her
career) at the end of her first year she had the pick of the students
waiting for her. Unfortunately Lucia had never been strong; and this
summer her health had completely broken down.

At that he shuddered, and turned abruptly away. Miss Roots looked at
him and wondered why. When he approached her again it was to offer
her, with every delicacy and hesitation, the loan of his study for the
time of Miss Harden's visit. This was not an easy thing to do; but he
was helped by several inspirations. The room, he said, was simply
standing empty all day. He had hardly any use for it now. He would be
kept busy at the office up to the time of his marriage. And he thought
it would be a little more comfortable for Miss Harden than the public
drawing-room.

"I want," he said (lying with a certain splendour), "to pay some
attention to her. You see, she's my editor's cousin--"

Miss Roots turned on him a large look that took him in, his monstrous
mendacity and all. But she nodded as much as to say that the
explanation passed.

"One hardly likes to think of her, you know, sitting in the same room
with Soper."

"We all have to put up with Mr. Soper."

"Yes; but if she isn't strong, she ought to have some place where she
can be alone and rest. Besides, it'll be nicer for _you_. You'll see a
great deal more of her, you know, that way."

In the end the offer was accepted. For, as Miss Roots pointed out to
her friend, it would give him far more pleasure to lend his room than
to sit in it himself.

Certainly it gave him pleasure, a thrilling, subtle, and perfidious
pleasure, every time that he thought of Lucia occupying his room. But
before she could be allowed to enter, he caused it to be thoroughly
cleansed, and purified as far as possible from the tobacco smoke that
lingered in the curtains and the armchairs. He tidied it up with his
own hands, removing or concealing the unlovelier signs of his
presence and profession. He bought several cushions (silk and down)
for the sofa, and a curtain for the door to keep out the draught, and
a soft rug for Lucia's feet; also a tea-table, a brass kettle and a
spirit lamp, and flowers in an expensive pot. He did things to them to
make them look as if they had been some little time in use. He caused
a wrinkle to appear in the smooth blue cheeks of the sofa cushions. He
rubbed some of the youth off the edges of the tea-table. He made the
brass kettle dance lightly on the floor, until, without injury to its
essential beauty, it had acquired a look of experience. It was the
deceit involved in these proceedings that gave him the first clear
consciousness of guilt. He persuaded himself that all these articles
would come in nicely for the little house at Ealing, then remembered
that he had provided most of them already.

In doubt as to the propriety of these preparations, he again
approached Miss Roots. "I say," said he, "you needn't tell her all
these things are mine. I'm going to leave them here in case she wants
to stay on afterwards. She won't have to pay so much then, you know."
He hesitated. "Do you think that's a thing that can be done?"

"Oh yes, it can be done," she replied with an unmistakable emphasis.

"But I mayn't do it? Mayn't I? It's all right if she doesn't know, you
know."

Miss Roots said nothing; but he gathered that she would not betray
him, that she understood.

He could not explain matters half so clearly to himself. He might have
wanted to lend his study to his friend's cousin; he certainly did want
to lend it to Lucia for her own sake; but besides these very proper
and natural desires he had other motives which would not bear too
strict examination. Lucia sitting in the same room with Mr. Soper was
not a spectacle that could be calmly contemplated; but he hoped that
by providing her with a refuge from Mr Soper he might induce her to
stay till the moment of his own departure. And there was another
selfish consideration. It was impossible to see her, to talk to her
with any pleasure in the public drawing-room. Lucia could not come
into his study as long as it was his; but if he gave it up to her and
her friend, it was just possible that he might be permitted to call on
her there. That she accepted him as a friend he could not any longer
doubt. There were so many things that he had to say to her, such long
arrears of explanation and understanding to make up. He could see
that, unlike the Lucia he used to know, she had misunderstood him;
indeed she had owned as much. And for this he had to thank Horace
Jewdwine.

Jewdwine's behaviour gave him much matter for reflection, painful, but
instructive. Jewdwine had not lied to him about Lucia's movements; but
he had allowed him to remain in error. He had kept his cousin
regularly posted in the news she had asked for, as concerning an
unfortunate young man in whom they were both interested; but he had
contrived that no sign of her solicitude should reach the object of
it. It was as if he had been merely anxious to render an account of
his stewardship; to assure her that the unfortunate young man was now
prospering under his protection, was indeed doing so well that there
was no occasion for Lucia to worry herself about him any more.
Apparently he had even gone so far as to admit that there was
friendship between Rickman and himself, while taking care that there
should never be anything of the sort between Rickman and Lucia. He had
constituted himself a way by which news of Rickman might reach Lucia;
but he had sternly closed every path from Lucia to Rickman. That meant
that Lucia might be depended upon; but that Rickman must be allowed no
footing lest he should advance too far. In other words it meant that
they acknowledged, and always would acknowledge, the genius while they
judged it expedient to ignore the man.

But _she_ had not always ignored him. Did it not rather mean, then,
that Jewdwine would not trust her there; that, knowing her nature and
how defenceless it lay before the impulses of its own kindness, he
feared for her any personal communication with his friend? It did not
occur to Rickman that what Jewdwine dreaded more than anything for
Lucia was the influence of a unique and irresistible personal charm.
As far as he could see, Jewdwine was merely desperately anxious to
protect his kinswoman from what he considered an undesirable
acquaintance. And five years ago his fears and his behaviour would
have been justifiable; for Rickman owned that at that period he had
not been fit to sit in the same room with Lucia Harden, far less, if
it came to that, than poor Soper. But his life since he had known her
was judged even by Jewdwine to be irreproachable. As Rickman
understood the situation, he had been sacrificed to a prejudice, a
convention, an ineradicable class-feeling on the part of the
distinguished and fastidious don. It was not the class-feeling itself
that he resented; he could have forgiven Jewdwine a sentiment over
which he had apparently no control; he could have forgiven him
anything, even his silence and his subterfuge, if he had only
delivered Lucia's messages. That was an unpardonable cruelty. It was
like holding back a cup of water from a man dying of thirst. He had
consumed his heart with longing for some word or sign from her; he had
tortured himself with his belief in her utter repudiation of him; and
Jewdwine, who had proof of the contrary, had abandoned him to his
belief. He could only think that, after taking him up so gently, Lucia
had dropped him and left him where he fell. He owned that Jewdwine was
not bound to tell him that Lucia had returned to England, or to
provide against any false impression he might form as to her
whereabouts; and it was not there, of course, that the cruelty came
in. He could have borne the sense of physical separation if, instead
of being forced to infer her indifference from her silence, he had
known that her kind thoughts had returned to him continually; if he
had known that whatever else had been taken from him, he had kept her
friendship. Her friendship--it was little enough compared with what he
wanted--but it had already done so much for him that he knew what he
could have made of it, if he had only been certain that it was his. He
could have lived those five years on the memory of her, as other men
live on hope; sustained by the intangible but radiant presence, by
inimitable, incommunicable ardours, by immaterial satisfactions and
delights. If they had not destroyed all bodily longing, they would at
least have made impossible its separation from her and transference to
another woman. They would have saved him from this base concession to
the folly of the flesh, this marriage which, as its hour approached,
seemed to him more inevitable and more disastrous. Madness lay in the
thought that his deliverance had been near him on the very day when he
fixed that hour; and that at no time had it been very far away. No;
not when two years ago he had stood hesitating on the edge of the
inexpiable, immeasurable folly; the folly that had received, engulfed
him now beyond deliverance and return. If only he had known; if he
could have been sure of her friendship; if he could have seen her for
one moment in many months, one hour in many years, the thing would
never have begun; or, being begun, could never have been carried
through.