"'E never 'ad no truck with me," she said. It struck Maddox that the
denial had a sublimity and pathos of its own. She dropped the bag into
her lean bosom and went out.

And the porters wrapped him in his blankets, and laid him on a
stretcher, and carried him out; past Maddox and Rankin who turned
their heads away; past Flossie who shrank a little from the blankets,
but cried softly to see him go; and past the woman standing on her
threshold. And in that manner he passed Horace Jewdwine coming up the
stair too late. And all that Jewdwine could do was to stand back and
let him pass.

It was Jewdwine's fear that made him uncover, as in the presence of
the dead.




CHAPTER LXXIII


When Rankin, Maddox and Jewdwine stood alone in the garret whence they
had seen Rickman carried away from them, remorse drove all hope of his
recovery from their hearts. They learnt some of the truth about him
from the woman in the next room, a keen observer of human nature.
Jewdwine and Rankin, when they too had paid her for her services, were
glad to escape from the intolerable scene. Maddox stayed behind,
collecting what he could only think of as Rickman's literary remains.

He found in the table drawer three unpublished articles, a few poems,
and the First Act of the second and unfinished tragedy, saved by its
obscure position at the back of the drawer. The woman owned to having
lit the fire with the rest. Maddox cursed and groaned as he thought of
that destruction. He knew that many poems which followed _Saturnalia_
had remained unpublished. Had they too been taken to light the fire?
He turned the garret upside down in search of the missing manuscripts.
At last in a cupboard, he came upon a leather bag. It was locked and
he could find no key, but he wrenched it open with the poker. It
contained many manuscripts; among them the Nine and Twenty Sonnets,
and the testament concerning them. He read the Sonnets, but not the
other document which was in a sealed envelope. He found also a bundle
of Dicky Pilkington's receipts and his last letter threatening
foreclosure. And when he had packed up the books (Lucia's books) and
redeemed Rickman's clothes from the pawn-shop, he took all these
things away with him for safety.

There was little he could do for Rickman, but he promised himself the
pleasure of settling Dicky's claim. But even that satisfaction was
denied him. For Dicky had just renewed his bill for a nominal three
months. Nominal only. Dicky had in view a magnificent renunciation,
and he flatly refused to treat with Maddox or anybody else. He was
completely satisfied with this conclusion; it meant that Rickman, for
all his style and pluck, had lost the game and that he, Pilkington,
had done the handsome thing, as he could do it when the fancy took
him. For Dicky's heart had been touched by the tale that Poppy told
him, and it melted altogether when he went and saw for himself poor
Ricky lying in his cot in the North-Western Hospital. He had a great
deal of nice feeling about him after all, had Dicky.

Terrible days followed Rickman's removal to the hospital; days when
his friends seemed justified in their sad conviction; days when the
doctors gave up hope; days when he would relapse after some brief
recovery; days when he kept them all in agonizing suspense.

But Rickman did not die. As they said, it was not in him to take that
exquisitely mean revenge. It was not in him to truckle to the
tradition that ordains that unfortunate young poets shall starve in
garrets and die in hospitals. He had always been an upsetter of
conventions, and a law unto himself. So there came a day, about the
middle of March, when he astonished them all by appearing among them
suddenly in Maddox's rooms, less haggard than he had been that night
when he sat starving at Rankin's dinner-table.

And as he came back to them, to Jewdwine, to Maddox and to Rankin,
they each could say no more to him than they had said five years ago.
"What a fool you were, Rickman. Why didn't you come to _me_?" But when
the others had left, Maddox put his hands on Rickman's shoulders and
they looked each other in the face.

"I say, Ricky, what did you do it for?"

But that was more than Rickman could explain, even to Maddox.

They had all contended which should receive him when he came out of
hospital; but it was settled that for the present he should remain
with Maddox in his rooms. There Dicky, absolutely prepared to do the
handsome thing, called upon him at an early date. Dicky had promised
himself some exquisite sensations in the moment of magnanimity; but
the moment never came. Rickman remained firm in his determination that
every shilling of the debt should be paid and paid by him; it was more
than covered by the money Maddox advanced for his literary remains.
Dicky had to own that the plucky little fellow had won his game, but
he added, "You couldn't have done it, Razors, if I hadn't given you
points."

The great thing was that he had done it, and that the Harden library
was his, was Lucia's. It only remained to tell her, and to hand it
over to her. He had long ago provided for this difficult affair. He
wrote, as he had planned to write, with a judicious hardness, brevity
and restraint. He told her that he desired to see her on some business
connected with the Harden library, in which he was endeavouring to
carry out as far as possible his father's last wishes. He asked to be
allowed to call on her some afternoon in the following week. He
thanked her for her letter without further reference, and he
remained--"sincerely"? No, "faithfully" hers.

He told Maddox that he thought of going down to Devonshire to recruit.




CHAPTER LXXIV


Lucia was suffering from the disagreeable strain of a divided mind. To
begin with she was not altogether pleased with Mr. Rickman. He had
taken no notice of the friendly little letter she had written about
the Elegy, her evident intention being to give him pleasure. She had
written it on impulse, carried away by her ardent admiration. That was
another of those passionate indiscreet things, which were followed by
torments of her pride. And the torments had followed. His two months'
silence had reproved her ardour, had intimated to her that he was in
no mood to enter in at the door which she had closed to him three
years ago. She took it that he had regarded her poor little olive
branch as an audacity. And now that he _had_ written there was not a
word about the subject of her letter. He had only written because
business compelled him, and his tone was not only cold, but positively
austere.

But, she reflected, business after all did not compel him to come down
and see her. Having reached this point she became aware that her heart
was beating most uncomfortably at the bare idea of seeing him. For the
first time this anticipation inspired her with anxiety and fear. Until
their last meeting in Tavistock Place there had been in all their
intercourse something intangible and rare, something that, though on
her part it had lacked the warmth of love, she had acknowledged to be
finer than any friendship. That beautiful intangible quality had
perished in the stress of their final meeting. And even if it came to
life again it could never be the same, or so she thought. She had
perceived how much its permanence had depended on external barriers,
on the social gulf, and on the dividing presence of another woman. She
could not separate him from his genius; and his genius had long ago
overleapt the social gulf. And now, without poor Flossie, without the
safeguard of his engagement, she felt herself insecure and
shelterless. More than ever since he had overleapt that barrier too.

But though Lucia had found out all these things, she had not yet found
out why it was that she had been so glad to hear that Keith Rickman
was going to be married, nor why she had been so passionately eager to
keep him to his engagement. In any case she could not have borne to be
the cause of unhappiness to another woman; and that motive was so
natural that it served for all.

As things had turned out, if he had married, that, she had understood,
would have been such a closing of the door as would have shut him out
for ever. And now that he was knocking at the door again, now that
there was no reason why, once opened, it should not remain open, she
began to be afraid of what might enter in with him. She made up her
mind that she would not let him in. So she sat down and wrote a cold
little note to say that she was afraid she would not be able to see
him next week. Could he not explain the business in writing? She took
that letter to the post herself. And as each step brought her nearer
to the inevitable act, the conviction grew on her that this conduct of
hers was cowardly, and unworthy both of him and of herself. A refusal
to see him was a confession of fear, and fear assumed the existence of
the very thing his letter had ignored. It was absurd too, if he had
come to see that his feeling for her was (as she persisted in
believing it to be) a piece of poetic folly, an illusion of the
literary imagination. She turned back and tore up that cold little
note, and wrote another that said she would be very glad to see him
any day next week, except Friday. There was no reason why she should
have excepted Friday; but it sounded more business-like somehow.

She did not take Kitty into her confidence, and in this she failed to
perceive the significance of her own secrecy. She told herself that
there was no need to ask Kitty's advice, because she knew perfectly
well already what Kitty's advice would be.

He came on Tuesday. Monday was too early for his self-respect,
Wednesday too late for his impatience. He had looked to find
everything altered in and about Court House; and he saw, almost with
surprise, the same April flowers growing in the green garden, and the
same beech-tree dreaming on the lawn. He recognized the black rifts in
its trunk and the shining sweep of its branches overhead. The door was
opened by Robert, and Robert remembered him. There was a shade more
gravity in the affectionate welcome, but then Robert was nine years
older. He was shown into the drawing-room, and it, too, was much as he
had left it nine years ago.

Kitty Palliser was there; she rose to meet him with her irrepressible
friendliness, undiminished by nine years. There was nothing cold and
business-like about Kitty.

"Will you tell Miss Harden?" said she to the detached, retreating
Robert. Then she held out her hand. "I am very glad to see you." But a
wave of compassion rather than of gladness swept over her face as she
looked at him. She made him sit down, and gave him tea. There was a
marked gentleness in all her movements, unlike the hilarious lady she
used to be.

The minutes went by and Lucia did not appear. He could not attend to
what Kitty was saying. His eyes were fixed on the door that looked as
if it were never going to open. Kitty seemed to bear tenderly with his
abstraction. Once he glanced round the room, recognizing familiar
objects. He had expected, after Dicky's descent on Court House, to
find nothing recognizable in it. Kitty was telling him how an uncle of
hers had lent them the house for a year, how he had bought it
furnished, and how, but for the dismantled library and portrait
gallery, it was pretty much as it had been in Miss Harden's time. So
unchanged was it and its atmosphere that Rickman felt himself in the
presence of a destiny no less unchanging and familiar. He had come on
business as he had done nine years ago; and he felt that the events of
that time must in some way repeat themselves, that when he was alone
with Lucia he would say to her such things as he had said before, that
there would be differences, misunderstandings, as before, and that his
second coming would end in misery and separation like the first. It
seemed to him that Kitty, kind Kitty, had the same perception and
foreboding. Thus he interpreted her very evident compassion. She meant
to console him.

"Robert remembers you," said she.

"That's very clever of Robert," said he.

"No, it's only his faithfulness. What a funny thing faithfulness is.
Robert won't allow any one but Miss Harden to be mistress here. My
people are interlopers, abominations of desolation. He can barely be
civil to their friends. But to hers--he is as you see him. It's a good
thing for me I'm her friend, or he wouldn't let me sit here and pour
out tea for you."

He thought over the speech. It admitted an encouraging interpretation.
But Miss Palliser may have been more consoling than she had meant.

She rattled on in the kindness of her heart. He was grateful for her
presence; it calmed his agitation and prepared him to meet Lucia with
composure when she came. But Lucia did not come; and he began to have
a horrible fear that at the last moment she would fail him. He refused
the second cup that Kitty pressed on him, and she looked at him
compassionately again. He was so used to his appearance that he had
forgotten how it might strike other people. He was conscious only of
Kitty's efforts to fill up agreeably these moments of suspense.

At last it ended. Lucia was in the doorway. At the sight of her his
body shook and the strength in his limbs seemed to dissolve and flow
downwards to the floor. His eyes never left her as she came to him
with her rhythmic unembarrassed motion. She greeted him as if they had
met the other day; but as she took his hand she looked down at it,
startled by its slenderness. He was glad that she seated herself on
his right, for he felt that the violence of his heart must be audible
through his emaciated ribs.

Kitty made some trivial remark, and Lucia turned to her as if her
whole soul hung upon Kitty's words. Her absorption gave him time to
recover himself. (It did not occur to him that that was what she had
turned away for.) Her turning enabled him to look at her. He noticed
that she seemed in better health than when he had seen her last, and
that in sign of it her beauty was stronger, more vivid and more
defined.

They said little to each other. But when Kitty had left them they drew
in their chairs to the hearth with something of the glad consent of
those for whom the long-desired moment has arrived. He felt that old
sense of annihilated time, of return to a state that had never really
lapsed; and it struck him that she, too, had that feeling. It was she
who spoke first.

"Before you begin your business, tell me about yourself."

"There isn't anything to tell."

She looked as if she rather doubted the truth of that statement.

"If you don't mind, I'd rather begin about the business and get it
over."

"Why, is it--is it at all unpleasant?"

He smiled. "Not in the least, not in the very least. It's about the
library."

"I thought we'd agreed that that was all over and done with long ago?"

"Well, you see, it hasn't anything to do with _us_. My father--"

"Don't let us go back to that."

"I'm sorry, but we must--a little. You know my father and I had a
difference of opinion?"

"I know--I know."

"Well, in the end he owned that I was right. That was when he was
dying."

He wished she would not look at him; for he could not look at her. He
was endeavouring to make his tale appear in the last degree natural
and convincing. Up till now he had told nothing but the truth, but as
he was about to enter on the path of perjury he became embarrassed by
the intentness of her gaze.

"You were with him?" she asked.

"Yes." He paused a moment to command a superior kind of calm. That
pause wrecked him, for it gave her also time for thought. "He wanted
either to pay you the money that you should have had, or to hand over
the library; and I thought--"

"But the library was sold?"

He explained the matter of the mortgage, carefully, but with an amount
of technical detail meant to impose and mystify.

"Then how," she asked, "was the library redeemed?"

He repudiated an expression so charged with moral and emotional
significance. He desired to lead her gently away from a line of
thought that if pursued would give her intelligence the clue. "You
can't call it redeemed. Nobody redeemed it. The debt, of course, had
to be paid out of my father's estate."

"In which case the library became yours?"

He smiled involuntarily, for she had him there, and she knew it.

"It became nothing of the sort, and if it had I could hardly go
against my father's wishes by holding on to it."

"Can't you see that it's equally impossible for me to take it?"

"Why? Try and think of it as a simple matter of business."

He spoke like a tired man, straining after a polite endurance of her
feminine persistence and refining fantasy. "It hasn't anything to do
with you or me."

Thus did he turn against her the argument with which she had crushed
him in another such dispute nine years ago.

"I am more business-like than you are. I remember perfectly well that
your father paid more than a thousand pounds for those books in the
beginning."

"That needn't trouble you. It has been virtually deducted. I'm sorry
to say a few very valuable books were sold before the mortgage and
could not be recovered."

He had given himself away by that word "recovered." Her eyes searched
him through and through to find his falsehood, as they had searched
him once before to find his truth. "It is very, very good of you," she
said.

"Of _me_? Am _I_ bothering you? Don't think of me except as my
father's executor."

"Did you know that he wanted you to do this, or did you only think it?
Was it really his express wish?"

He looked her in the face and lied boldly and freely. "It was.
Absolutely."

And as she met that look, so luminously, so superlatively sincere, she
knew that he had lied. "All the same," said she, "I can't take it.
Don't think it unfriendly of me. It isn't. In fact, don't you see it's
just because we have been--we are--friends that I must refuse it? I
can't take advantage of that"--she was going to say "feeling," but
thought better of it.

"And don't you see by refusing you are compelling me to be
dishonourable? If you were really my friend you would think more of my
honour than of your own scruples. Or is that asking too much?" He felt
that he had scored in this game of keen intelligences.

"No. But it would be wrong of me to let your honour be influenced by
our friendship."

"Don't think of our friendship, then. It's all pure business, as
brutally impersonal as you like."

"If I could only see it that way."

"I should have thought it was quite transparently and innocently
clear." He had scored again. For now he had taxed her with stupidity.
"If I could persuade you that it came from my father, you wouldn't
mind. You mind because you think it comes from me. Isn't that so?"

She was silent, and he knew.

"How can I persuade you? I can only repeat that I've absolutely
nothing to do with it." There was but little friendliness about him
now. His whole manner was full of weariness and irritation. "Why
should you imagine that I had?"

"Because it would have been so very like you."

"Then I must be lying abominably. Is that so very like me?"

"I have heard you do it before--once--twice--magnificently."

"When?"

"About this time nine years ago."

He remembered. The wonder was that she should have remembered too.

"I daresay. But what possible motive could I have for lying now?"

He had scored heavily this time. Far too heavily. There was a flame in
Lucia's face which did not come from the glow of the fire, a flame
that ran over her neck and forehead to the fine tips of her ears. For
she thought, supposing all the time he had been telling her the simple
truth? Why should she have raised that question? Why should she have
taken for granted that any personal interest should have led him to
do this thing? And in wondering she was ashamed. He saw her confusion,
and attributed it to another cause.

"I'm only asking you to keep the two things distinct, as I do--as I
must do," he said gently.

"I'll think about it, and let you know to-morrow."

"But I'm going to-night."

"Oh no, I can't let you do that. You must stay over the night. Your
room is ready for you."

He protested; she insisted; and in the end she had her way, as he
meant to have his way to-morrow.

He stayed, and all that evening they were very kind to him. Kitty
talked gaily throughout dinner; and afterwards Lucia played to him
while he rested, propped up with great cushions (she had insisted on
the cushions) in her chair. Kitty, his hostess, drew back, and seemed
to leave these things to Lucia as her right. He knew it was Lucia, and
not Kitty, who ran up to his room to see that all was comfortable and
that his fire burnt well. In everything she said and did there was a
peculiar gentleness and care. It was on the same lines as Kitty's
compassion, only more poignant and intense. It was, he thought, as if
she knew that it was for the last time, that of all these pleasant
things to-morrow would see the end. Was it kind of her to let him know
what her tenderness could be when to-morrow must end it all? For he
had no notion of the fear evoked by his appearance, the fear that was
in both their hearts. He did not know why they looked at him with
those kind glances, nor why Lucia told him that Robert was close at
hand if he should want anything in the night. He slept in the room
that had once been Lucia's, the room above the library, looking to the
western hills. He did not know that they had given it him because it
was a good room to be ill and to get well in.

Lucia and Kitty sat up late that night over the fire, and they talked
of him.

Kitty began it. "_Do_ you remember," said she, "the things we used to
say about him?"

"Oh don't, Kitty; I do."

"You needn't mind; it was only I who said them."

"Yes, you said them; but I thought them."

Then she told Kitty what had brought him there and the story that he
had told her. "And, Kitty, all the time I knew he lied."

"Probably. You must take it, Lucy, all the same."

"How can I take it, when I know it comes out of his own poor little
waistcoat pocket?"

"You would, if you cared enough about him."

"No. It's just _because_ I care that I can't."

"You do care, then?"

"Yes, of course I do."

"But not in the same way as _he_ cares, Lucy."

Kitty's words sounded like a statement rather than a question, so they
passed unanswered.

"It's all right, Kitty. It's all over, at last. He doesn't care a bit
now, not a bit."

"Oh doesn't he! How can you be so idiotic? All over? I assure you it's
only just begun."

Lucia turned her head away.

"Lucy--what are you going to do with him?"

Lucia smiled sadly. That was the question she had asked Horace ten
years ago, making him responsible. And now the responsibility had been
laid on her. "Kitty--did you notice how thin he is? He looks as if
he'd just come through some awful illness. But I can't ask him about
it."

"Rather not. You don't know whether he's had it, or whether he's going
to have it."

"I wonder if you'd mind asking him to stay a week or two? It might
help him to get strong."

"I doubt it."

"I don't. I think it's just what he wants. Oh, Kitty, could you--would
you, if I wanted it, too?"

"You needn't ask. But what earthly good can it do?"

"If he got strong here it would be so nice to think we sent him away
well. And if he's going to be ill I could look after him--"

Her use of "we" and "I" did not pass unnoticed by the observant Kitty.

"And then?"

Lucia's face, which had been overcast with care, was now radiant.
"Then I should have done something for him besides making him
miserable. Will you ask him, Kitty?"

"You're a fool, Lucy, and I'm another. But I'll ask him. To-morrow,
though; not to-day."

She waited to see what to-morrow would bring forth, for she was
certain it would bring forth something.

It brought forth glorious weather after the east wind, a warm languid
day, half spring, half summer. Lucia and Kitty seemed bent on putting
all idea of business out of their guest's head. In the morning they
drove about the country. In the afternoon they all sat out in the
south square under the windows of the morning-room, while Lucia talked
to him about his tragedies. Kitty still held her invitation in
reserve.

At last she left them to themselves. It was Lucia who first returned
to the subject of dispute. She had some sewing in her lap which gave
her the advantage of being able to talk in a calm, detached manner and
without looking up. He sat near her, watching with delight the quiet
movements of her hands.

"I've been thinking over what you said yesterday," said she. "I can't
do what you want; but I can suggest a compromise. You seem determined
on restitution. Have you forgotten that you once offered it me in
another form?"

"You refused it in that form--then."

"I wouldn't refuse it now. If you could be content with that."

"Do you remember why you refused it?"

She did not answer, but a faint flush told him that she had not
forgotten.

"The same objection--the same reason for objecting--holds good now."

"Not quite. I should not be wronging any one else."

"You mean the Beaver, who dotes upon immortal verse?"

She smiled a little sadly. "Yes; there's no Beaver in the question
now."

"You shall have the sonnets in any case. I brought them for you in
place of the _Aurea Legenda_, and the Neapolitan Horace and--"

She lay back in her chair and closed her eyes, as if she could shut
out sound with sight. "Please--please. If you go on talking about it
we shall both be very tired. Don't you feel as if you'd like some
tea?" She was bringing out all her feminine reserves to conquer him.
But he was not going to be conquered this time. He could afford to
wait; for he also had reserves.

"I'm so sorry," he said humbly. "I won't bore you any more till after
tea."

And Lucia knew it was an armistice only and not peace.

At tea-time Kitty perceived that the moment was not yet propitious for
her invitation. She was not even sure that it would ever come. Nor
would it; for Rickman knew that his only chance lay in their imminent
parting, in the last hour that must be his.

He was counting on it when the steady, resistless flow of a stream of
callers cut short his calculations. It flowed between him and Lucia.
They could only exchange amused or helpless glances across it now and
then. At last he found a moment and approached her.

"I wanted to give you those things before I go."

"Very well. We'll go into the house in one minute."

He waited. She made a sign that said, "Come," and he followed her. She
avoided the morning-room that looked on the courtyard with its throng
of callers; hesitated, and opened the door into the library. He ran
upstairs to fetch the manuscript, and joined her there. But for the
empty bookshelves this room, too, was as he had left it.

Lucia was sitting in a window seat. He came to her and gave the poems
into her open hands, and she thanked him.

"Nonsense. It's good of you to take them. But that doesn't release you
from your obligations."

She laid the manuscript on the window-seat, protected by her hand. He
sat there facing her, and for a moment neither spoke.

"I haven't very much time," he said at last. "I've got to catch the
seven-forty."

"You haven't. We don't want you to go like this. Now you're here you
must stay a fortnight at the very least."

He hung his head. He did not want her to see how immense was the
temptation. He murmured some half-audible, agitated thanks, but his
refusal was made quite plain. He could not give up the advantage he
had counted on. "I'm afraid I must bore you again a little now. I've
only got an hour."

"Don't spoil it, then. See how beautiful it is."

She rose and threw open the lattice, and they stood together for a
moment looking out. It was about an hour before sunset, an April
sunset, the golden consummation of the wedding of heaven and earth. He
felt a delicate vibration in the air, the last tender resonance of the
nuptial song. This April was not the April of the streets where the
great wooing of the world goes on with violence and clangour; for the
city is earth turned to stone and yields herself struggling and
unwilling to the invasion of the sky. Here all the beautiful
deep-bosomed land lay still, breathless in her escape from the wind to
the sun. Up the western valley the earth gave all her greenness naked
to the light; but the hills were dim with the divine approaches of her
mystical union, washed by the undivided streams of blue and purple air
that flowed to the thin spiritual verge, where earth is caught up and
withdrawn behind heaven's inmost veil.

The hour was beautiful as she had said. Its beauty had clothed itself
with immortality in light; yet there was in it such mortal tenderness
as drew his heart after it and melted his will in longing. He turned
from the window and looked at her with all his trouble in his eyes.

Lucia saw that her words had saddened him, and she sat still, devising
some comfort for him in her heart.

"I don't think," he said at last, "you quite know what you are doing.
I'm going to tell you something that I didn't mean to tell you. When I
said I'd had nothing to do with all this, it wasn't altogether true."

"So I supposed," she murmured.

"There was a--a certain amount of trouble and difficulty about it--"

"And what did that mean?"

"It only meant that I had to work rather hard to put it right. I liked
it, so you needn't think anything of that. But if you persist in your
refusal all my hard work goes for nothing." He was so powerless
against her tender obstinacy that he had determined to appeal to her
tenderness alone. "There were about three years of it, the best three
years out of my life; and you are going to fling them away and make
them useless. All for a little wretched scruple. This is the only
argument that will appeal to you; or I wouldn't have mentioned it."

"The best years out of your life--why were they the best?"

"Because they were the first in which I was free."

She thought of the time nine years ago when she had taken from him
three days, the only days when he was free, and how she had tried to
make restitution and had failed. "And whatever else I refuse," she
said, "I've taken _them_? I can't get out of that?"

"No. If you want to be very cruel you can say I'd no business to lay
you under the obligation, but you can't get out of it."

She looked away. Did she want to be very cruel? Did she want to get
out of it? Might it not rather be happiness to be in it, immersed in
it? Lost in it, with all her scruples and all her pride?

His voice broke and trembled into passion. "And what is it that I'm
asking you to take? Something that isn't mine and _is_ yours;
something that it would be dishonourable of me to keep. But if it
_was_ mine, it would be a little thing compared with what I wanted to
give you and you wouldn't have."

Her hands in her distress had fallen to their old unconscious trick of
stroking and caressing the thing they held, the one thing that he had
given her, that she had not refused. His eyes followed her movements.
She looked up and saw the jealous hunger in them.

She saw too, through his loose thin suit, that the lines of his body
were sharper than ever. His face was more than ever serious and clean
cut; his eyes were more than ever sunk under the shadow of his brows,
darkening their blue. He was refined almost to emaciation. And she saw
other things. As he sat there, with one leg crooked over the other,
his wrists stretched out, his hands clasped, nursing his knee, she
noticed that his cuffs, though clean, were frayed; that his coat was
worn in places; that his boots were patched and broken at the sole. He
changed his attitude suddenly when he became aware of her gaze. She
did not know why she had not noticed these details before, nor why she
noticed them now. Perhaps she would not have seen them but for that
attempt to hide them which revealed their significance. She said to
herself, "He is poor; and yet he has done this." And the love that had
been so long hidden, sheltered and protected by her pity, came forth,
and knew itself as love. And she forgot his greatness and remembered
only those pitiful human things in which he had need of her. So she
surrendered.

"I will take everything--on one condition. That you will give me--what
you said just now I wouldn't have." The eyes that she lifted to his
were full of tears.

For one moment he did not understand. Very slowly he realized that the
thing he had dreamed and despaired of, that he dared not ask for, was
being divinely offered to him as a free gift. There was no moment, not
even in that night of his madness, in this room nine years ago, nor in
that other night in Howland Street, when he had desired it as he
desired it now.

Her tears hung curved on the curved lashes of her eyes, and spilt
themselves, and fell one by one on to the pages of the manuscript. He
heard them fall.

Before he let himself be carried away by the sweep of her impulse and
his own passion he saw that not honour but common decency forbade him
to take advantage of a moment's inspired tenderness. He had already
made a slight appeal _ad misericordiam_; but that was for her sake not
his own. He realized most completely his impossible position. He had
no income, and he had damaged his health so seriously that it might be
long enough before he could make one; and these facts he could not
possibly mention. She suspected him of poverty; but the smallest hint
of his real state would have roused her infallible instinct of
divination. He had felt, as her eyes rested on his emaciated body,
that they could see the course of its sufferings, its starvation. He
meant that she should never know what things had happened to him in
Howland Street. His chivalry revolted against the brutality of
capturing her tender heart by such a lacerating haul on its
compassion.

All this swept through him between the falling of her ears. Last of
all came the thought of what he was giving up. Was it possible that
she cared for him?

It could not be. The illusion lasted only for an instant. Yet while it
lasted the insane longing seized him to take her at her word and risk
the consequences. For she would find out afterwards that she had never
loved him; and she would disguise her feeling and he would see through
her disguise. He would know. There could never be any disguise, any
illusion between her and him. But at least he could take her in his
arms and hold her now, while her tears fell; she would be his for this
moment that was now.

He searched her face to see if indeed there had been any illusion.
Through the tears that veiled her eyes he could not see whether it
were love or pity that still shone in them; but because of the tears
he thought it must be pity.

She went on. "You said I had taken the best years of your life--I
would like to give you all mine, instead, such as it is--if you'll
take it."

She said it quietly, so quietly that he thought that she had spoken so
only because she did not love him.

"How can I take it--now, in this way?"

(Her tears stopped falling suddenly.)

"I admit that I made a gross appeal to your pity."

"My pity?"

"Yes, your pity." His words were curt and hard because of the terrible
restraint he had to put upon himself. "I did it because it was the
best argument. Otherwise it would have been abominable of me to have
said those things."

"I wasn't thinking of anything you said, only of what you've done."

"I haven't done much. But tell me the truth. Whether would you rather
I had done it for your sake or for mere honour's sake?"

"I would rather you had done it for honour's sake." She said it out
bravely, though she knew that it was the profounder confession of her
feeling. He, however, was unable to take it that way.

"I thought so," he said. "Well, that _is_ why I did it."

"I see. I wanted to know the truth; and now I know it."

"You don't know half of it--" His passion leapt to his tongue under
the torture, but he held it down. He paused, knowing that this moment
in which he stood was one of those moments which have the spirit and
the power of eternity, and that it was his to save or to destroy it.
So admirable indeed was his control that it had taken their own
significance from his words, and she read into them another meaning.
Her face was white with terror because of the thing she had said; but
she still looked at him without flinching. She hardly realized that he
was going, that he was trying to say good-bye.

"I will take the books--if you can keep them for me a little while."

Some perfect instinct told her that this was the only way of atonement
for her error. He thanked her as if they had been speaking of a
trifling thing.

She rose, holding the manuscript loosely in her clasped hands, and he
half thought that she was going to give it back to him. He took it
from her and threw it on the window-seat, and held her hands together
for an instant in his own. He looked down at them, longing to stoop
and kiss them, but forebore, because of his great love for her, and
let them go. He went out quickly. He had sufficient self-command to
find Kitty and thank her and take his leave.

As the door closed on him Lucia heard herself calling him back, with
what intention she hardly knew, unless it were to return his poems.
"Keith," she said softly--"Keith." But even to her own senses it was
less a name than a sound that began in a sob and ended in a sigh.

Kitty found her standing in the window-place where he had left her.
"Has anything happened?" she asked.

"I asked him to marry me, Kitty, and he wouldn't. That was all."

"Are you sure you did, dear? From the look of him I should have said
it was the other way about."




CHAPTER LXXV


"I don't know what to think of it, Kitty. What do you think?"

"I think you've been playing with fire, dear. With the divine fire.
It's the most dangerous of all, and you've got your little fingers
burnt."

"Like Horace. He once said the burnt critic dreads the divine fire.
I'm not a critic."

"That you most certainly are not."

"Still I used to understand him; and now I can't. I can't make it out
at all."

"There's only one thing," said Kitty, musing till an inspiration came.
"You haven't seen him for more than three years, and you can't tell
what may have happened in between. He _may_ have got entangled with
another woman."

Kitty would not have hazarded this conjecture if she had not believed
it plausible. But she dwelt on it with a beneficent intention. No
other theory, she opined, would so effectually turn and rout the
invading idea of Keith Rickman.

Kitty was for once mistaken in her judgement, not having all the
evidence before her. The details which would have thrown light on the
situation were just those which Lucia preferred to keep to herself.
All that the benevolent Kitty had achieved was to fill her friend's
mind with a new torment. Lucia had dreaded Rickman's coming; she had
lost all sense of security in his presence. Still she had understood
him. And now she felt that her very understanding was at fault; that
something troubled the fine light she had always viewed him in. Was it
possible that she had never really understood?

Close upon Kitty's words there came back to her the tilings that
Edith had said of him, that Horace had hinted; things that he had
confessed to her himself. Was it possible that he was still that sort
of man, the sort that she had vowed she would never marry? He was not
bad; she could not think of him as bad; but was he good? Was he like
her cousin Horace? No; certainly there was not the smallest
resemblance between him and Horace. With Horace she had always
felt--in one way--absolutely secure. If she had ever been uncertain it
had not been with this obscure inexplicable dread.

How was it that she had never felt it before? Never felt it in the
first weeks of their acquaintance, when day after day and evening
after evening she had sat working with him, here, alone? When he had
appeared to her in the first flush of his exuberant youth, transparent
as glass, incapable of reservation or disguise? It was in those days
(he had told her) that he had not been--good. And yet her own vision
of him had never been purer, her divination subtler than then. Even in
that last week, after her terrible enlightenment at Cannes, when she
was ready to suspect every man, even Horace, she had never suspected
him. And in the second period of their friendship, when his character
was ripened and full-grown, when she had lived under the same roof
with him, she had never had a misgiving or a doubt. And now there was
no end to her doubt. She could not tell which was the instinct she
should trust, or whether she were better able to judge him then or
now. What had become of her calm and lucid insight? Of the sympathy in
which they had once stood each transparent to the other.

For that was the worst of it; that he no longer understood her; and
that she had given him cause for misunderstanding (this thought was
beginning to keep her awake at night). She had made it impossible for
him to respect her any more. He had his ideas of what a woman should
and should not do, and he had been horrified at finding her so like,
and oh, so unlike other women (here Lucia's mood rose from misery to
anger). She had thought him finer, subtler than that; but he had
judged her as he judged such women. And she had brought that judgement
on herself.

In an ecstasy of shame she recalled the various episodes of their
acquaintance, from the time when she had first engaged him to work for
her (against his will), to the present intolerable moment. There rose
before her in an awful vision that night when she had found him
sleeping in the library; when she had stayed and risked the chances of
his waking. Well, he could not think any the worse of her for that;
because he had not waked. But she had risked it. The more she thought
of it the more she saw what she had risked. He would always think of
her as a woman who did risky things. Edith had said she had put
herself in his power. She remembered how she had come between him and
the woman whom he would have married but for her; how she had invited
him to sit with her when the Beaver was away. He had liked it, but he
must have had his own opinion of her all the same. That was another of
the risky things. And of course he had taken advantage of it. That was
the very worst of all. He had loved her in his way; she had been one
of a series. Flossie had come before her. And before Flossie? All that
was fine in him had turned against Flossie because of the feeling she
inspired. And it had turned against her.

For now, when he had got over it, had forgotten that he had ever had
that feeling, when all he wanted was to go his own way and let her go
hers, she had tried to force herself upon him (Lucia was unaware of
her violent distortion of the facts). He had come with his simple
honourable desire for reparation; and she had committed _the_
unpardonable blunder--she had mistaken his intentions. And for the
monument and crown of her dishonour, she, Lucia Harden, had proposed
to him and been rejected.

Her misery endured (with some merciful intermissions) for three weeks.
Then Horace Jewdwine wrote and invited himself down for the first
week-end in May.

"_Can_ he come, Kitty?" she asked wearily.

"Of course he can, dear, if you want him,"

"I don't want him; but I don't mind his coming."

Kitty said to herself, "He has an inkling; Edith has been saying
things; and it has brought him to the point." Otherwise she could not
account for such an abrupt adventure on the part of the deliberate
Horace. It was a Wednesday; and he proposed to come on Friday. He
came on Friday. Kitty's observation was on the alert; but it could
detect nothing that first evening beyond a marked improvement in
Horace Jewdwine. With Lucia he was sympathetic, deferential, charming.
He also laid himself out, a little elaborately, to be agreeable to
Kitty.

In the morning he approached Lucia with a gift, brought for her
birthday ("I thought," said Lucia, "he had forgotten that I ever had a
birthday"). It was an early copy of Rickman's tragedy _The Triumph of
Life_, just published. His keen eyes watched her handling it.

"He suspects," thought Kitty, "and he's testing her."

But Lucia's equanimity survived. "Am I to read it now?"

"As you like."

She carried the book up to her own room and did not appear till
lunch-time. In her absence Horace seemed a little uneasy; but he went
on making himself agreeable to Kitty. "He must be pretty desperate,"
thought she, "if he thinks it worth while." Apparently he did think it
worth while, though he allowed no sign of desperation to appear.
Lucia, equally discreet, avoided ostentatious privacy. They sat out
all afternoon under the beechtrees while she read, flaunting _The
Triumph of Life_ in his very eyes. He watched every movement of her
face that changed as it were to the cadence of the verse. It was
always so, he remembered, when she was strongly moved. At last she
finished and he smiled.

"You like your birthday present?"

"Very much. But Horace, he has done what you said was impossible."

"Anybody would have said it was impossible. Modern drama in blank
verse, you know--"

"Yes. It ought to have been all wrong. But because he's both a great
poet and a great dramatist, it's all right, you see. Look," she said,
pointing to a passage that she dared not read. "Those are human
voices. Could anything be simpler and more natural? But it's blank
verse because it couldn't be more perfectly expressed in prose."

"Yes, yes. I wonder how he does it."

"It would have been impossible to anybody else."

"It remains impossible. If it's ever played, it will be played because
of Rickman's stage-craft and inimitable technique, not because of his
blank verse."

She put the book down; took up her work, and said no more. Horace
seemed to have found his answer and to be satisfied. "A fool," thought
Kitty; "but he shall have his chance." So she left them alone together
that evening.

But Jewdwine was very far from being satisfied, either with Lucia or
himself. Lucia had refused to play to him yesterday because she had a
headache; she had refused to walk with him to-day because she was
tired; and to-night she would not sit up to talk to him because she
had another headache. That evening he had all but succumbed to a
terrible temptation. It was so long since he had been alone with
Lucia, and there was something in her face, her dress, her attitude,
that appealed to the authority on Æsthetics. He found himself
wondering how it would be if he got up and kissed her. But just then
Lucia leaned back in her chair, and there was that tired look in her
face which he had come to dread. He thought better of it. If he had
kissed her his sense of propriety would have obliged him to propose to
her and marry her.

He almost wished he had yielded to that temptation, done that
desperate deed. It would have at least settled the question once for
all.

For Jewdwine had found himself a third time at the turning of the
ways. He knew where he was; but not where he was going. It had
happened with Jewdwine as it had with Isaac Rickman; as it happens to
every man bent on serving two masters. He had forbidden his right hand
all knowledge of his left. He lived in two separate worlds. In one,
lit by the high, pure light of the idea, he stood comparatively alone,
cheered in his intellectual solitude by the enthusiasm of his
disciples. For in the minds of a few innocent young men Horace
Jewdwine's reputation remained immortal; and these made a point of
visiting the Master in his house at Hampstead. He allowed the souls of
these innocent young men to appear before him in an undress; for them
he still kept his lamp well trimmed, handing on the sacred
imperishable flame. Some suffered no painful disenchantment for their
pilgrimage; and when the world that knew Jewdwine imparted to them its
wisdom they smiled the mystic smile of the initiated. But many had
become shaken in their faith. One of these, having achieved a little
celebrity, without (as he discovered to his immense astonishment) any
public assistance from the Master, had gone to Rickman and asked him
diffidently for the truth about Jewdwine. Rickman had assured him that
the person in the study, the inspired and inspiring person with the
superhuman insight, who knew your thoughts before you had time to
round your sentence, the person who in that sacred incommunicable
privacy had praised your work, he was the real Jewdwine. "But," he had
added, "everybody can't afford to be himself." And this had been
Jewdwine's own confession and defence.

But now he had gone down into Devonshire, as Rickman had once gone
before him, to find himself. He had returned to Lucia as to his own
purer soul. That night Jewdwine sat up face to face with himself and
all his doubts; his problem being far more complicated than before.
Three years ago it might have been very simply stated. Was he or was
he not going to marry his cousin Lucia? But now, while personal
inclination urged him to marry her, prudence argued that he would do
better to marry a certain cousin of Mr. Fulcher's. His own cousin had
neither money nor position. Mr. Fulcher's cousin had both. Once
married to Miss Fulcher he could buy back Court House, if the
Pallisers would give it up. The Cabinet Minister's cousin was in love
with him, whereas he was well aware that his own cousin was not.

But then he had never greatly desired her to be so.

Jewdwine had neither respect nor longing for Miss Fulcher's passionate
love. To his fragile temperament there was something infinitely more
alluring in Lucia's virginal apathy. Her indifference (which he
confused with her innocence) fascinated him; her reluctance was as a
challenge to his languid blood. He was equally fascinated by her
indifference to the income and position that were his. He admired that
immaculate purity the more because he was not himself in these ways
particularly pure. He loved money and position for their own sakes
and hated himself for loving them. He would have liked to have been
strong enough to despise these things as Lucia had always despised
them. But he did not desire that she should go on despising them, any
more than he desired that her indifference should survive the marriage
ceremony. He pictured with satisfaction her gradual yielding to the
modest luxury he had to offer her, just as he pictured the exquisite
delaying dawn of her wifely ardour.

The truth was he had lived too long with Edith. The instincts of his
nature cried out (as far as anything so well-regulated could be said
to cry out) in the most refined of accents for a wife, for children
and a home. He had his dreams of the holy faithful spouse, a spouse
with great dog-like eyes and tender breast, fit pillow for the head of
a headachy, literary man. Lucia had dog-like eyes, and of her
tenderness he had never had a doubt. He had never forgotten that hot
June day, the year before he left Oxford, when he lay in the hammock
in the green garden and Lucia ministered to him. Before that there was
a blessed Long Vacation when he had over-read himself into a nervous
breakdown, and Lucia had soothed his headaches with the touch of her
gentle hands. For the sake of that touch he would then have borne the
worst headache man ever had.

And now it seemed that it was Lucia that was always having headaches.
He had, in fact, begun to entertain the very gravest anxiety about her
health. Her face and figure had grown thin; they were becoming less
and less like the face and figure of the ideal spouse. Poor Lucia's
arms offered no reliable support for a tired man.

To his annoyance Jewdwine found that he had to breakfast alone with
his hostess, because of Lucia's headache.

"Lucia doesn't seem very strong," he said to Kitty, sternly, as if it
had been Kitty's fault. "Don't you see it?"

"I have seen it for some considerable time."

"She wants rousing."

And Jewdwine, who was himself feeling the need of exercise, roused her
by taking her for a walk up Harcombe Hill. Half-way up she turned a
white face to him, smiling sweetly, sat down on the hillside, and
bent her head upon her knees. He sat beside her and waited for her
recovery with punctilious patience. His face wore an expression of
agonized concern. But she could see that the concern was not there
altogether on her account.

"Don't be frightened, Horace, you won't have to carry me home."

He helped her to her feet, not ungently, and was very considerate in
accommodating his pace to hers, and in reassuring her when she
apologized for having spoilt his morning. And then it was that she
thought of Keith Rickman, of his gentleness and his innumerable acts
of kindness and of care; and she said to herself, "_He_ would not be
impatient with me if I were ill."

She rested in her room that afternoon and Kitty sat with her. Kitty
could not stand, she said, more than a certain amount of Horace
Jewdwine.

"Lucia," she asked suddenly, "if Horace Jewdwine had asked you to
marry him five years ago, would you have had him?"

"I don't know. I don't really know. He's a good man."

"You mean his morals are irreproachable. It's quite easy to have
irreproachable morals if you have the temperament of an iceberg that
has never broken loose from its Pole. Now I call Keith Rickman a
saint, because he could so easily have been the other thing."

Lucia did not respond; and Kitty left her.

Kitty's question had set her thinking. Would she have married Horace
if he had asked her five years ago? Why not? Between Horace and her
there was the bond of kindred and of caste. He was a scholar; he had,
or he once had, a beautiful mind full of noble thoughts of the kind
she most admired. With Horace she would have felt safe from many
things. All his ideas and feelings, all his movements could be relied
on with an absolute assurance of their propriety. Horace would never
do or say anything that could offend her feminine taste. In his love
(she had been certain) there would never be anything painful,
passionate, disturbing. She had dreamed of a love which should be a
great calm light rather than a flame. There was no sort of flame about
Horace. _Was_ Horace a good man? Yes. That is to say he was a moral
man. He would have come to her clean in body and in soul. She had
vowed she would never marry a certain kind of man. And yet that was
the kind of man Keith Rickman had been.

She had further demanded in her husband the finish of the ages. Who
was more finished than Horace? Who more consummately, irreproachably
refined? And yet her heart had grown more tender over Keith Rickman
and his solecisms. And now it beat faster at the very thought of him,
after Horace Jewdwine.

For Horace's coming had brought her understanding of Keith Rickman and
herself. She knew now what had troubled her once clear vision of him.
It was when she had loved him least that she had divined him best.
Hers was not the facile heart that believes because it desires. It
desired because it believed; and now it doubted because its belief was
set so high.

And, knowing that she loved him, she thought of that last day when he
had left her, and how he had taken her hands in his and looked at
them, and she remembered and wondered and had hope.

Then it occurred to her that Horace would be leaving early the next
morning, and that she really ought to go down to the drawing-room and
talk to him.

Again by Kitty's mercy he had been given another chance. He was
softened by a mood of valediction mingled with remorse. He was even
inclined to be a little sentimental. Lucia, because her vision was
indifferent therefore untroubled, could not but perceive the change in
him. His manner had in it something of benediction and something of
entreaty; his spirit brooded over, caressed and flattered hers. He
deplored the necessity for his departure. "_Et ego in Arcadia_"--he
quoted.

"But you'll go away to-morrow and become more--more Metropolitan than
ever."

"Ah, Lucia, can't you leave my poor rag alone? Do you really think so
badly of it?"

"Well, I was prouder of my cousin when he had _The Museion_."

"I didn't ask you what you thought of _me_. Perhaps I'm not very proud
of myself."

"I don't suppose it satisfies your ambition--I should be sorry if it
did."

"My _ambition_? What do you think it was?"

"It was, wasn't it--To be a great critic?"

"It depends on what you call great."

"Well, you came very near it once."

"When?"

"When you were editor of _The Museion_."

He smiled sadly. "The editor of _The Museion_, Lucia, was a very
little man with a very big conceit of himself. I admit he made himself
pretty conspicuous. So does every leader of a forlorn hope."

"Still he led it. What does the editor of _Metropolis_ lead?"

"Public opinion, dear. He has--although you mightn't think
it--considerable power."

Lucia was silent.

"He can make--or kill--a reputation in twenty-four hours."

"Does that satisfy your ambition?"

"Yes. It satisfies my ambition. But it doesn't satisfy me."

"I was afraid it didn't."

"You needn't be afraid, dear; for you know perfectly well what would."

"Do I know? Do you know yourself, Horace?"

"Yes, Lucia," he said gently; "after ten years. You may not be proud
of your cousin--"

"I used to be proud of him always--or nearly always."

"When were you proud of him?"

"When he was himself; when he was sincere."

"I ought to be very proud of _my_ cousin; for she is pitilessly
sincere."

"Horace--"

"It is so, dear. Never mind, you needn't be proud of me, if you'll
only care--"

"I have always cared."

"Or is it--nearly always?"

"Well--nearly always."

"You're right. I _am_ insincere, I was insincere when I said you
needn't be proud of me. I want you, I mean you to be."

"Do you mean to give up _Metropolis_, then?"

"Well, no. That's asking rather too much."

"I know it is."

"Do you hate it so much, Lucia? I wish you didn't."

"I have hated it so much, Horace, that I once wished I had been a rich
woman, that you might be"--she was going to say "an honourable man."

"What's wrong with it? It's a better paper than the old one. There are
better men on it, and its editor's a better man."

"Is he?"

"Yes. He's a simpler, humbler person, and--I should have thought--more
possible to like."

In her heart Lucia admitted that it was so. There was a charm about
this later Horace Jewdwine which was wanting in that high spirit that
had essayed to move the earth. He had come down from his chilly
altitudes to mix with men; he had shed the superstition of
omnipotence, he was aware of his own weakness and humanized by it. The
man was soiled but softened by his traffic with the world. There was
moreover an indescribable pathos in the contrast presented by the
remains of the old self, its loftiness, its lucidity, and the
vulgarity with which he had wrapped it round. Jewdwine's intellectual
splendour had never been so impressive as now when it showed thus
tarnished and obscured.

"At any rate," he went on, "he is infinitely less absurd. He knows his
limitations. Also his mistakes. He tried to turn the republic of
letters into a limited monarchy. Now he has surrendered to the
omnipotence of facts."

"You mean he has lowered his standard?"

"My dear girl, what am I to do with my standard? Look at the rabble
that are writing. I can't compare Tompkins with Shakespeare or Brown
with Sophocles. I'm lucky if I can make out that Tompkins has
surpassed Brown this year as Brown surpassed Tompkins last year; in
other words, that Tompkins has surpassed himself."

"And so you go on, looking lower and lower."

"N-n-no, Lucia. I don't look lower; I look closer, I see that there is
something to be said for Tompkins after all. I find subtler and
subtler shades of distinction between him and Brown. I become more
just, more discriminating, more humane."

"I know how fine your work is, and that's just the pity of it. You
might have been a great critic if you hadn't wasted yourself on little
things and little men."

"If a really big man came along, do you think I should look at them?
But he doesn't come. I've waited for him ten years, Lucia, and he
hasn't come."

"Oh, Horace--"

"He hasn't. Show me a big man, and I'll fall down and worship him.
Only show him me."

"That's your business, isn't it, not mine? Still, I can show you one,
not very far off, in fact very near."

"Too near for us to judge him perhaps. Who is he?"

"If I'm not mistaken, he's a sort of friend of yours."

"Keith Rickman? Oh--"

"Do you remember the day we first talked about him?"

He did indeed. He remembered how unwilling he had been to talk about
him; and he was still more unwilling now. He wanted, and Lucia knew
that he wanted, to talk about himself.

"It's ten years ago," she said. "Have you been waiting all this time
to see him?"

He coloured. "I saw him before you did, Lucia. I saw him a very long
way off. I was the first to see."

"Were you? Then--oh Horace, if you saw all those years ago why haven't
you said so?"

"I have said so, many times."

"Whom have you said it to?"

"To you for one. To every one, I think, who knows him. They'll bear me
out."

"The people who know him? What was the good of that? You should have
said it to the people who don't know him--to the world."

"You mean I should have posed as a prophet?"

"I mean that what you said you might have written."

"Ah, _litera scripta manet_. It isn't safe to prophesy. Remember, I
saw him a very long way off. Nobody had a notion there was anybody
there."

"You could have given them a notion."

"I couldn't. The world, Lucia, is not like you or me. It has no
imagination. It wouldn't have seen, and it wouldn't have believed. I
should have been a voice crying in the wilderness; a voice and nothing
behind it. And as I said prophecy is a dangerous game. In the first
place, there is always a chance that your prediction may be wrong; and
the world, my dear cousin, has a nasty way of stoning its prophets
even when they're right."

"Oh, I thought it provided them with bread and butter, plenty of
butter."

"It does, on the condition that they shall prophesy buttery things.
When it comes to hard things, if they ask for bread the world
retaliates and offers them a stone. And that stone, I need not tell
you, has no butter on it."

"I see. You were afraid. You haven't the courage of your opinion."

"And I haven't much opinion of my courage. I own to being afraid."

"Afraid to do your duty as a critic and as a friend?"

"My first duty is to the public--_my_ public; not to my friends.
Savage Keith Rickman may be a very great poet--I think he is--but if
my public doesn't want to hear about Savage Keith Rickman, I can't
insist on their hearing, can I?"

"No, Horace, after all you've told me, I don't believe you can."

"Mind you, it takes courage, of a sort, to own it."

"I'm to admire your frankness, am I? You say you're afraid. But you
said just now you had such power."

"If I had taken your advice and devoted myself to the rôle of Vates I
should have lost my power. Nobody would have listened to me. I began
that way, by preaching over people's heads. The _Museion_ was a pulpit
in the air. I stood in that pulpit for five years, spouting literary
transcendentalism. Nobody listened. When I condescended to come down
and talk about what people could understand then everybody listened.
It wouldn't have done Rickman any good if I'd pestered people with
him. But when the time comes I shall speak out."