"I daresay, when the time comes--it will come too--when he has made
his name with no thanks to you, then you'll be the first to say 'I
told you so.' It would have been a greater thing to have helped him
when he needed it."

"I did help him. He wouldn't be writing now if it wasn't for me."

"Do you see much of him?"

"Not much. It isn't my fault," he added in answer to her reproachful
eyes. "He's shut himself up with Maddox in a stuffy little house at
Ealing."

"Does that mean that he's very badly off?"

"Well, no; I shouldn't say so. He's got an editorship. But he isn't
the sort that's made for getting on. In many things he is a fool."

"I admire his folly more than some people's wisdom."

From the look in Lucia's eyes Jewdwine was aware that his cousin no
longer adored him. Did she adore Rickman?

"You're a little hard on me, I think. After all, I was the first to
help him."

"_And_ the last. Are you quite sure you helped him? How do you know
you didn't hinder him? You kept him for years turning out inferior
work for you, when he might have been giving us his best."

"He might--if he'd been alive to do it."

"I'm only thinking of what you might have done. The sort of thing
you've done for other people--Mr. Fulcher, for instance."

Jewdwine blushed as he had never blushed before. He was not given to
that form of self-betrayal.

"You said just now you could either kill a book in twenty-four hours,
or make it--did you say?--immortal."

"I might have said I could keep it alive another twenty-four hours."

"You know the reputations you have made for people."

"I do know them. I've made enough of them to know. The reputations
I've made will not last. The only kind that does last is the kind that
makes itself. Do you seriously suppose a man like Rickman needs my
help? I am a journalist, and the world that journalists are compelled
to live in is very poor and small. He's in another place altogether. I
couldn't dream of treating him as I treat, say, Rankin or Fulcher. The
best service I could do him was to leave him alone--to keep off and
give him room."

"Room to stand in?"

"No. Room to grow in, room to fight in--"

"Room to measure his length in when he falls?"

"If you like. Rickman's length will cover a considerable area."

Lucia looked at her cousin with genuine admiration. How clever, how
amazingly clever he was! She knew and he knew that he had failed in
generosity to Rickman; that he had been a more than cautious critic
and a callous friend. She had been prepared to be nice to him if they
had kept Rickman out of their conversation; but as the subject had
arisen she had meant to give Horace a terribly bad quarter of an hour;
she had meant to turn him inside out and make him feel very mean and
pitiful and small. And somehow it hadn't come off. Instead of
diminishing as he should have done, Horace had worked himself
gradually up to her height, had caught flame from her flame, and now
he was consuming her with her own fire. It was she who had taken, the
view most degrading to the man she admired; she who would have dragged
her poet down to earth and put him on a level with Rankin and Fulcher
and such people. Horace would have her believe that his own outlook
was the clearer and more heavenly; that he understood Rickman better;
that he saw that side of him that faced eternity.

His humility, too, was pathetic and disarmed her indignation. At the
same time he made it appear that this was a lifting of the veil, a
glimpse of the true Jewdwine, the soul of him in its naked simplicity
and sincerity. And she was left uncertain whether it were not so.

"Even so," she said gently; "think of all you will have missed."

"Missed, Lucia?"

"Yes, missed. I think, to have believed in any one's greatness--the
greatness of a great poet--to have been allowed to hold in your hands
the pure, priceless thing, before the world had touched it--to have
seen what nobody else saw--to feel that through your first glorious
sight of him he belonged to you as he never could belong to the world,
that he was your own--that would be something to have lived for. It
would be greatness of a kind."

He bowed his head as it were in an attitude as humble and reverent as
her own. "And yet," he said, "the world does sometimes see its poet
and believe in him."

"It does--when he works miracles."

"Someday he will work his miracle."

"And when the world runs after him you will follow."

"I shall not be very far behind."




CHAPTER LXXVI


He wondered how it was that Lucia had seen what he could not see. As
far as he understood his own attitude to Rickman, he had begun by
being uncertain whether he saw or not; but he had quite honestly
desired to see. Yet he had not seen; not because he was incapable of
seeing but because there had come a time when he had no longer desired
to see; and from not desiring to see he had gone on till he had ended
by not seeing. Then because he had not seen he had persuaded himself
that there was nothing to see. And now, in that last sudden flaming of
Lucia's ardour, he saw what he had missed.

They parted amicably, with a promise on Lucia's part that she would
stay with Edith in the summer.

By the time he returned to town he was very sure of what he saw. It
had become a platitude to say that Keith Rickman was a great poet
after the publication of _The Triumph of Life_. The interesting, the
burning question was whether he were not, if anything, a greater
dramatist. By the time Lucia came to Hampstead that point also had
been settled, when the play had been actually running for three weeks.
Its success was only sufficient to establish his position and no more.
He himself required no more; but his friends still waited anxiously
for what they regarded as the crucial test, the introduction of the
new dramatist to a picked audience in Paris in the autumn.

Lucia had come up with Kitty Palliser to see the great play. She
looked wretchedly ill. Withdrawn as far as possible into the darkness
of the box, she sat through the tremendous Third Act apparently
without a sign of interest or emotion. Kitty watched her anxiously
from time to time. She wondered whether she were over-tired, or
overwrought, or whether she had expected something different and were
disappointed with Keith's tragedy. Kitty herself wept openly and
unashamed. But to Lucia, who knew that tragedy by heart, it was as if
she were a mere spectator of a life she herself had once lived
passionately and profoundly. With every word and gesture of the actors
she felt that there passed from her possession something of Keith
Rickman's genius, something sacred, intangible, and infinitely dear;
that the triumphant movement of the drama swept between him and her,
remorselessly dividing them. She was realizing for the first time that
henceforth he would belong to the world and not to her. And yet the
reiterated applause sounded to her absurd and meaningless. Why were
these people insisting on what she had known so well, had seen so long
beforehand?

She was glad that Horace was not with her. But when he came out of his
study to greet them on their return she turned aside into the room and
called him to her. It was then that she triumphed.

"Well, Horace, he has worked his miracle."

"I always said he would."

"You doubted--once."

"Once, perhaps, Lucia. But now, like you, I believe."

"Like me? I never doubted. I believed without a miracle."

She leaned against the chimney-piece, and he saw that she was
trembling. She turned to him a face white with trouble and anxiety.

"Where is he, Horace?"

"He's still with Maddox. You needn't worry, Lucy; if he scores a
success like this in Paris that will mean magnificence." There was
something unspeakably offensive to her in her cousin's tone. He did
not perceive the disgust in her averted profile. He puzzled her. One
moment he seemed to be worshipping humbly with her at the inner
shrine, the next he forced her to suspect the sincerity of his
conversion. She could see that now his spirit bowed basely before the
possibility of the great poet's material success.

"You'll meet him if you stay till next week, Lucy. He'll be dining
here on the tenth."

Again the tone, the manner hurt her. Horace could not conceal his
pride in the intimacy he had once repudiated. He so obviously exulted
in the thought that some of Rickman's celebrity, his immortality,
perhaps, must through that intimacy light upon him. For her own part
she felt that she could not face Keith Rickman and his celebrity. His
immortality she had always faced; but his celebrity--no. It rose up
before her, crushing the tender hope that still grew among her
memories. She said to herself that she was as bad as Horace in
attaching importance to it; she was so sure that Keith would attach
none to it himself. Yet nothing should induce her to stay for that
dinner on the tenth; if it were only that she shrank from the
spectacle of Horace's abasement.

Something of this feeling was apparent in the manner of her refusal;
and Jewdwine caught the note of disaffection. He was not sure whether
he still loved his cousin, but he could not bear that his self-love
should thus perish through her bad opinion. It was in something of his
old imperial mood that he approached her the next morning with the
proofs of his great article on "Keith Rickman and the Modern Drama."
There the author of the _Prolegomena to Г†sthetics_, the apostle of the
Absolute, the opponent of Individualism, had made his recantation. He
touched with melancholy irony on the rise and fall of schools; and
declared, as Rickman had declared before him, that "in modern art what
we have to reckon with is the Man Himself." That utterance, he
flattered himself, was not unbecoming in the critic who could call
himself Keith Rickman's friend. For Rickman had been his discovery in
the beginning; only he had lost sight of him in between.

He was immensely solemn over it. "I think that is what I should have
said."

"Yes, Horace; it is what you should have said long ago when he needed
it; but not now."

He turned from her and shut himself up in his study with his article,
his eulogy of Rickman. He had had pleasure in writing it, but the
reading was intolerable pain. He knew that Lucia saw both it and him
with the cold eye of the Absolute. There was no softening, no
condonement in her gaze; and none in his bitter judgement of himself.
Up till now there had been moments in which he persuaded himself that
he was justified in his changes of attitude. If his conscience joined
with his enemies in calling him a time-server, what did it mean but
that in every situation he had served his time? He had grown opulent
in experience, espousing all the fascinating forms of truth. And did
not the illuminated, the supremely philosophic mood consist in just
this openness, this receptivity, this infinite adaptability, in short?
Why should he, any more than Rickman, be bound by the laws laid down
in the _Prolegomena to Г†sthetics_? The _Prolegomena to Г†sthetics_ was
not a work that one could set aside with any levity; still, in
constructing it he had been building a lighthouse for the spirit, not
a prison.

But now he became the prey of a sharper, more agonizing insight, an
insight that oscillated between insufferable forms of doubt. Was it
possible that he, the author of the _Prolegomena_, had ceased to care
about the Truth? Or was it that the philosophy of the Absolute had
never taken any enormous hold on him? He had desired to be consistent
as he was incorruptible. Did his consistency amount to this, that he,
the incorruptible, had been from first to last the slave of whatever
opinion was dominant in his world? Loyal only to whatever theory best
served his own ungovernable egoism? In Oxford he had cut a very
imposing figure by his philosophic attitude. In London he had found
that the same attitude rendered him unusual, not to say ridiculous.
Had the Absolute abandoned him, or had he abandoned the Absolute, when
it no longer ministered to his personal prestige? Jewdwine was aware
that, however it was, his case exemplified the inevitable collapse of
a soul nourished mainly upon formulas. Yet behind that moral wreckage
there remained the far-off source of spiritual illumination, the inner
soul that judged him, as it judged all things, holding the pellucid
immaterial view. Its vision had never been bound, even by the
_Prolegomena_. If he had trusted it he might have been numbered among
those incorruptible spirits that preserve the immortal purity of
letters. As it was, that supreme intelligence was only a light by
which he saw clearly his own damnation.




CHAPTER LXXVII


Meanwhile the Junior Journalists found amusement in discussing whether
the great dramatist were Maddox's discovery or Jewdwine's. With the
readers of _Metropolis_ he passed as Jewdwine's--which was all that
Jewdwine wanted. With the earnest aspiring public, striving to admire
Keith Rickman because they had been told they ought to, he passed as
their own. The few who had known him from the first knew also that
poets like Rickman are never discovered until they discover
themselves. Maddox, whom much worship had made humble, gave up the
absurd pretension. Enough that he lived, and was known to live, with
Rickman as his friend.

They shared that little house at Ealing, which Rickman, in the ardour
of his self-immolation, had once destined for the young Delilah, his
bride. It had now become a temple in which Maddox served with all the
religious passion of his half-Celtic soul.

The poet had trusted the honour and the judgement of his friend so far
as to appoint him his literary executor. Thus Maddox became possessed
of the secret of the Sonnets. And here a heavy strain was put upon his
judgement and his honour. Maddox had guessed that there was a power in
Rickman's life more terrible than Jewdwine, who after all had never
really touched him. There was, Maddox had always known, a woman
somewhere. A thousand terrors beset the devotee when he noticed that
since fame had lighted upon Rickman the divinity had again begun to
furnish his part (the holy part) of the temple in a manner
unmistakably suggestive of mortality. Maddox shuddered as he thought
of the probable destination of that upper chamber which was the
holiest of all. And now this terror had become a certainty. The woman
existed; he knew her name; she was a cousin of the detestable
Jewdwine; the Sonnets could never be given to the world as long as she
withheld her consent, and apparently she did withhold it. More than
this had not been revealed to Maddox, and it was in vain that he tried
to penetrate the mystery.

His efforts were not the most delicate imaginable. One evening,
sitting with Rickman in that upper chamber, he entered on the subject
thus--

"Seen anything of the Spinkses lately?"

"I called there last Saturday."

"How is the divine Flossie?"

"Flourishing. At least there's another baby. By the way Maddy you were
grossly wrong about her there. The Beaver is absolutely devoid of the
maternal instinct. She's decent to the baby, but she's positively
brutal to Muriel Maud. How Spinky--He protests and there are horrid
scenes; but through them all I believe the poor chap's in love with
her."

"Curious illusion."

Curious indeed. It had seemed incredible to Rickman when he had seen
the Beaver pushing her first-born from her knee.

"Good Heavens, Rickman, what a deliverance for you."

"I wonder if he's happy."

"Can't say; but possibly he holds his own. You see, Spinky's position
is essentially sound. My theory is--"

But Rickman had no desire for a theory of marriage as propounded by
Maddox. He had always considered that in these matters Maddox was a
brute.

Maddox drew his own conclusions from the disgusted protest. He
remembered how once, when he had warned Rickman of the love of little
women, Rickman had said it was the great women who were dangerous. The
lady to whom he had entrusted the immortality of his Sonnets would be
one of these. As the guardian of that immortality Maddox conceived it
was his duty to call on the lady and prevail on her to give them up.
Under all his loyalty he had the audacity of the journalist who sticks
at nothing for his own glorious end.

There was after all a certain simplicity about Maddox. He considered
himself admirably equipped by nature for this delicate mission. He
was, besides, familiar with what he called the "society woman," and he
believed that he knew how to deal with her. Maddox always had the air
of being able to push his way anywhere by the aid of his mighty
shoulders. He sent in his card without a misgiving.

Lucia knew that Maddox was a friend of Keith Rickman's, and she
received him with a courtesy that would have disarmed a man less
singularly determined. It was only when he had stated his
extraordinary purpose that her manner became such that (so he
described it afterwards) it would have "set a worm's back up." And
Maddox was no worm.

It was a little while before Lucia realized that this rather
overpowering visitor was requesting her to "give up" certain sonnets
of Keith Rickman's, written in ninety-three. "I don't quite
understand. Are you asking me to give you the manuscript or to give my
consent to its publication?"

"Well--both. I _have_ to ask you because he never would do it
himself."

"Why should he not?"

"Oh, well, you know his ridiculous notions of honour."

"I do indeed. I daresay some people would consider them ridiculous."

It was this speech, Maddox confessed, that first set his back up. He
was irritated more by the calm assumption of proprietorship in Rickman
than by the implied criticism of himself.

"Do you mind telling me," she continued, still imperturbably, "how you
came to know anything about it?"

Maddox stiffened. "I am Mr. Rickman's oldest and most intimate friend,
and he has done me the honour to make me his literary executor."

"Did he also give you leave to settle his affairs beforehand?"

Maddox shrugged his shoulders by way of a reply.

"If he did not," said Lucia, "there's nothing more to be said."

"Pardon me, there is a great deal more to be said. I don't know
whether you have any personal reason for objecting--"

She coloured and was silent.

"If it's pride, I should have thought most women would have been
prouder--" (A look from Lucia warned him that he would do well to
refrain from thinking.) "Oh, well, for all I know you might have fifty
good reasons. The question is, are you justified in sacrificing a work
of genius to any mere personal feeling?"

He had her there, and she knew it. She was silently considering the
question. Three years ago she would have had no personal feeling in
the matter beyond pride in the simple dedication. Now that personal
feeling had come in and had concentrated itself upon that work of
genius, and made it a thing so sacred and so dear to her, she shrank
with horror from the vision of publicity. Besides, it was all of Keith
Rickman that was left to her. His other works were everybody's
property; therefore she clung the more desperately to that one which,
as he had said, belonged to nobody but her. And Mr. Maddox had no
right to question her. Instead of answering him she moved her chair a
little farther from him and from the light.

Now Maddox had the coldness as well as the passion of the Celt. He was
not touched by Lucia's beauty, nor yet by the signs of illness or
fatigue manifest in her face and all her movements. Her manner
irritated him; it seemed the feminine counterpart of her cousin's
insufferable apathy. He felt helpless before her immobility. But he
meant to carry his point--by brute force if necessary.

But not yet. "I'm not asking you to give up a mere copy of verses. The
Sonnets are unique--even for Rickman; and for one solitary lady to
insist on suppressing them--well, you know, it's a large order."

This time she indeed showed some signs of animation. "How do you know
they are unique? Did he show you them?"

"No, he did not. I found them among his papers when he was in
hospital."

"In hospital?" She sat up and looked at him steadily and without
emotion.

"Yes; I had to overhaul his things--we thought he was dying--and the
Sonnets--"

"Never mind the Sonnets now, please. Tell me about his illness. What
was it?"

Again that air of imperious proprietorship! "Enteric," he said
bluntly, "and some other things."

"Where was he before they took him to the hospital?"

"He was--if you want to know--in a garret in a back street off
Tottenham Court Road."

"What was he doing there?"

"To the best of my belief, he was starving. Do you find the room too
close?"

"No, no. Go on."

Maddox went on. He was enjoying the sensation he was creating. He went
on happily, piling up the agony. Since she would have it he was not
reticent of detail. He related the story of the Rankins' dinner. He
described with diabolically graphic touches the garret in Howland
Street. "We thought he'd been drinking, you know, and all the time he
was starving."

"He was starving--" she repeated slowly to herself.

"He was not doing it because he was a poet. It seems he had to pay
some debt, or thought he had. The poor chap talked about it when he
was delirious. Oh--let _me_ open that window."

"Thank you. You say he was delirious. Were you with him then?"

Maddox leapt to his conclusion. Miss Lucia Harden had something to
conceal. He gathered it from her sudden change of attitude, from her
interrogation, from her faintness and from the throbbing terror in her
voice. _That_ was why she desired the suppression of the Sonnets.

"Were you with him?" she repeated.

"No. God forgive me!"

"Nobody was with him--before they took him to the hospital?"

"Nobody, my dear lady, whom you would call anybody. He owes his life
to the charity of a drunken prostitute."

She was woman, the eternal, predestined enemy of Rickman's genius.
Therefore he had determined not to spare her, but to smite her with
words like sledge-hammers.

And to judge by the look of her he had succeeded. She had turned away
from him to the open window. She made no sign of suffering but for the
troubled rising and falling of her breast. He saw in her a woman
mortally smitten, but smitten, he imagined, in her vanity.

"Have I persuaded you," he said quietly, "to give up those Sonnets?"

"You shall have a copy. If Mr. Rickman wants the original he must come
for it himself."

"Thanks." Maddox had ceased to be truculent, having gained his end.
His blue eyes twinkled with their old infantile devilry. "Thanks. It's
awfully nice of you. But--couldn't you make it seem a little more
spontaneous? You see, I don't want Rickman to know I had to ask you
for them." He had a dim perception of inconsistency in his judgement
of the lady; since all along he had been trusting her generosity to
shelter his indiscretion.

Lucia smiled even in her anguish. "That I can well imagine. The copy
shall be sent to him."

And Maddox considered himself dismissed. He wondered why she called
him back to ask for the number of that house in Howland Street.

That afternoon she dragged herself there, that she might torture her
eyes because they had not seen, and her heart because it had not felt.




CHAPTER LXXVIII


At Jewdwine's heart there was trouble and in his mind perfect peace.
For he knew his own mind at last, though he was still a little
indefinite as to the exact condition of his heart.

Three days after Maddox's extraordinary disclosures Lucia had become
most obviously and inconsiderately ill; and had given her cousin Edith
a great deal of trouble as well as a severe fright, till Kitty, also
frightened, had carried her off to Devonshire out of the house of the
Jewdwines. To Horace the working of events was on the whole
beneficent. Lucia's change of attitude, her illness, her abrupt
departure, though too unpleasant for his fastidious mind to dwell
upon, had committed that mind irretrievably to the path of prudence.

So prudent was he, that of his saner matrimonial project the world in
general took no note. Secure of the affections of Miss Fulcher, he had
propitiated rumour by the fiction of his engagement to Lucia. Rumour,
adding a touch of certainty to the story, had handed it on to Rickman
by way of Maddox and Miss Roots. He there upon left off beautifying
his house at Ealing, and agreed with Maddox that after Paris in
November they should go on to Italy together, and that he would winter
there for his health.

But by November there came more rumours, rumours of the breaking off
of the engagement; rumours of some mysterious illness of Lucia's as
the cause. They reached Rickman in the week before the date fixed for
the production of _The Triumph of Life_ in Paris. He was paying a
farewell call on Miss Roots, who became inscrutable at the mention of
Lucia's name. He accused her with violence of keeping the truth from
him, and implored her with pathos to tell it him at once. But Miss
Roots had no truth, no certain truth to tell; there were only rumours.
Miss Roots knew nothing but that Lucia had been lying on her back for
months; she conjectured that possibly there might be something the
matter with her spine. Her mother had been delicate, and Sir
Frederick, well, the less said about Sir Frederick the better. Rickman
retreated, followed by Miss Roots. As for an engagement, she was not
aware that there ever had been one; there was once, she admitted
half-way downstairs, an understanding, probably misunderstood. He had
better ask Horace Jewdwine straight out. "But," she assured him from
the doorstep, "it would take an earthquake to get the truth out of
_him_."

He flung himself into a hansom, and was one with the driver in
imprecation at the never-ending, ever-increasing gradient of the hill.
The delay, however, enabled him to find Jewdwine at home and alone. He
was aware that the interview presented difficulties, but none deterred
him.

Jewdwine, questioned as to his engagement, betrayed no surprise; for
with Rickman the unusual was to be expected. He might not have
condescended to answer Rickman, his obscure disciple, but he felt that
some concession must be made to the illustrious dramatist.

There had been, he admitted, an understanding between him and Miss
Harden. It hardly amounted to an engagement; and it had been cancelled
on the score of health.

"Of _her_ health?"

The compression of Jewdwine's lips intimated that the great poet had
sinned (not for the first time) against convention.

"She _is_ ill, then?"

"I said on the score of health. We're first cousins, and it is not
always considered advisable--"

"I see. Then that's all over."

"At any rate I'm not going to take any risks."

Rickman pondered that saying for a while. "Do you mean you're not
going to let her take any risks?"

Jewdwine said nothing, but endeavoured to express by his manner a
certain distaste for the conversation.

("Or does he mean," thought Rickman, "that he won't risk having a
delicate wife on his hands?")

"It's not as if I didn't know," he persisted, "I know she--she lies
on her back and can't move. Is it her spine?"

"No."

"Or her heart?"

"Not to my knowledge."

"Is it something worse?"

Jewdwine was silent.

And in the silence Rickman's mind wandered free among all imaginable
horrors and forebodings. At last, out of the silence, there appeared
to him one more terrible than the rest. He saw what Jewdwine must have
meant. He gathered it, not from anything he had said, but from what he
refused to say, from the sternness of his face, from his hesitations,
his reserves. Jewdwine had created the horror for him as vividly as if
he had shaped it into words.

"You needn't tell me what it is. Do you mind telling me whether it's
curable or not?"

"My _dear_ Rickman, if I knew why you are asking all these
questions--"

"They must seem extraordinary. And my reason for asking them is more
extraordinary still."

They measured each other with their eyes. "Then, I think," said
Jewdwine quietly, "I must ask you for your reason."

"The reason is that if you're not going to marry her I am."

"That," said Jewdwine, "is by no means certain. There is not a single
member of her family living except my sister and myself. Therefore I
consider myself responsible. If I were her father or her brother I
would not give my consent to her marrying, and I don't give it now."

"Oh. And why not?"

"For many reasons. Those that applied in my own case are sufficient."

"You only said there was a risk, and that you weren't going to take
it. Now I mean to take it. You see, those fools of doctors may be
mistaken. But whether they're mistaken or not, I shall marry her just
the same."

"The risk, you see, involves her happiness; and judging by what I know
of your temperament--"

"What do you know about my temperament?"

"You know perfectly well what I know about it."

"I know. You don't approve of my morals. I don't altogether blame you,
considering that since I knew Miss Harden I very nearly married
someone else. My code is so different from yours that I should have
considered marrying that woman a lapse from virtue. So the intention
may count against me, if you like."

"Look here, Rickman, that is not altogether what I mean. Neither of us
is fit to marry Miss Harden--and _I_ have given her up." He said it
with the sublime assurance of Jewdwine, the moral man.

"Does it--does her illness--make all that difference? It makes none to
me."

"Oh, well--all right--if you think you can make her happy."

"My dear Jewdwine, I don't think, I know." He smiled that smile that
Jewdwine had seen once or twice before. "It may be arrogant to suppose
that I'll succeed where better men might fail; still--" He rose and
drew himself up to all his slender height--"in some impossible things
I have succeeded."

"They are not the same things."

"No; but in both, you see, it all depends upon the man." With that he
left him.

As Rickman's back turned on him, Jewdwine perceived his own final
error. As once before in judging the genius he had reckoned without
the man, so now, in judging the man he had reckoned without his
genius.

This horrid truth came home to him in his solitude. In the
interminable watches of the night Jewdwine acknowledged himself a
failure; and a failure for which there was no possible excuse. He had
had every conceivable advantage that a man could have. He had been
born free; free from all social disabilities; free from pecuniary
embarrassment; free from the passions that beset ordinary men. And he
had sold himself into slavery. He had opinions; he was packed full of
opinions, valuable opinions; but he had never had the courage of them.
He had always been a slave to other people's opinions. Rickman had
been born in slavery, and he had freed himself. When Rickman stood
before him, superb in his self-mastery, he had felt himself conquered
by this man, whom, as a man, he had despised. Rickman's errors had
been the errors of one who risks everything, who never deliberates or
counts the cost. And in their repeated rivalries he had won because he
had risked everything, when he, Jewdwine, had lost because he would
risk nothing.

He had lost ever since the beginning. He had meant to discover this
great genius; to befriend him; to protect him with his praise;
eventually to climb on his shoulders into fame. And he had not
discovered him; and as for climbing on his shoulders, he had been
shaken off with one shrug of them. There had been risk in passing
judgement on young Rickman, and he had not taken the risk. Therefore
he had failed as a critic. He had waited to found an incorruptible
review. It had been a risky proceeding, and he had not taken the risk.
His paper was a venal paper, sold like himself to the public he
despised. Of all that had ever appeared in it, nothing would live,
nothing but a few immortal trifles, signed S.K.R. He had failed pretty
extensively as an editor. Last of all he had wanted to marry his
cousin Lucia; but there was risk in marrying her, and he would not
take the risk, and Rickman would marry her. He had failed most
miserably as a man.

With that Jewdwine turned on his pillow, and consoled himself by
thinking of Miss Fulcher and her love.




CHAPTER LXXIX


Lucia had been lying still all the afternoon on her couch in the
drawing-room; so still that Kitty thought she had been sleeping. But
Kitty was mistaken.

"Kitty, it's past five, isn't it?"

"Yes, dear; a quarter past."

"It'll be all over by this time to-morrow. Do you think he'll be very
terrible?"

"No, dear. I think he'll be very kind and very gentle."

"Not if he thinks I'm shamming."

"He won't think that." ("I wish he could," said Kitty to herself.)

They were waiting for the visit of Sir Wilfrid Spence. The Harmouth
doctor had desired a higher light on the mysterious illness that kept
Lucia lying for ever on her back. It might have been explained, he
said, if she had suffered lately some deep mental or moral shock; but
Lucia had not confessed to either, and in the absence of any mental
cause it would be as well, said the Harmouth doctor, to look for a
physical one. The fear at the back of the Harmouth doctor's mind was
sufficiently revealed by his choice of the specialist, Sir Wilfrid
Spence.

"_Do_ you think I'm shamming, Kitty? Sometimes I think I am, and
sometimes I'm not quite sure. You know, if you think about your spine
long enough you can imagine that it's very queer. But I haven't been
thinking about my spine. It doesn't interest me. Dr. Robson would have
told me if he thought I was shamming, because I asked him to. There's
one thing makes me think it isn't fancy. I keep on wanting to do
things. I want--you don't know how I want to go to the top of Harcombe
Hill. And my ridiculous legs won't let me. And all the while, Kitty, I
want to play. It's such a long time since I made my pretty music."

A long time indeed, as Kitty was thinking sadly. Lucia had not made
her pretty music since that night six months ago when she had played
to please Keith Rickman.

"Things keep on singing in my head, and I want to play them. It stands
to reason that I would if I could. But I _can't_. Oh, how I do talk
about myself! Kitty, there must be a fine, a heavy fine, of sixpence,
every time I talk about myself."

"I shouldn't make much by it," said Kitty.

Lucia closed her eyes, and Kitty went on with the manuscript she was
copying. After a silence of twenty minutes Lucia opened her eyes
again. They rested longingly on Kitty at her work.

"Kitty," she said, "Do you know, I sometimes think it would be better
to sell those books. I can't bear to do it when he gave them to me.
But I do believe I ought to. The worst of it is I should have to ask
him to do it for me."

"Don't do anything in a hurry, dear. Wait and see," said Kitty
cheerfully.

It seemed to Lucia that there was nothing to wait for now. She
wondered why Kitty said that, and whether it meant that they thought
her worse than they liked to say and whether that was why Sir Wilfrid
Spence was coming?

"Kitty," she said again, "I want you to promise me something.
Supposing--it's very unlikely--but supposing after all I were to go
and die--"

"I won't suppose anything of the sort. People don't go and die of
nervous exhaustion. You'll probably do it fifty years hence, but that
is just the reason why I won't have you harrowing my feelings this way
now."

"I know I've had such piles of sympathy for my nervous exhaustion that
it's horrid of me to try and get more for dying, too. I only meant if
I did do it, quite unexpectedly, of something else--you wouldn't tell
him, would you?"

"Well, dear, of course I won't mention it if you wish me not to--but
he'd be sure to see it in the papers."

"Kitty--you know what I mean. He couldn't see _that_ in the papers. He
couldn't see it anywhere unless you told him. And if you did, it might
make him very uncomfortable, you know."

Poor Kitty, trying to be cheerful under the shadow of Sir Wilfrid
Spence, was tortured by this conversation. She had half a mind to say,
"You don't seem to think how uncomfortable you're making _me_." But
she forbore. Any remark of that sort would rouse Lucia to efforts
penitential in their motive, and more painful to bear than this
pitiful outburst, the first in many months of patience and reserve.
She remembered how Lucia had once nursed her through a long illness in
Dresden. It had not been, as Kitty expressed it, "a pretty illness,"
and she had been distinctly irritable in her convalescence; but Lucy
had been all tenderness, had never betrayed impatience by any look or
word.

"I shouldn't mind anything, if only I'd been with him when _he_ was
ill. But perhaps he'd rather I hadn't been there. I think it's that,
you know, that I really cannot bear."

Kitty would have turned to comfort her, but for the timely entrance of
Robert. He brought a letter for Lucia which Kitty welcomed as an
agreeable distraction. It was from Horace Jewdwine. "Any news?" she
asked presently.

"Yes. What _do_ you think? He's going to Paris to-morrow. Then he's
going on to Italy--to Alassio, with Mr. Maddox."

"Horace Jewdwine and Mr. Maddox? What next?"

"It isn't Horace that's going." She gave the letter to Kitty because
she had shrunk lately from speaking of Keith Rickman by his name.

"That's a very different tale," said Kitty

"I'm so glad he's going. That was what he always wanted to do. Do you
remember how I asked him to be my private secretary? Now I'm his
private secretary; which is as it should be."

"You mean _I_ am."

"Yes. Do you think you could hurry up so that he'll get them before he
goes? Poor Kitty--I can't bear your having all these things to do for
me."

"Why not? You'd do them for me, if it was I, not you."

"I wish it were you. I mean I wish I were doing things for you. But
you haven't done them all, Kitty. I did some. I forget how many."

"You did three, darling."

"Only three? And there are nine and twenty. Still, he'll see that I
began them. Kitty--do you think he'll wonder and guess why I left
off?"

"Oh no, he isn't as clever as all that."

"You mustn't tell him. You're writing the letter, dear, now, aren't
you? You mustn't say a word about my illness. Only tell him I'm so
glad to hear he's going to Alassio with Mr. Maddox."

"I don't think any the better of him for that. Fancy going to Italy
with that brute of a man!"

"He wasn't really a brute. He only said those things because he cared
for him. You can't blame him for that."

"I don't blame him for that. I blame him for being a most appalling
bounder."

"Do you mind not talking about him any more?"

"No dear, I don't a bit."

Lucia lay very quiet for some time before she spoke again. "They can't
say now I sacrificed his genius to my pride. You _will_ catch the
post, won't you? What a plague I am, but if they're posted before
seven he'll get them in the morning and he'll have time to write.
Perhaps he won't be starting till the afternoon."

In the morning she again betrayed her mind's preoccupation. "He must
have got them by now. Kitty, did you hear how the wind blew in the
night? He'll have an awful crossing."

"Well then, let's hope he won't be very ill; but he isn't going by the
Bay of Biscay, dear."

The wind blew furiously all morning, and when it dropped a little
towards evening it was followed by a pelting rain.

"He's at Dover now."

"In a mackintosh," said Kitty by way of consolation. But Lucia,
uncomforted, lay still, listening to the rain. It danced like a
thousand devils on the gravel of the courtyard. Suddenly she sat up,
raising herself by her hands.

"Kitty!" she cried. "He's coming. He is really. By the terrace. Can't
you hear?"

Kitty heard nothing but the rain dancing on the courtyard. And the
terrace led into it by the other wing. It was impossible that Lucia
could have heard footsteps there.

"But I _know_, Kitty, I know. It's his walk. And he always came that
way."

She slipped her feet swiftly on to the floor, and to Kitty's amazement
sat up unsupported. Kitty in terror ran to her and put her arm round
her, but Lucia freed herself gently from her grasp. She was trembling
in all her body. Kitty herself heard footsteps in the courtyard now.
They stopped suddenly and the door-bell rang.

"Do go to him, Kitty--and tell him. And send him here to me."

Kitty went, and found Keith Rickman standing in the hall. Her instinct
told her that Lucia must be obeyed. And as she sent him in to her, she
saw through the open door that Lucia rose to her feet, and came to him
and never swayed till his arms held her.

She clung to him and he drew her closer and lifted her and carried her
to her couch, murmuring things inarticulate yet so plain that even she
could not misunderstand.

"I thought you were going to Paris?" she said.

"I'm not. I'm here."

She sat up and laid her hands about him, feeling his shoulders and his
sleeves.

"How wet your coat is."

He kissed her and she held her face against his that was cold with the
wind and rain; she took his hands and tried to warm them in her own,
piteously forgetful of herself, as if it were he, not she, who needed
tenderness.

"Lucy--are you very ill, darling?"

"No. I am very, very well."

He thought it was one of those things that people say when they mean
that death is well. He gathered her to him as if he could hold her
back from death. She looked smiling into his face.

"Keith," she said, "you _didn't_ have a mackintosh. You must go away
at once to Robert and get dry."

"Not now, Lucy. Let me stay."

"How long can you stay?"

"As long as ever you'll let me."

"Till you go to Italy?"

"Very well. Till I go to Italy."

"When are you going?"

"Not till you're well enough to go with me."

"How did you know I was ill?"

"Because I saw that Kitty had had to finish what your dear little
hands had begun."

"Ah--you should have had them sooner--"

"Why should I have had them at all? Do you think I would have
published them before I knew I had dedicated them to my wife?"

"Keith--dear--you mustn't talk about that yet."

She hid her face on his shoulder; he lifted it and looked at it as if
it could have told him what he had to know. It told him nothing; it
had not changed enough for that. It was like a beautiful picture
blurred, and the sweeter for the blurring.

He laid his hand over her heart. At his touch it leapt and throbbed
violently, suggesting a new terror.

"Darling, how fast your heart beats. Am I doing it harm?"

"No, it doesn't mind."

"But am I tiring it?"

"No, no, you're resting it."

She lay still a long time without speaking, till at last he carried
her upstairs and delivered her into Kitty's care. At the open door of
her room he saw a nurse in uniform standing ready to receive her. Her
presence there was ominous of the unutterable things he feared.

"Kitty," said Lucia, when they were alone. "It looks as if I had been
shamming after all. What do you think of me?"

"I think perhaps Sir Wilfrid Spence needn't come down to-morrow."

"Perhaps not. And yet it would be better to know. If there really is
anything wrong I couldn't let him marry me. It would be awful. I want
to be sure, Kitty, for his sake."

Kitty felt sure enough; and her certainty grew when Lucia came down
the next morning. But she was unable to impart her certainty to Keith.
The most he could do was to hide his anxiety from Lucia. It wanted but
a day to the coming of the great specialist; and for that day they
made such a brave show of happiness that they deceived both Kitty and
themselves. Kitty, firm in her conviction, left them to themselves
that afternoon while she went into Harmouth to announce to Lucia's
doctor the miracle of her recovery.

When she had left the house a great peace fell on them. They had so
much to say to each other, and so little time to say it in, when
to-morrow might cut short their happiness. But Lucia was sorry for
Kitty.

"Poor Kitty," said she, "she's going to marry her cousin Charlie
Palliser. But that won't be the same."

"The same as what?"

"The same as my marrying you. Oh, Keith, that's one of the things I
said we weren't to say. Do you know, once Kitty was angry with me. She
said I was playing with fire--the divine fire. Ought I to have been
afraid of it? Just a little bit in awe?"

"What? Of the divine fire? I gave it you, dearest, to play with--or to
warm your little hands by."

"And now you've given it me to keep, to put my hands round it--so--and
take care of it and see that it never goes out. I can do that, can't
I, whatever happens?"

There was always that refrain: Whatever happens.

"I keep forgetting it doesn't really belong to me; it belongs to
everybody, to the whole world. I believe I'm jealous."

"Of the British public? It doesn't really love me, Lucy, nor I it."

"Whether it does or not, you _do_ remember that I loved you
first--before anybody ever knew?"

"I do indeed."

"It _is_ a shame to be so glad because Kitty is away."

Yet she continued to rejoice in the happiness that came of their
solitude. It was Keith, not Kitty, who arranged her cushions for her
and covered her feet; Keith, not Kitty, who poured out tea for her,
and brought it her, and sat beside her afterwards, leaning over her
and stroking her soft hair, as Kitty loved to do.

"Lucy," he said suddenly, "can you stand living with me in a horrid
little house in a suburb?"

"I should love it. Dear little house."

"Maddox is in it now; but we'll turn him out. You don't know Maddox?"

She shuddered, and he drew the rug in closer about her.

"It's such a tiny house, Lucy; it would all go into this room."

"This room," said Lucy, "is much too large."

"There's only room for you and me in it."

"All the better, so long as there's room for me."

"And the walls are all lath and plaster. When Maddox is in another
room I can hear him breathing."

"And when I'm in another room I shall hear you breathing; and then I
shall know you're alive when I'm afraid you're not. I'm glad the walls
are all lath and plaster."

"But it isn't a pretty house, Lucy."

"It will be a pretty house when I'm in it," said she, and was admitted
to have had the best of the argument.

"Then, if you really don't mind, we shan't have to wait. Not a week,
if you're ready to come to me."

But Lucia's face was sad. "Keith--darling--don't make plans till we
know what Sir Wilfrid Spence says."

"I shall, whatever he says. But I suppose I must consult him before I
take you to Alassio."

For still at his heart, under all its happiness, there lay that
annihilating doubt; the doubt and the fear that had been sown there by
Horace Jewdwine. He could see for himself that one of his terrors was
baseless; but there remained that other more terrible possibility.
None of them had dared to put it into words; but it was implied,
reiterated, in the name of Sir Wilfrid Spence. He had moreover a
feeling that this happiness of his was too perfect, that it must be
taken away from him.

He confided his trouble to Kitty that night, sitting up over the
drawing-room fire. Lucia's doctor had come and gone.

"What did he say, Kitty?"

"He says there's no need for Sir Wilfrid Spence to see her at all. He
is going to wire to him not to come."

He gave a sigh of relief. Then his eyes clouded.

"No. He must come. I'd rather he came."

"But why? He isn't a nerve specialist."

He shuddered. "I know. That's why I must have him. I can't trust
these local men."

"It will be horribly expensive, Keith. And it's throwing money away.
Dr. Robson said so."

"That's my affair."

"Oh well, as for that, it was all arranged for."

"Nobody has any right to arrange for it but me."

"Much better arrange for a good time at Alassio."

"No. I want to be absolutely certain. You tell me she's perfectly
well, and that doctor of yours swears she is, and I think it; and yet
I can't believe it. I daren't."

"That's because you're not feeling very well yourself."

"I know that in some ways she is getting stronger every minute; but
you see, I can't help thinking what that other man said."

"What other man?"

"Well, the Jewdwines' doctor."

"What did _he_ say?"

"Nothing. It was Jewdwine. He told me--well--that was why their
engagement was broken off. Because she wasn't strong enough to marry."

Kitty's eyes blazed. "He told you _that_?"

"Not exactly. He couldn't, you know. I only thought their doctor must
have told him--something terrible."

"I don't suppose he told him anything of the sort."

"Oh well, you know, he didn't say so. But he let me think it."

"Yes. I know exactly how it was done. He wouldn't say anything he
oughtn't to. But he'd let you think it. It was just his awful
selfishness. He thought there was an off chance of poor Lucy being a
sort of nervous invalid, and he wouldn't risk the bother of it. But as
for their engagement, there never was any. That was another of the
things he let you think. I suppose he cared for Lucy as much as he
could care for anybody; but the fact is he wants to marry another
woman, and he couldn't bear to see her married to another man."

"Oh, I say, you know--"

"It sounds incredible. But you don't know how utterly I distrust that
man. He's false through and through. There's nothing sound in him
except his intellect. I wish you'd never known him. He's been the
cause of all your--your suffering, and Lucy's too. You might have been
married long ago if it hadn't been for him."

"No, Kitty. I don't think that."

"You might, really. If he hadn't been in the way she would have known
that she cared for you and let you know it, too. But nothing that he
ever did or didn't do comes up to this."

"The truth is, Kitty, he thinks I'm rather a bad lot, you know."

"My dear Keith, he thinks that if _he_ doesn't marry Lucy he'd rather
you didn't. He certainly hit on the most effectual means of preventing
it."

"Oh, did he! He doesn't know me. I shall marry her whatever Sir
Wilfrid Spence says. If she's ill, all the more reason why I should
look after her. I'm only afraid lest--lest--"

She knew what he thought and could not say--lest it should not be for
very long.

"There are some things," he said quietly, "that _can't_ be taken away
from me."

Kitty was silent; for she knew what things they were.

"You can trust her to me, Kitty?"

"I can indeed."

And so on Sunday the great man came down.

It was over in half an hour. That half-hour Keith spent in pacing up
and down the library, the place of so many dear and tender and
triumphant memories. They sharpened his vision of Lucy doomed, of her
sweet body delivered over to the torture.

He did not hear Kitty come in till she laid her hand upon his arm. He
turned as if at the touch of destiny.

"Don't Keith, for Goodness' sake. It's all right. Only--he wants to
see you."

Sir Wilfrid Spence stood in the morning-room alone. He looked very
grave and grim. He had a manner, a celebrated manner that had
accomplished miracles by its tremendous moral effect. It had helped to
set him on his eminence and he was not going to sacrifice it now. He
fixed his gaze on the poet as he entered and held him under it for
the space of half a minute without speaking. He seemed, this master of
the secrets of the body, to be invading despotically the province of
the soul. It struck Rickman that the great specialist was passing
judgement on him, to see whether in all things he were worthy of his
destiny. The gaze thus prolonged became more than he could bear.

"Do you mind telling me at once what's wrong with her?"

"There isn't anything wrong with her. What fool ever told you that
there was? She has been made ill with grief."

Lucia herself came to him there and led him back into the library.
They sat together in the window-seat, held silent for a little while
by the passing of that shadow of their fear.

"Keith," she said at last. "Is it true that you loved me when you were
with me, here, ever so long ago?"

He answered her.

"And when you came to me and I was horrid to you, and when I sent you
away? And when I never wrote to you, and Horace made you think I'd
forgotten you? Did you love me then?"

"Yes, more than I did before, Lucy."

"But--Keith--you didn't love me when you were loving somebody else?"

"I did, more than ever then. That happened because I loved you."

"I can understand all the rest; but I can't understand that."

"I think I'd rather you didn't understand it, darling."

She sighed, puzzled over it and gave it up. "But you didn't love me
when you--when I--when you wouldn't have me?"

He answered her; but not with words.

"And now," said she, "you're going to Paris to-morrow."

"Perhaps."

"You must. Perhaps they'll be calling for you."

"And perhaps I shan't be there. Do you know, Lucy, you've got violets
growing among the roots of your hair?"

"I know you're going to Paris, to-morrow, to please me."

"Perhaps. And after that we're going to Alassio, and after that to
Florence and Rome; all the places where your private secretary--"

"And when," said she, "is my private secretary going to take me home?"

"If his play succeeds, dear, he won't have to take you to that horrid
house of his."

"Won't he? But I like it best of all."

"Why, Lucy?"

"Oh, for such a foolish reason. Because he's been in it."

"I'm afraid, darling, some of the houses he's been in--"

At that she fell to a sudden breathless sobbing, as if the life that
had come back to her had spent itself again.

In his happiness he had forgotten Howland Street; or if he thought of
it at all he thought of it as an enchanted spot, the stage that had
brought him nearest to the place of his delight.

"Lucy, Lucy, how did you know? I never meant you to."

"Some one told me. And I--I went to see it."

"Good God!"

"I saw your room, the room they carried you out of. If I'd only known!
My darling, why didn't you come to me then? Why didn't you? I had
plenty. Why didn't you send for me?"

"How could I?"

"You could, you could--"

"But sweetest, I didn't even know where you were."

"Wherever I was I would have come to you. I would have taken you
away."

"It was worth it, Lucy. If it hadn't been for that, I shouldn't be
here now. Looking back it seems positively glorious. And whatever it
was I'd go through years of it, for one hour with you here. One of
those hours even when you didn't love me."

"I've always loved you, all my life long. Only I didn't know it was
you. Do you remember my telling you that your dream was divorced from
reality? It wasn't true. That was what was wrong with me."

"I'm afraid I wasn't always very faithful to my dream."

"Because your dream wasn't always faithful to you. And yet it _was_
faithful."

"Lucy, do you remember the things I told you? Can you forgive me for
being what I was?"

"It was before I knew you."

"Yes, but after? That was worse; it was the worst thing I ever did,
because I _had_ known you."

She wondered why he asked forgiveness of her now, of all moments; and
as she wondered the light dawned on her.

"I forgive you everything. It was my fault. I should have been there,
and I wasn't."

Then he knew that after all she had understood. Her love was in her
eyes, in their light and in their darkness. They gathered many flames
of love into that tender tragic gaze, all pitying, half maternal.
Those eyes had never held for him the sad secrets of mortality. Love
in them looked upon things invisible, incorruptible; divining, even as
it revealed, the ultimate mystery. He saw that in her womanhood Nature
was made holy, penetrated by the spirit and the fire of God. He knelt
down and laid his face against her shoulder, and her arm, caressing,
held him there, as if it were she who sheltered and protected.

"Keith," she whispered, "did you mean to marry me before you came this
time, or after?"

"Before, oh before."

"You thought--that terrible thing had happened to me; you thought you
would always have me dragging on you? And yet you came? It made no
difference. You came."

"I came because I wanted to take care of you, Lucy. I wanted nothing
else. That was all."

Lucia's understanding was complete.

"I knew you were like that," said she; "I always knew it."

She bent towards his hidden face and raised it to her own.