Here they stopped, each struck by the strange landscape now suddenly
revealed to them. They stood in clear air above the fog. It had come
rolling in from the south, submerging the cliffs, and the town, and
the valley; and now it lay smooth and cold and blue-white, like the
sea under a winter sky. They might have been looking down on some
mysterious world made before man. No land was to be seen save the tops
of the hills lashed by the torn edges of the mist. Westward, across
the bay, the peaks of the cliffs showed like a low, flat coast, a dull
purplish line tormented by a livid surf. The flooded valley had become
an arm of that vague sea. And from under the fog, immeasurably far
below, there came the muffled sound of the mother sea, as if it were
beating on the invisible floor of the world.

"I say, that's rather uncanny, isn't it?" So uncanny did it seem to
him that he felt that it called for remark.

She looked at him with that faintly interrogative lifting of the
eyebrows, which always seemed familiar to him. He remembered
afterwards that Horace Jewdwine had the same trick. But in her,
accompanied as it was by a pretty lifting of the corners of her mouth,
it expressed friendly interest, in Jewdwine, apathy and a certain
insolence. And yet all the time she was wondering how she should break
it to him that their ways must now diverge.

"There's a horrible unconsciousness about it," he went on, pursuing as
usual his own fancy. "If you _could_ get bare nature without spirit,
it would look like that."

"It _doesn't_ look quite real," she admitted. (After that, there must
be no more concessions. They must separate.)

"It hasn't any reality but what we give it."

"Hasn't it?"

(A statement so sweeping challenged contradiction.)

"You think that's only my Cockney view?"

"I think it isn't Nature. It's your own idea."

"It isn't even my own idea; I bagged it from Coleridge. P'raps you'll
say he muddled himself with opium till he couldn't tell which was
Nature and which was Coleridge; but there was old Wordsworth, as sober
as a churchwarden, and he knew. What you call my Cockney view is the
view of the modern poets. They don't--they can't distinguish between
Nature and the human soul. Talk of getting near to Nature--we wouldn't
know Nature if we saw it now. Those everlasting poets have got so near
it that they've blocked the view for themselves and everybody else."

"Really, you talk as if they were a set of trippers."

"So they are! Wordsworth was nothing but a tripper, a glorified
tripper. Nature never looked the same since he ran his Excursion-train
through the Lake country--special service to Tintern and Yarrow."

"This is slightly profane."

"No--it only means that if you want Nature you musn't go to the poets
of Nature. They've humanized it. I wouldn't mind that, if they hadn't
womanized it, too."

"That only means that they loved it," she said softly.

"It means that they've demoralized it; and that now it demoralizes us.
Nature is the supreme sentimentalist. It's all their fault. They've
been flinging themselves on the bosom of Mother Earth, and sitting and
writing Stanzas in Dejection on it, and lying down like a tired child
on it, and weeping away their lives of care, that they have borne and
yet must bear on it, till they've saturated it with their beastly
pathos. There isn't a dry comfortable place left for anybody else."

"Perhaps that's just the way Nature inspires poets, by giving out the
humanity it absorbs."

"Perhaps. I can't say it inspires me."

"Are you a poet?" she asked. She was beginning to think it must be a
case of mistaken identity; for this was not what she had expected of
him.

He did not answer at first, neither did he look at her. He looked at
the beautiful face of Nature (the sentimentalist), and a wave of hot
colour rushed again over his own.

"I don't know whether I am or not."

"Let us hope not, since you want to make a clean sweep of them."

"I'd make a clean sweep of myself if I stood in my own light. Anything
for a good view. But I'm afraid it's too late." His tone dropped from
the extreme of levity to an almost tragic earnest. "We've done our
work, and it can't be undone. We've given Nature a human voice, and
now we shall never--never hear anything else."

"That's rather dreadful; I wish you hadn't."

"Oh, no, you don't. It's not the human voice you draw the line
at--it's the Cockney accent."

Lucia's smile flickered and went out, extinguished by the waves of her
blush. She was not prepared to have her thoughts read--and read aloud
to her--in this way; and that particular thought was one she would
have preferred him not to read.

"I daresay Keats had a Cockney accent, if we did but know; and I
daresay a good many people never heard anything else."

"I'm afraid you'd have heard it yourself, Miss Harden, if you'd met
him."

"Possibly. It isn't what I should have remembered him by, though. That
reminds me. I came upon a poem--a sonnet--of yours--if it was
yours--this morning. It was lying on the library floor. You will find
it under the bronze Pallas on the table."

Mr. Rickman stooped, picked up a sod and examined it carefully.

"Thank you very much. It _was_ mine. I was afraid it was lost."

"It would have been a great pity if it had been."

Mr. Rickman dropped his sod.

She answered the question that appeared in his eyes, though not on his
tongue. "Yes, I read it. It was printed, you see. I read it before I
could make up my mind whether I might or not."

"It was all right. But I wish you hadn't."

To look at Mr. Rickman you would have said that all his mind was
concentrated on the heel of his boot, as it slowly but savagely ground
the sod to dust. Even so, the action seemed to say, even so could he
have destroyed that sonnet.

"What did you think of it?"

He had looked up, when she least expected, with his disarming and
ingenuous smile. Lucia felt that he had laid an ambush for her by his
abstraction; the question and the smile shot, flashed, out of it with
a directness that made subterfuge impossible.

The seriousness of the question was what made it so awkward for a lady
with the pleasure-giving instinct. If Mr. Rickman had merely asked her
if she liked his new straw hat with the olive green ribbon (supposing
them to be on terms that made such a question possible) she would
probably have said "Yes," whether she liked it or not; because she
wanted to give pleasure, because she didn't care a straw about his
straw hat. But when Mr. Rickman asked her how she liked his sonnet, he
was talking about the things that really mattered; and in the things
that really mattered Lucia was sincerity itself.

"I thought," said she, "I thought the first dozen lines extremely
beautiful."

"In a sonnet _every_ line should be beautiful--should be perfect."

"Oh--if you're aiming at perfection."

"Why, what else in Heaven's name should I aim at?"

Lucia was silent; and he mistook her silence for distrust.

"I don't want you to judge me by that sonnet."

"But I shouldn't dream of judging you by that sonnet, any more than I
should judge that sonnet by its last two lines. They're not the last
you'll ever write."

"They're the last you will ever read."

"Well, it's something to have written one good sonnet."

"One swallow doesn't make a spring."

"No; but it tells us spring is coming, and the other swallows."

"There won't be any other swallows. All my swallows have flown."

"Oh, they'll fly back again, you'll see, if you wait till next
spring."

"You weren't serious just now when you asked me if I was a poet. _I_
was serious enough when I said I didn't know."

Something passed over Lucia's face, a ripple of shadow and flame, some
moving of the under currents of the soul that told him that he was
understood, that something had happened there, something that for the
moment permitted him to be personal.

"What made you say so?"

"I can't tell you. Not natural modesty. I'm modest about some things,
but not about that."

"Yet surely you must know?"

"I did yesterday."

"Yesterday?"

"Yesterday--last night; in fact up to eleven o'clock this morning I
firmly believed that I had genius, or something uncommonly like it. I
still believe that I _had_ it."

He seemed to himself to have become almost grossly personal; but to
Lucia he had ceased to be personal at all; he had passed into the
region of realities; and in so passing had become intensely
interesting. To Lucia, with the blood of ten generations of scholars
in her veins, the question of a man's talent was supremely important;
the man himself might not matter, but his talent mattered very much;
to discuss it with him was entirely natural and proper. So she never
once stopped to ask herself why she was standing on Harcombe Hill,
holding this really very intimate conversation with Mr. Rickman.

"The things," he continued, "the things I've written prove it. I can
say so without the smallest conceit, because I haven't it now, and
never shall have it again. I feel as if it had belonged to somebody
else."

Mr. Rickman was losing all likeness to his former self. He spoke no
longer impulsively, but in the steady deliberate tones of unalterable
conviction. And Lucia no longer heard the Cockney accent in this voice
that came to her out of a suffering so lucid and so profound. She
forgot that it came from the other side of the social gulf. If at any
point in that conversation she had thought of dismissing him, she
could not have dismissed him now. There was very little use in having
saved his neck if she abandoned him to his misery.

Instead of abandoning him she sat down on a rough seat by the roadside
to consider Mr. Rickman's case in all its bearings. In doing so she
found herself for the first time contemplating his personal appearance
as such; and that not altogether with disapproval. Though it was not
in the least what she would have expected, he showed to advantage in
the open air. She began to perceive the secret of his extravagant and
preposterous charm. There was something about him--something that he
had no right to have about him, being born a dweller in cities, which
none the less he undeniably and inevitably had, something that made
him one with this moorland setting, untamed and beautiful and shy. The
great natural features of the landscape did him no wrong; for he was
natural too.

Well, she had found his sonnet for him; but could she help him to
recover what he had lost now?

"I hope you won't mind my asking, but don't you know any one who can
help you?"

"Not any one who can help me out of this."

"I believe it must have been you Sir Joseph Harden used to talk about.
I think he saw you once when you were a boy. I know if he were alive
he would have been glad to help you."

"He did help me. I owe my education to the advice he gave my father."

"Is that the case? I am very glad."

She paused, exultant; she felt that she was now upon the right track.
"You said you had written other things. What have you written?"

"A lyrical drama for one thing. That sonnet was meant for a sort of
motto to it."

A lyrical drama? She was right, then; he was Horace Jewdwine's great
"find." If so, the subject was fenced around with difficulty. She must
on no account give Horace away. Mr. Rickman had seemed annoyed because
she had read his sonnet (which was printed); he would be still more
annoyed if he knew that she had read his lyrical drama in manuscript.
He was inclined to be reticent about his writings.

Lucia was wrong. Mr. Rickman had never been less inclined to
reticence in his life. He wished she had read his drama instead of his
sonnet. His spring-time was there; the swift unreturning spring-time
of his youth. If she had read his drama she would have believed in his
pursuit of the intangible perfection. As it was, she never would
believe.

"I wonder," she said, feeling her ground carefully, "if my cousin
Horace Jewdwine would be any good to you?"

"Mr. Jewdwine?"

"Do you know him?"

"Yes, slightly. That is--he knows--he knows what I can do. I mean what
I've done."

"Really?" The chain of evidence was now complete. "Well, what does he
say?"

Rickman laughed as he recalled his last conversation with the critic.
"He says I'm one-seventh part a poet.

"Does he? Then you may be very sure you are a great deal more. My
cousin is most terribly exacting. I should be glad if I succeeded in
satisfying him; but I don't think I should be seriously unhappy if--if
I failed. Did he say anything to discourage, to depress you?"

"Not he. I don't think I should have minded if he had. I felt strong
enough for anything then. It was this morning. I was sitting out here,
looking at all this beautiful inspiring scenery, when it came to me,
that notion that I should never do anything again."

"Is it--" her hesitations were delightful to him--"is it the want of
recognition that disheartens you?"

He laughed again, a healthy honest laugh. "Oh, dear me, no! I don't
worry about recognition. That would be all right if I could go on. But
I can't go on."

"Have you ever felt like this before?"

"N--no. No, never. And for the life of me I can't think why I should
now."

"And yet you've been making catalogues for years, haven't you?"

Lucia had said to herself, "It's that catalogue _raisonné_, I know."

"Do you like making catalogues?"

"Well, under ordinary circumstances it isn't exactly what you'd call
exciting. But I'm afraid that hasn't got anything to do with it this
time."

"It may have everything to do with it--such a dreadful kind of work."

"No. It isn't the work that's dreadful."

"Then perhaps it's the worry? And I'm afraid I'm responsible for
that."

He started, shaken out of his admirable self-possession by that
glaring personality. "How could you be?"

"By insisting on engaging you as I did. From what you told me it's
very evident that you had something on your mind, and that the work
has been very dreadful, very difficult."

"I _have_ something on my mind and--it _has_ been difficult--all the
same--"

"I wouldn't have pressed you if I had really known. I'm very sorry. Is
it too late? Would it be any good if I released you now?"

If she released him!

"Miss Harden, you are most awfully good to me."

"_Would_ that help you?"

He looked at her. Over her face there ran again that little ripple of
thought and sympathy, like shadow and flame. One fear was removed from
him. Whatever happened Miss Harden would never misunderstand him. At
the same time he realized that any prospect, however calamitous, would
be more endurable than the course she now proposed.

"It wouldn't help me. The best thing I can do is to stay where I am
and finish."

"Is that the truth?"

"Nothing but the truth."

("But not the whole truth," thought Lucia.)

"Well," she said, rising, "whatever you do, don't lose heart."

He smiled drearily. It was all very well to say that, when his heart
was lost already.

"Wait--wait till next spring comes."

He could put what meaning he liked into that graceful little
commonplace. But it dismissed at the same time that it reassured him.
The very ease and delicacy with which it was done left him no doubt on
that point.

He was not going to accept his dismissal then and there. A bold
thought leapt in his brain. Could he--might he--? She had read his
sonnet; would it do to ask her to read his drama also? To be sure the
sonnet had but fourteen lines, while the drama had twice as many
hundred. But the drama, the drama, his beautiful _Helen in Leuce_, was
his ultimate achievement, the highest, completest expression of his
soul. And what he required of Lucia Harden was not her praise, but
fuller, more perfect comprehension. He stood in a cruel and false
position, and he longed for her to know the finest and the best of
him, before she knew (as she must know) the worst.

She was turning away; but there was a closed gate between her and the
hill-path that led down into the valley.

"Miss Harden--"

"Yes?"

She turned. His heart beat violently. He was afraid to look up lest
his face should betray his emotion; it must seem so disproportioned to
its cause. And yet he was going to ask her for leave to put his drama,
the fine offspring of his soul, into her hands.

"May I send you the drama I spoke of? I would like you to see it."

"Nothing would give me greater pleasure."

He tried to stammer out some words of thanks; but they died before
utterance.

"You know your way now, don't you?" said she.

"Yes, thanks."

Her hand was on the gate; he opened it to let her pass. He also made a
movement as though he would have held out his hand, but thought better
of it, raising his hat instead.

He stood uncovered until she had passed.

He walked up and down the road, giving her time to get well out of
sight. Then he returned to the place where he had suffered, and stood
a long while looking over the valley.

He knew now the meaning of his great misery; and it was misery no
longer. The veil was lifted from the face of Nature; and it was a
face that he had never yet seen. It had lost that look of mysterious,
indefinable reproach. It was as if the beauty of the land, seeking
after the heart that should love it, was appeased and reconciled. He
could hear the lyric soul of things most clearly and unmistakably, and
it was singing a new song. A strange, double-burdened contradictory
song. There was sorrow in it, such sorrow as her children drink from
the breast of the tragic earth; and through it all and over it the
laughter as of some yet virgin and imperishable joy.

For Nature sings to every poet the song of his own soul.

He spent the last of that Easter Sunday in his shabby little bedroom
in the Marine Hotel, where with windows open to the wind and sea he
sat writing long past midnight. And hope rose again in him as he
surveyed the first rough draft--that wild battlefield and
slaughter-ground of lines, lines shooting and flying in all
directions, lines broken and scattered and routed by other lines,
over-ridden and trampled down by word upon triumphing word. Above the
hideous confusion at least two verses shone luminous and clear; they
had come swinging into the pure ether, full-formed and golden from
their birth. And over the whole he wrote in legible characters, "_On
Harcombe Hill_."

His doubt had died there; and on Easter Monday he awoke exulting in
another blessed day.




CHAPTER XXII


Lucia had yielded recklessly to her pleasure-giving instinct, and was
only half contented. She had given pleasure to her father by writing
him a long letter; she was in a fair way of giving pleasure to Horace
Jewdwine by undertaking this monstrous labour of the catalogue; and
she had given pleasure to herself in giving pleasure to them. But
there was one person to whom she had not given pleasure; and that
person was Horace Jewdwine's friend. On the contrary, she had robbed
the poor man of the one solitary pleasure he had anticipated in his
three days' holiday; with what disastrous results she had just
witnessed.

It was impossible for Lucia to do anybody a wrong, however innocently,
without making up for it. On that Sunday evening she conceived a great
idea. She had deprived Mr. Rickman of a small opportunity; she would
give him a large one. Restitution was to be on a noble scale. Lucia
had a small sum left to her by her grandfather, and even when Mr.
Rickman was paid for his four weeks' work on the catalogue that sum
would only be reduced to £285. On the strength of it she now proposed
to offer Mr. Rickman the post of secretary to herself, for one year,
at a salary of a hundred, the remainder to be devoted to his
travelling and household expenses. As secretary he would assist her in
editing Sir Joseph's unpublished works, while she secured him abundant
leisure for his own.

For one year he would be free from all sordid demands on his time and
energy. He would be free, for one year, from the shop and the
Quarterly Catalogue. He would enrich his mind, and improve his
manners, with travel, for one year. At the end of that year he would
know if there was anything in him.

In other words she would give the little man his chance.

The plan had the further advantage that it would have given her
grandfather pleasure if he could have known it. It was also to be
presumed that it would give pleasure to Horace Jewdwine, since it was
the very thing he himself had said he wished to do for Rickman. Of all
conceivable ways of spending Sir Joseph's money it was the fittest and
most beautiful. In its lesser way it was in line with the best
traditions of the family; for the Hardens had been known for
generations as the patrons of poor scholars and struggling men of
letters. And as Lucia inherited the intellect of her forefathers in a
more graceful, capricious and spontaneous form, so what in them had
been heavy patronage, appeared in her as the pleasure-giving instinct.
If she had inherited a large fortune along with it she would have been
a lady of lavish and indiscreet munificence.

By way of discretion she slept on her programme before finally
committing herself to it. In the morning discretion suggested that she
had better wait a week. She decided to act on that suggestion; at the
same time she stifled the inner voice which kept telling her that the
thing she was doing "to please Horace" would not really please him at
all.

She had already ignored the advice he had given her on one point; for
Horace had long ago told her plainly that there was no use in editing
their grandfather's posthumous works; that on any subject other than
textual criticism, Sir Joseph was absurd.

Meanwhile, by sympathy perhaps, Rickman also had become discreet. He
entered on his new week a new man. As if he had divined that he was on
his trial, he redoubled his prodigious efforts, he applied himself to
his hideous task with silent and concentrated frenzy. He seemed to
live and move and have his being in the catalogue _raisonné_. Whenever
Lucia had occasion to look up at him he was assiduous, rapid,
absorbed, He never stopped to talk about Æschylus and Euripides. Now
and then they exchanged a necessary word, but not more than once or
twice in the morning. If Lucia by any chance gave him an opening he
ignored it. He maintained a silence that was almost stern.

Mr. Rickman was undergoing a process of regeneration.

He would not have called it by so fine a name. In fact, in its earlier
stages he seemed to himself to be merely pushing to the point of mania
a strong predilection for personal cleanliness. He was first of all
possessed, recklessly, ruinously, by a passion for immaculate shirts.
He had telegraphed to Spinks to send down all of his linen that he
could lay his hands on; meanwhile he had supplied deficiencies at the
local haberdashers. At Mrs. Downey's there was a low standard for the
more slender particulars of the toilette, and Mr. Rickman had compared
favourably with his fellow-boarders. Now he looked back with
incredulity and horror to his former self. Since his person had been
brought into daily contact with Miss Harden he had begun to bestow on
it a solemn, almost religious care. In the matter of the pocket
handkerchief he practised an extreme ritual, permitting himself none
but the finest lawn, which he changed after the first trivial
crumpling. The pocket-handkerchief being thus glorified and exalted in
the hierarchy of dress, one source of painful misgiving was removed.

For the first few days he had been merely formal in this cult of the
person. Piety was appeased with external rites and symbols, with
changes of vestment, excessive lustrations, and the like. Now he had
grown earnest, uncompromising, in his religion; and consistency
entailed a further step. Clearly his person, the object of such
superstitious veneration, must be guarded from all unbecoming and
ridiculous accidents; such an accident, for instance, as getting
drunk. If you came to think of it, few things could be more
compromising to the person than that (Heavens! if Miss Harden had seen
it last Wednesday night!). And since any friendship with ladies of
doubtful character might be considered equally derogatory from its
dignity, he further resolved to eliminate (absolutely) Miss Poppy
Grace. He took no credit for these acts of renunciation. They seemed
to him no more morally meritorious than the removal of dust from his
coat sleeves, or of ink-stains from his hands.

But though he exterminated the devil in him with so light a touch, it
was gravely, tragically almost, that he turned to the expulsion of the
Cockney. Intoxication was an unlucky casualty; so, if you came to
think of it, was a violent infatuation for Miss Poppy Grace;
infinitely more disastrous, more humiliating, were the fatal habits of
his speech. Take the occasional but terrific destruction of the aitch.
It was worse than drink; it wrecked a man more certainly, more utterly
beyond redemption and excuse. It was anxiety on this point that partly
accounted for his reserve. He simply dared not talk about Æschylus or
Euripides, because such topics were exciting, and excitement was apt
to induce this lapse.

But most of all he dreaded the supreme agitation of love. For he knew
now perfectly well what had happened to him; though he had never known
it happen to him in this manner before. It was love as his heart had
imagined it in the days before he became the thrall of Miss Poppy
Grace. He had known the feeling, but until now he had not known the
woman who could inspire it. It was as if his heart had renewed its
primal virginity in preparation for some divine experience.

The night of Sunday beheld the withdrawal of Mr. Rickman into the
immensity of his preposterous dream. From this blessed state he
emerged on Monday morning, enlightened as to the whole comedy and
tragedy of his passion. To approach Lucia Harden required nothing less
than a change of spirit; and Mr. Rickman doubted whether he could
manage that. He could only change his shirts. And at this point there
arose the hideous fear lest love itself might work to hinder and
betray him.

As it turned out, love proved his ally, not his enemy. So far from
exciting him, it produced a depression that rendered him disinclined
for continuous utterance. In this it did him good service. It
prevented him from obtruding his presence unduly on Miss Harden. In
his seat at the opposite table he had achieved something of her
profound detachment, her consummate calm. And Lucia said to herself,
"Good. He can keep quiet for a whole day at a time, which is what I
doubted."

Six days had passed in this manner, and he had not yet attempted to
penetrate the mystery and seclusion of the Aldine Plato, the
Neapolitan Horace and the _Aurea Legenda_ of Wynkyn de Worde. He
turned away his eyes from that corner of the bookcase where he had
good reason to suppose them to be. He would have to look at them some
time, meanwhile he shrank from approaching them as from some gross
impiety. His father had written to him several times, making special
inquiries after the Aldine Plato, the Neapolitan Horace, and the
_Aurea Legenda_ of Wynkyn de Worde. He replied with generalities in a
guarded manner. He was kept very busy, and was as yet unable to send
him any more detailed information. He had begun to feel it strange
that these questions should be put, to marvel at the assumption that
they could in any way concern him. Rickman's had ceased altogether to
exist for him.

He was beginning to lose all sense of strangeness in his position. The
six days might have been six years and Court House the home of his
infancy, Lucia's presence filled it with so warm an atmosphere of
kindness and of love. The very servants had learnt something of her
gentle, considerate ways. He was at home there as he had never been at
home before. He knew every aspect of the library, through all the
changes of the light, from the first waking of its blues and crimsons
in the early morning to the broad and golden sweep of noonday through
the south window; from the quick rushing flame of the sunset to its
premature death among the rafters. Then the lamps; a little light in
the centre where they sat, and the thick enclosing darkness round
about them.

Each of those six days was like a Sunday, and Sunday to Rickman was
always a day of beatitude, being the day of dreams. And she, in her
sweet unfamiliar beauty, only half real, though so piercingly present
to him, was an incarnate dream. She always sat with her back to the
south window, so that her head and shoulders appeared somewhat
indistinct against the outer world, a background of flower-beds and
green grass and sky, covered with the criss-cross of the leaded
lozenge panes and the watery shimmer of the glass. The outline of her
head was indicated by a little line of light that threaded her hair
and tipped the curve of her small ears. He knew every change of her
face, from its serene, faint-tinted morning look, to its flower-like
pallor in the dusk. He knew only too well its look under the
lamp-light after a hard day's work; the look that came with a slight
blurring of its soft contours, and a drooping of tired eyelids over
pathetic eyes. He saw what Jewdwine had failed to see, that Lucia was
not strong.

Six days, and three days before that, nine days in all; and it was as
if he had known that face all his life; he could not conceive a time
when he had not known it. As for the things he had known, horrible,
curious and incredible things, such as Rickman's, Mrs. Downey's, St.
Pancras Church, and the editor of _The Museion_ (whose last letter he
had left unanswered), they belonged to an infinitely remote and
unimaginable past. It seemed the entirely obvious and natural thing
that he should be sitting there alone with Lucia Harden. He was never
very far from her. The east window looked across the courtyard to the
window of her drawing-room; he could see her there, sitting in the
lamp-light; he could hear the music that she made. Her bedroom was
above the library; it was pleasant to him to know that when she left
him it was to sleep there overhead. The deep quiet of his passion had
drawn him again into his dream.

And then all of a sudden, he woke up and broke the silence. It was ten
o'clock on Saturday evening. Lucia had shifted the shade of the lamp.
From where he sat her face was in twilight and her body in darkness.
He had got up to put a book into its place, when he saw her leaning
back and covering her eyes with her hand.

The sight was too much for him. He came up and stood beside her.

"Miss Harden, I don't like this. I--I can't stand it any longer."

She looked up. She had been unaware of Mr. Rickman for the last hour,
and certainly did not expect to find him there.

"What is it that you can't stand?"

"To see you working from morning to night. It--it isn't right, you
know. You're paying me for this, and doing the half of it yourself."

"I'm not doing a quarter of it. You forget that you're working three
times as fast as I can."

"And you forget that you're working three times as hard."

"No. I'm leaving the hard work to you."

"I wish you'd leave it all to me."

"In that case we should never have finished," said the lady.

He smiled. "Perhaps not. At any rate you've worked so hard that I can
finish it now by myself."

She looked round the room. Undisguised fatigue was in the look. What
they had done was nothing to what they had yet to do.

"You can't," she said.

"I can. Easily. I miscalculated the time it would take."

She said nothing, for she knew that he had lied. His miscalculation
was all the other way. She bent again over her work. It was all that
he could do not to lift her arms gently but firmly from the table, to
take away her pen and ink, and put out her lamp. He would have liked
to have done some violence to the catalogue.

"I say, you know, you'll make yourself ill. You're burning the candle
at both ends. May I suggest that the game isn't worth the candle?"

"Have you very much more to do?"

"About two hours' work. Would it be impertinent to say that I could do
it better by myself?"

She looked at her watch and ignored his last question. "You can't do
two hours' work. It's twenty minutes past your time already."

Past his time, indeed! As if he hadn't been working past his time
every night since he came. She had grown mighty particular all of a
sudden!

"The presence of these engaging little Elzevirs is a terrible
temptation to a second-hand bookseller, still I believe you can trust
me with them alone."

From the expression of her face he gathered that this remark was even
more impertinent than the other. He had meant it to be.

"I really think," said the lady, "that you had better go."

"Just as you please; I shall only have to sit up two hours later
to-morrow night."

He walked to his place with his head thrown farther back and his chin
thrust farther forward than ever. He began to sort and arrange his
papers preparatory to his departure. It took him five minutes. At the
end of the five minutes he was aware that Lucia had risen and was
bidding him Good-night.

"You were quite right," she was saying. "I _am_ tired, and I had
better leave off. If you had rather stay and finish, please stay."

At those words Mr. Rickman was filled with a monstrous and amazing
courage. He made for the door, crossing without a tremor the whole
length of the library. He reached the door before Miss Harden, and
opened it. He returned her good-night with a hope that she would be
rested in the morning. And as he went back to his solitary labour he
smiled softly to himself, a smile of self-congratulation.

He had meant her to go--and she had gone.

Upstairs in her room overhead Lucia communed with her own face in the
glass.

"My private secretary?"

The face in the glass looked dubious.

"Of course I would rather have a gentleman for my private secretary.
Some people would say he isn't a gentleman." (She had said it herself
the other day.)

The face in the glass smiled dimly, between two parted veils of hair.

"What _is_ a gentleman?"

The face in the glass suggested that this was indeed a subtle and a
difficult question.

"It was not his business if I chose to tire myself. Would it have been
his business if he'd been a gentleman?"

The face in the glass offered no opinion.

"I think I like him best when he's impertinent. He is so _very_ funny,
poor dear, when he tries to be polite."

The face in the glass, framed by two white arms raising a column of
hair, was suffused with rosy mirth.

"I wonder what Horace really thinks of him?"

The face, triumphantly crowned with its dark coil, looked grave.

"He _is_ a gentleman. At least, he lied like one."

By this time Lucia was in bed, and there was no face in the glass to
dispute or corroborate that statement.




CHAPTER XXIII


The next morning he gave into her hands the manuscript of _Helen in
Leuce_. It had arrived two or three days ago, packed by Spinks between
his new shirts. She had expected to feel a little guilty as she
received the familiar sheets; but as she glanced over them she saw
that they were anything but familiar; what she had to deal with was a
clean new draft.

She had a fairly clear recollection of the outline of the play.

In Act I Helen lands in the enchanted island of Leuce, and is found
watching the ship that brought her sailing away with the dead
Menelaus, for he, being altogether mortal, may not follow her there.
The Chorus tells the story of Helen, her rape by Theseus, her marriage
with Menelaus, her flight with Paris, the tragedy of Troy and her
return to Argos. It tells how through all her adventures the godhead
in her remained pure, untouched, holding itself apart.

In Act II Helen is asleep, for the soul of Leda still troubles her
divinity, and her mortality is heavy upon her. Helen rises out of her
sleep; her divinity is seen struggling with her mortality, burning
through the beauty of her body. Desire wakens in Achilles, and in
Helen terror and anguish, as of one about to enter again into the pain
of mortal life. But he may not touch her till he, too, has put on
immortality. Helen prays for deliverance from the power of Aphrodite.
She rouses in Achilles a great anger against Aphrodite by reminding
him of the death of Patroclus; so that he calls down upon the goddess
the curses of all the generations of men.

It was this Act that lived in Lucia's memory. Act III she had not yet
read, but she had gathered from the argument that Pallas Athene was
there to appear to Achilles and divest him of his mortality; that she
was to lead him to Helen, whose apotheosis was supposed to be
complete; the Act concluding with two choruses, an epithalamium
celebrating the wedding of Helen and Achilles, and a Hymn in praise of
Athene.

She remembered how when Horace had first told her of the subject,
Helen in Leuce, she had looked it up in Lemprière, found a reference
in Homer and another in Euripides, had shaken her head and said, "What
can he make of that?"

Now for the first time she saw what he had made of it. Rickman's Helen
was to the Helena of Euripides what Shelley's Prometheus is to the
Prometheus of Æschylus. Rickman had done what seemed good in his own
eyes. He had made his own metres, his own myth and his own drama. A
drama of flesh and blood, a drama of spirit, a drama of dreams. Only a
very young poet could have had the courage to charge it with such a
weight of symbolism; but he had contrived to breathe into his symbols
the breath of life; the phantoms of his brain, a shadowy Helen and
Achilles, turned into flesh and blood under his hands. It was as if
their bodies, warm, throbbing, full-formed, instinct with irresistible
and violent life, had come crashing through the delicate fabric of his
dream.

As she read Lucia's mind was troubled, shaken out of its critical
serenity. She heard a new music; she felt herself in the grasp of a
new power, a new spirit. It was not the classic spirit. There was too
much tumult in its harmonies, as if the music of a whole orchestra had
been torn from its instruments and flung broadcast, riding
triumphantly on the wings of a great wind. There were passages
(notably the Hymn to Aphrodite in the second Act) that brought the
things of sense and the terrible mysteries of flesh and blood so near
to her that she flinched. Rickman had made her share the thrilling
triumph, the flushed passion of his youth. And when she was most hurt
and bruised under the confusion of it, he lifted her up and carried
her away into the regions of spiritual beauty and eternal strength.

It was all over; the tumult of the flesh and the agony of the spirit;
over, too, the heaven-piercing singing, the rapture of spirit and of
flesh made one. Rickman had ended his amazing drama with the broad
majestic music of his Hymn to Athene. Lucia had borne up under the
parting of Helen and Menelaus; but she was young, and at that touch of
superb and ultimate beauty, two tears, the large and heavy tears of
youth, fell upon Rickman's immaculate manuscript, where their marks
remain to this day. The sight of them had the happy effect of making
her laugh, and then, and not till then, she thought of Rickman--Mr.
Rickman. She thought of him living a dreadful life among dreadful
people; she thought of him sitting in his father's shop, making
catalogues _raisonnés_; she thought of him sitting in the library
making one at that very moment. And this was the man she had had the
impertinence to pity; whom Horace would say she now proposed to
patronize. As she stood contemplating the pile of manuscript before
her, Miss Lucia Harden felt (for a great lady) quite absurdly small.

In that humble mood she was found by Miss Palliser.

"What's up?" said Kitty.

"Kitty, that little man in there--he's written the most beautiful
play. It's so terribly sad."

"What, the play?"

"No, the little man. It's a classic, Kitty--it'll live."

"Then I'm sure you needn't pity him. Let's have a look at the thing."
Miss Palliser dipped into the manuscript, and was lost.

"By Jove," she said, "it does look ripping. Where does the sadness
come in?"

"He thinks he'll never write another."

"Well, perhaps he won't."

"He will--think of it--he's a genius, the real thing, this time.
Only--he has to stand behind a counter and make catalogues."

Miss Palliser meditated. "Does he--does he by any chance drop his
aitches?"

"Kitty, he _does_."

"Then Lucy, dear child, beware, beware, his flashing eyes, his
floating hair--"

"Don't. That little man is on my mind."

"I shouldn't let him stop there too long, if I were you. He might
refuse to get on."

"I must do something for him, and I must do it now. What _can_ I do?"

"Not much, I imagine."

"I--I think I'll ask him to dinner."

"I wouldn't. You said he drops his aitches. Weave," said Miss
Palliser, "a circle round him thrice, and close your eyes with holy
dread, but whatever you do, don't ask him to dinner."

"Why not?"

"Because ten to one it would make him most horribly uncomfortable. Not
that that matters so much. But wouldn't the faithful Robert think it a
little odd?"

"Robert is too faithful to think anything at all."

"I'm not so sure of that. Personally, I wish you _would_ ask him to
dinner--I seem to foresee a certain amount of amusing incident."

"Well, I don't think I will ask him--to dinner. Perhaps he wouldn't
enjoy it. But as I've got to talk over his play with him, I should
like to ask him to something."

"Ask him to coffee afterwards."

"Coffee hardly seems enough."

"It depends. Serve it festively--on a table, and pour it out yourself.
Offer him strange and bewitching forms of food. Comfort him with--with
angel cake--and savoury sandwiches and bread and butter."

"I see--a sort of compromise?"

"Exactly. Society, my child, is based on compromise."

"Very well, then, I'll write him a note."

She wrote it, and sent Robert with it to the library.

"I suppose," said she, "it's about time to dress for dinner?"

"Don't make yourself too pretty, dear."

Lucia looked back through the doorway.

"I shall make myself as pretty as ever I can. He has had nothing but
ugly things to look at all his life."

Miss Palliser apostrophized the departing figure of her friend.

"Oh Lucy, Lucy, what an angelic little fool you _are_!"




CHAPTER XXIV


Half-past six, and Miss Harden had not yet appeared in the library. It
was the first time that Rickman had passed a whole day without seeing
her. He began to be uneasy, to wonder whether she were really ill. At
seven he was leaving the house as usual for his hotel when Robert
brought him a little three-cornered note.

     "Dear Mr. Rickman," it said (Dear Mr. Rickman!) "you see I have
     taken your advice, and given myself a holiday. I have spent it
     very pleasantly--reading _Helen in Leuce_. It would give me much
     pleasure if you would come in for coffee this evening, about
     eight o'clock. We can then talk it over.

     "Very truly yours,

     "LUCIA HARDEN.

"You need only send a verbal answer."

A verbal answer? No. That would never do. He could not trust himself
with speech, but in writing he knew he was impeccable.

     "Dear Miss Harden. How very kind of you! But I am sorry that you
     did not give yourself a complete rest. I should be sorrier, if I
     were not so grateful for the trouble you have taken. It will give
     me great pleasure to come in this evening at the time you name.

     "With many thanks, yours very truly,

     "S.K. RICKMAN."

He was not pleased with it; it erred on the side of redundancy; he had
not attained the perfect utterance, the supreme simplicity. But he was
obliged to let it go. Two hours later Robert announced that coffee was
served in the drawing-room.

It seemed that to reach the drawing-room you had to cross the whole
length of the house from west to east. In this passage he realized
(what his mind had not greatly dwelt upon), the antiquity of the
Hardens, and the march of their splendid generations. Going from the
Tudor Library into the grim stone hall of the Court House, he took a
cold plunge backward into time. Thence his progress was
straightforward, bringing him into the Jacobean picture gallery that
cut the house from north to south. Here he paused, perceiving that the
double line of portraits began with a Vandyck and a Lely. Robert stood
with his hand on the brass rose knob of an oak door; in his eternal
attitude of affection, mingled with immobile respect, he waited for
the moment when Mr. Rickman should elect to tear himself from the Lely
and the Vandyck. The moment came, and Mr. Rickman heard himself
announced in a clear high voice as he passed over the threshold.

He found himself in a long oak-panelled room; that room whose west
window looked out across the courtyard to the east window of the
library. It was almost dark except for a small fire-lit, lamp-lit,
square at the far end. Lucia was sitting in a low chair by the
fireplace, under the tall shaded lamp, where the light fell full on
her shoulders. She was not alone. On a settee by the other side of the
open hearth sat the young lady who had intruded on his solitude in the
library. The presence of the young lady filled him with anxiety and
dismay.

He had to cross a vast, dim space before he reached that lighted
region. With what seemed to him a reeling and uncertain gait, he
approached over the perilously slippery parquet. Miss Harden rose and
came forward, mercifully cutting short that frightful passage from the
threshold to her chair.

Lucia had not carried out the intention she had announced to Kitty.
She had dressed in haste; but in Rickman's eyes the effect was that
which Kitty had seen fit to deprecate. She had made herself very
pretty indeed. He could not have given a very clear account of it,
could not have said whether the thing she wore, that floating,
sweeping, curling, trailing, folding and caressing garment were made
of grey gossamer in white or white in grey, but he was aware that it
showed how divinely her slender body carried its flower, her head;
showed that her arms, her throat, and the first sweep and swell of her
shoulders, were of one tone with the luminous pallor of her face.
Something in the dress, in her bearing and manner of approach, gave
her the assured charm of womanhood for the unfinished loveliness of
youth.

She introduced him to her friend Miss Palliser, whose green eyes
smiled in recognition. He bowed with the stiffness of a back
unaccustomed to that form of salutation. He hardly knew what happened
after that, till he found himself backing, nervously, ridiculously
backing into a lonely seat in the middle of the room.

The three were now grouped in a neat geometrical figure, Mr. Rickman,
on the chair of his choice, forming the apex of a prolonged triangle,
having the hearthrug for its base. He was aware that Miss Harden and
Miss Palliser were saying something; but he had no idea of what they
said. He sat there wondering whether he ought to be seated at all,
whether he ought not rather to be hovering about that little table,
ready to wait upon Miss Palliser. He was still wondering when Miss
Palliser got up with the evident intention of waiting upon him.

That, he knew, was all wrong; it was not to be permitted for a moment.
Inspired by a strange, unnatural courage, he advanced and took his
coffee from her hand, retreating with it to his remote and solitary
position.

He sat silent, moodily looking at his coffee, stirring it from time to
time and wondering whether he would ever be brave enough to drink it.
He waited for an opportunity of dispatching it unperceived. The
presence of Miss Palliser paralysed him. He wondered whether he ought
to say anything to her or to Miss Harden, or to neither or to both; he
tried to think of something suitable to say.

Meanwhile Miss Palliser talked for all three. It seemed that she had
dined with her friend on her way to an "at home" in Harmouth.

"Bread and butter?" said she judicially "N--no, I think not, thanks.
I've got to eat jellies and sandwiches and things for two hours
straight on end. It sounds horrible, but I shall be driven to it. At
the Flossers," she explained for her friend's benefit, "you must
either eat or talk; and if you can't talk scandal you're not expected
to talk at all." And still talking Miss Palliser slowly bore down upon
Mr. Rickman with a plate of bread and butter.

Mr. Rickman's earnest and chivalrous endeavour to forestall her caused
a rug to slide under his feet. It slid, and Mr. Rickman with it, for
quite a considerable distance; and though Mr. Rickman, indeed,
preserved the erect attitude by a series of complicated movements (a
superb triumph of muscular ingenuity, but somewhat curious and
fantastic as a spectacle), his coffee cup flung itself violently on
its side, and poured out its contents at the lady's feet.

He looked at Miss Harden. She was smiling; for who wouldn't have
smiled? But her smile became almost tender in her perception of his
distress.

Miss Palliser continued to talk.

"Ah," said Miss Palliser, "I was waiting for that to happen. I've been
wondering which of us would do it first. I rather thought it would be
me; but for pure, delightful unexpectedness, give me a parquet floor.
I wouldn't mop it up with my pocket handkerchief, if I were you."

"No--please--it doesn't matter. It happens every day."

"And it puts a visitor on an agreeable footing at once. You _can't_
keep up any stiffness or formality, when what you took for a
drawing-room turns itself into a skating rink."

"Quite so," said Rickman, "and if you fall, it breaks the ice." He was
entering shyly into her humour. "I'm afraid my be-h-haviour wasn't
quite so h-happy and spontaneous as it might have been."

"I assure you it was extremely naïve and natural, as far as it went,"
said Kitty, laughing.

"I think you were very clever to keep your balance," said Lucia.

"Too clever by half. If you'd been a really genial person, Mr.
Rickman, you'd have lost it."

Thus lightly did they cover his confusion, thus adroitly turn the
malignant hand of circumstance.

"Kitty," said Lucia, "I don't want to hurry you, but it's past nine,
and you'll _have_ to hurry if you don't want to be late."

"But I do want to be late. I mean to be late. I can't eat sandwiches
for more than two hours."

And Kitty flung herself on her settee again in crosslegged,
unpremeditated ease, and there she conversed with Mr. Rickman as if
she had known him all her life. Kitty was amused at last.

So was Mr. Rickman. He found himself answering with appropriate
light-heartedness; he heard himself laughing in the manner of one
infinitely at ease. It was impossible to be anything else in Kitty
Palliser's society. He was, in fact, surprised. Though it was only by
immense expenditure of thought and effort that he managed to secure
the elusive aspirate, still he secured it. Never for a moment did he
allow himself to be cheated into the monstrous belief that its absence
was, or could be unperceived.

But though he was grateful to Miss Palliser, he wished all the time
that she would go. At last she rose and drew her fur-collared cloak
about her with a slow, reluctant air.

"Well, I suppose I must be off. I shall be back before eleven, Lucy.
Good-night, Mr. Rickman, if I don't see you again."

He was alone with Lucia Harden.

It was one thing to be alone with Lucia Harden in the library or on
Harcombe Moor, and quite another thing to be left with her in that
lamp-lit, fire-lit room. The library belonged to her race and to their
historic past; the moor to nature and to all time; this room to her
and to the burning present. There was no sign or suggestion of another
presence.

A kindly room (barring that parquet floor!); a beautiful room; full of
warm lights, and broad and pleasing shadows; furnished with an extreme
simplicity, such bareness as musicians love. He was struck by that
absence of all trivial decoration, all disturbing and irrelevant
detail. In such a room, the divinity of the human form was not dwarfed
or obscured by excess of furniture. Such a room, he reflected, was
also eminently disadvantageous to any figure that was not entirely
sure of its divinity. But for two persons who desired to know each
other better there couldn't be a better place. It left them so
securely, so intimately alone.

For the first time, then, he was alone with Lucia Harden.

She had risen and had unlocked a drawer in the writing-table near her,
and taken out the thick pile of manuscript. He noticed that she
detached from it some loose pencilled sheets and put them back into
the drawer. She seated herself in her old place and signed to him to
take the low chair beside her.

He approached her (for the first time) without nervousness or
embarrassment; for he saw his _Helen_ lying on her knees and knew that
she held his dreams in her soul. He had made her acquainted with the
best and highest in him, and she would judge him by that alone. In her
sight his genius would stand apart from all in him that was jarring
and obscure. It at least was untouched by the accident of his birth,
the baseness of his false position.

"I sent for you," said she, "because I wanted to talk to you about
this, while it is all fresh in my mind. I thought we could talk better
here."

"Thanks. I want awfully to know what you have to say."

"I can't have anything to say that you don't know already."

"I--I know nothing." (What a hypocrite he felt as he said it!)

"Nor I. As far as knowledge goes I haven't any right to speak.
Only--the other evening, you expressed such absolute disbelief in
yourself--"

"I was perfectly sincere."

"I know you were. That's what made me believe in you."

(Well then, if _that_ was what made her believe in him he would
continue to express disbelief in himself.)

She paused. "It's the little men, isn't it, the men of talent, that
are always so self-conscious and so sure? I don't know much about it,
but it seems to me that genius isn't bound to be like that. It might
be so different from your ordinary self that you couldn't be aware of
it in the ordinary way. There would always be a sort of divine
uncertainty about it."

"I'm afraid I don't agree with you. All the great geniuses have been
not only aware of themselves, but most uncommonly certain."

"Still, their genius may have been the part of themselves they
understood least. If they had tried to understand it, they would have
doubted too."

"There's something in that. You mean genius understands
everything--except itself?

"I think that's what I meant."

"Yes; but whether genius understands itself or not, whatever it does,
you see, it doesn't doubt."

"Doesn't it? Have you read Keats' letters? _He_ doubted."

"Only when he was in love with Fanny Brawne."

He paused abruptly. He was seized by an idea, a rushing irresistible
idea that lifted him off his feet and whirled him suddenly into a
region of light, tumultuous and profound. Keats was in love when he
doubted. Could that be the explanation of his own misgiving?

"That," he said hastily, "that's another thing altogether. Any way, if
you don't believe in yourself, you'll have some difficulty in making
other people believe in you."

"And if other people _do_ believe in you, before you believe in
yourself?"

"Before? It might be done before, but not after. You may make a man
conceited, but you can't give him back the conceit he had on Saturday,
if he's lost it all by Monday."

"That means that you know you've written a beautiful thing and you
only think you'll never write another."

"Perhaps it does." (He had to keep it up for the pleasure of hearing
her say she believed in him.)

"Well, I don't suppose you will write another _Helen in Leuce_."

"I'm afraid not." He went on to tell her that the wonder was how he
wrote the thing at all. It had been done anyhow, anywhere, in
successive bursts or spasms of creative energy; the circumstances of
his life (he referred to them with some diffidence) not being exactly
favourable to sustained effort. "How did _you_ feel about it?" he
inquired.

"I can hardly tell you. I think I felt as you feel about anything
beautiful that comes to you for the first time. I don't know what it
is you've done. It's as if something had been done to me, as if I'd
been given a new sense. It's like hearing Beethoven or Wagner for the
first time." As she spoke she saw the swift blood grow hot in his
face, she saw the slight trembling of the hand that propped his chin
and she thought, "Poor fellow, so much emotion for a little praise?"

"What did you mean by it?" she said.

He considered a moment--as who should say "What the dickens did I mean
by it?"

Lucia leaned back now, for the first time, in the breathing space he
gave her, attentively watching the man she proposed to make her
secretary; and as she watched him she found herself defending him
against her own criticism. If he dropped his aitches it was not
grossly as the illiterate do; she wouldn't go so far as to say he
_dropped_ them; he slipped them, slided them; it was no more than a
subtle slur, a delicate elision. And that only in the commoner words,
the current coin of his world. He was as right as possible, she
noticed, in all words whose acquaintance he had made on his own
account. And his voice--his voice pleaded against her prejudice with
all its lyric modulations. Much may be forgiven to such voices. And
there were other points in his favour.

Kitty was right. He was nice to look at. She was beginning to know the
changes of his face; she liked it best when, as now, its features
became suddenly subtle and serious and straight. At the moment his
eyes, almost opaque from the thickness of their blue, were dull under
the shadow of the eye-bone. But when he grew excited (as he frequently
did) they had a way of clearing suddenly, they flashed first colour at
you, then light, then fire. That was what they were doing now; for now
he let himself go.

His Helen, he said, was the eternal Beauty, the eternal Dream. Beauty
perpetually desirous of incarnation, perpetually unfaithful to flesh
and blood; the Dream that longs for the embrace of reality, that
wanders never satisfied till it finds a reality as immortal as itself.
Helen couldn't stay in the house of Theseus, or the house of Menelaus
or the house of Priam. Theseus was a fool if he thought he would take
her by force, and Paris was a fool if he thought he could keep her for
pleasure; and Menelaus was the biggest fool of all if he expected her
to bear him children and to mind his house. They all do violence to
the divinity in her, and she vindicates it by eluding them. Her
vengeance is the vengeance of an immortal made victim to mortality.
Helen of Argos and Troy is the Dream divorced from reality.

"Yes--yes. I see." She leaned back in her chair, fascinated, while the
wonderful voice went on, covering its own offences with exquisite
resonances and overtones.

"This divorce is the cause of all the evil that can happen to men and
women. Because of it Helen becomes an instrument in the hands of
Aphrodite--Venus Genetrix--do you see? She's the marriage-breaker, the
destroyer of men. She brings war and pestilence and death. She is the
supreme illusion. But _Helen in Leuce_ is the true Helen. In Leuce,
you know, she appears as she is, in her divine form, freed from the
tyranny of perpetual incarnation. I can't explain it, but that's the
idea. Don't you see how the chorus in praise of Aphrodite breaks off
into a prayer for deliverance from her? And at the end I make Athene
bring Helen to Achilles, who was her enemy in Troy.--That's part of
the idea, too."

"And Achilles?"

"Achilles is strength, virility, indestructible _will_."

It seemed that while trivial excitement corrupted, intense feeling
purified his speech, and as he pronounced these words every accent was
irreproachable. A lyric exaltation seemed to have seized him as it had
seized him in the reading of Sophocles.

"The idea is reconciliation, the wedding of the Dream to reality. I
haven't made up my mind whether the last chorus will be the
Epithalamium or the Hymn to Pallas Athene."

He paused for reflection, and in reflection the lyric rapture died.
He added pensively. "The 'Ymn, I think."

Lucia averted her ardent gaze before the horror in his young blue
eyes. They were the eyes of some wild winged creature dashed down from
its soaring and frenzied by the fall. Lucia could have wept for him.

"Then this," said she, feigning an uninterrupted absorption in the
manuscript, "this is not what my cousin saw?"

"No, h--he only saw the first draft of the two first Acts. It was
horribly stiff and cold. He said it was classical; I don't know what
he'd say it is now. I began it that way, and it finished itself this
way, and then I re-wrote the beginning."

"I see. I see. Something happened to you." As she spoke she still kept
her eyes fixed on the manuscript, as if she were only reading what was
written there. "You woke up--in the middle of the second Act, wasn't
it?--and came to life. You heard the world--the real world--calling to
you, and Helen and Achilles and all the rest of them turned to flesh
and blood on your hands."

"Yes," he said, "they were only symbols and I'd no notion what they
meant till they left off meaning it."

She looked from the manuscript to him. "You know in your heart you
_must_ be certain of yourself. And yet--I suspect the trouble with you
is that _your_ dream is divorced from reality."

He stared in amazement at the young girl who thus interpreted him to
herself. At this rate he saw no end to her powers of divination. There
were depths in his life where her innocence could not penetrate, but
she had seized on the essential. It had been as she had said. That
first draft was the work of the young scholar poet, the adorer of
classic form, the dreamer who found in his dreams escape from the
grossness of his own lower nature and from the brutalities of the
world he lived in. A great neo-classic drama was to be his protest
against modernity and actuality. Then came an interval of a year in
which he learnt many things that are not to be found in books, or
adequately expressed through neo-classic drama; and the thing was
finished and re-written at a time when, as she had said, something
had happened to him; when that same gross actual world was making its
claims felt through all his senses. And he was suffering now the deep
melancholy of perspicuous youth, unable to part with its dreams but
aware that its dreams are hopelessly divorced from reality. That was
so; but how on earth did she know it?

"It's hardly a divorce," he said, laughing. "I think it's separation
by mutual consent."

"That's a pity," said she, "life is so lovable."

"I don't always find it either lovable or loving. But then it's life
in a fifth-rate boarding-house in Bloomsbury--if you know what that
is."

She did not know what that was, and her silence suggested that she
conceived it to be something too unpleasant to discuss with him.

"I work eight hours a day in my father's shop--"

"And when your work is done?"

"I go back to the boarding-house and dine."

"And after dinner?"

Mr. Rickman became visibly embarrassed. "Oh, after dinner, there are
the streets, and the theatres, and--and things."