That evening as they sat down to dinner, it might have been noticed
that Mrs Downey's face was more flushed and festal than it had been
since the day was fixed for Mr. Rickman's wedding and departure. She
seated herself expansively, with a gay rustling of many frills, and
smiled well pleased upon the arrangements of her table. From these
signs it was evident that Mrs. Downey was expecting another boarder, a
boarder of whom she had reason to be proud. Rickman noticed with
dismay that the stranger's place was laid beside his own. He knew them
so well, these eternal, restless birds of passage, draggled with their
flight from one boarding-house to another. The only tolerable thing
about them was that, being here to-day, they were gone to-morrow.
The new boarder was late, culpably late. But Mrs. Downey was proud of
that too, as arguing that the poor bird of passage had stayed to
smooth her ruffled plumage. Mrs. Downey approved of all persons who
thus voluntarily acknowledged the high ceremonial character of the
Dinner. She was glad that Mr. Rickman would appear to-night in full
evening dress, to rush away in the middle of the meal, a splendour the
more glorious, being brief. She was waiting for the delightful moment
when she would explain to the visitor that the gentleman who had just
left the room was Mr. Rickman, "the reviewer and dramatic critic." She
would say it, as she had said it many times before, with the easy
accomplished smile of the hostess familiar with celebrity.
But that moment never came. The very anticipation of it was lost in
the thrill of the visitor's belated entrance. Yet nothing could have
been quieter than the manner of it. She (for it _was_ a lady) came
into the room as if she had lived at Mrs. Downey's all her life, and
knew her way already from the doorway to her chair. When she said,
"I'm so sorry, I'm afraid I'm rather late," she seemed to be taking
for granted their recognition of a familiar personal characteristic.
Perhaps it was because she was so tall that her voice sounded like
music dropped downward from a height.
There was a stir, a movement down each side of the table; it was
subtle, like the flutter of light and wind, and sympathetic, answering
to her footfall and the flowing rhythm of her gown. As it passed, Mrs.
Downey's face became if possible more luminous, Miss Bramble's figure
if possible more erect. A feeble flame flickered in Mr. Partridge's
cheeks; Mr. Soper began feeling nervously in his pocket for the box of
bon-bons, his talisman of success; while Mr. Spinks appeared as if
endeavouring to assume a mental attitude not properly his own. Miss
Bishop searched, double-chinned, for any crumbs that might have lodged
in the bosom of her blouse; and Flossie, oh, Flossie became more
demure, more correct, more absolutely the model of all propriety. Each
was so occupied with his or herself that no one noticed the very
remarkable behaviour of Mr. Rickman. He rose to his feet. He turned
his back on Flossie. There was a look on his face as of a man seized
with sudden terror, and about to fly.
In turning he found himself face to face with Lucia Harden.
He had the presence of mind to stand back and draw her chair from the
table for her; so that his action appeared the natural movement of
politeness.
Though she held out her hand by an instinct of recognition, there was
a perceptible pause before she spoke. He had known that it was she
before he saw her. She had to look at him twice to make quite sure.
And then, being sure, she smiled; not the slow, cold smile of
politeness that dies downwards on the lips, but the swift smile of
pleasure that leaps to the eyes and forehead.
"Mr. Rickman--? I think I should have known you anywhere else; but I
didn't expect to meet you here."
He looked at her courageously.
And as he looked there fell from him the past five years, the long
estranging years of bitterness and misery and vain desire, and the
years, still more estranging, of his madness and his folly; and not
the thinnest phantom shadow of time divided him from the days of
Harmouth, That moment of recognition annihilated all between; a lustre
of his life swept away in one sweep of her eyelids, dropped fathom
deep and forgotten in the gaze of her pure and tender eyes. It was not
the Lucia of their last meeting; the tragic and terrible Lucia who had
been so divided from him by her suffering and her grief. As she had
appeared to him on that evening, the last of his brief, incredible
happiness, when he sat with her alone in the drawing-room at Court
House, and she had declared her belief in him, so she appeared to him
now. The unforgettable movements of her face, the sweet curve of her
mouth (the upper lip so soft and fine that it seemed to quiver
delicately with the rhythm of her pulses and her breath), the turn of
her head, the lifting of her eyebrows, told him that she had kept no
memory of his part in the things that had happened after that.
And he too forgot. With Lucia sitting at his right hand, he forgot the
woman sitting at his left; he forgot the house of bondage, and he
forgot that other house where the wedding chamber yet waited for the
bride.
"I should have known you anywhere." His eyes dropped and he said no
more.
That act of recognition had only lasted a second; but it had made its
mark. Over the dim, fluttering table was the hush of a profound
astonishment. He neither saw nor felt it; nor did he hear Mrs. Downey
scattering the silence with agitated apologies.
"You'll excuse us beginning, Miss Harden; but it's Mr. Rickman's night
at the theatre."
Miss Harden looked at him again, lifting her eyebrows with that air of
interested inquiry that he knew so well. And yet, beyond those first
half dozen words he said nothing.
"Silly boy," said Mrs. Downey to herself, "why can't he say he's sorry
he has to go. I'm sure I gave him his opportunity." She was annoyed at
his rudeness.
Whether he were sorry or not, he went at his appointed time. He never
knew how he got out of the room, nor how he had behaved before going.
He had simply looked at her, held her hand and left her. And he had
not said a word; or none at least that he could remember.
Miss Harden was, it seemed, the guest, or the ostensible guest, of
Miss Roots. And Miss Roots enjoyed herself, delighting openly in the
recovery of the friend she had lost sight of for so many years. But
from Mrs. Downey's point of view the Dinner that night was not exactly
a success. Mr. Rickman had behaved in an extraordinary manner. Mr.
Soper and Miss Bishop had never looked so--well, so out of place and
common. And she could see that Mr. Spinks had taken advantage of the
general consternation to help himself outrageously to ginger.
Lucia took her friend aside when it was over. "You might have told me
he was here," said she.
"My dear, I didn't know you knew him."
"Then, did he never--" Whatever Lucia was going to say she thought
better of it.
She did not see him till the next night, after dinner, when he came to
her as she was sitting in a corner of the back drawing-room alone. And
as he came, she looked at him with a curiously intent yet baffled
gaze, as if trying to fit a present impression to one past. And yet
she could hardly have had any difficulty in recognizing him; for his
face was unforgettable, unique; but she missed something in it which
used to be familiar. And now she saw that what she had missed was the
restless look of youth; the sensuous eagerness that had helped to make
it so irregular. It had settled into the other look that she had found
there more rarely; the look that strengthened and refined the mobile
features, and brought them into harmony with the clean prominent lines
of the chin and of the serious level brows. Of all his looks it was
the one that she used to like best.
"So you've come back again?" he said.
"But I never was away."
"I thought you were abroad?"
"Who told you that?"
"I don't know. I suppose I must have dreamt it."
"I think you must. I've been in town for the last six weeks."
"In town?"
"Yes, if Hampstead's town. I've been staying with the Jewdwines.
Didn't he tell you?"
"No, he never told me anything."
She was silent for a moment. "So _that's_ why you never came to see
me."
"To see you? I didn't know--and if I had I shouldn't have thought--"
He hesitated.
"Of what? Of coming to see me?"
"No, that you would have cared for me to come."
"I think that's not a thing you ought to say. Of course I cared."
"Well, but I couldn't take that for granted, could I?"
"Couldn't you? Not after the messages I sent you?"
"But I never got any messages."
"Didn't you?" Her upper lip quivered; it was as if she winced at some
thought that struck her like a blow. "Then my cousin must have
forgotten to give them to you. Just like him; he is shockingly
careless."
Now Rickman knew it was not just like him; Jewdwine was not careless,
he was in all things painfully meticulous; and he never forgot.
"I don't think I can forgive him for that."
"You must forgive him. He is overwhelmed with work. And he isn't
really as thoughtless as you might suppose. He has given me news of
you regularly. You can't think how glad I was to hear you were getting
on so well. As for the latest news of all--" She lifted her face and
looked at him with her sweet kind eyes. "It _is_ true that you are
going to be married?"
"Quite true."
"I was so glad to hear that, too."
"Thanks." There was a slight spasm in his throat. That thick difficult
word stuck in it and choked him for the moment.
"I hope I shall meet your wife some day."
"You have met her." Lucia looked puzzled and he smiled, a little sadly
for a bridegroom. "You sat next her at dinner. She's here somewhere."
Lucia turned her head to where Flossie was sitting by a table, sitting
very upright, with her little air of strained propriety.
"Is it--is it that pretty lady? Do you think I might go up and speak
to her? I would so like to know her."
"I'll bring her to you. There's rather a crowd just now in the other
room."
He went to her, hardly knowing how he went.
"Flossie," he said, "I want to introduce you to Miss Harden."
Flossie's eyes brightened with surprise and pleasure; for she had
learnt from Mrs. Downey that the visitor was the daughter of Sir
Frederick Harden; and Lucia's distinction subdued her from afar.
Keith, being aware of nothing but Lucia, failed to perceive, as he
otherwise might have done, that he had risen in Flossie's opinion by
his evident intimacy with Miss Harden. She came blushing and smiling
and a little awkward, steered by Keith. But for all her awkwardness
she had never looked prettier than at that moment of her approach.
If Keith had wanted to know precisely where he stood in the order of
Lucia's intimacies, he might have learnt it from her reception of Miss
Walker. By it he might have measured, too, the height of her belief in
him, the depth of her ignorance. She who had divined him was ready to
take his unknown betrothed on trust; to credit her, not with vast
intellect, perhaps (what did that matter?), but certainly with some
rare and lovely quality of soul. He loved her; that was enough. Lucia
deduced the quality from the love, not the love from the quality. His
pretty lady must be lovable since he loved her. He had noticed long
ago that Lucia's face had a way of growing more beautiful in the act
of admiration; as if it actually absorbed the loveliness it loved to
look upon. And now, as she made a place for Flossie at her side, it
wore that look of wonder, ardent yet restrained, that look of shy and
tentative delight with which five years ago she had approached his
_Helen_. It was as if she had said to herself, "He always brought his
best to show me. Five years ago he brought me his dream, to read and
care for. Now he brings me the real thing, to read and care for too."
She was evidently preparing to read Flossie as if she had been a new
and beautiful poem.
He was unaware of all this; unaware of everything except the mingled
beatitude and torture of the moment. He sat leaning forward, staring
over his clasped hands at Lucia's feet, where he longed to fall down
and worship. He heard her telling Flossie how glad she was to meet
her; how unexpected was her finding of him here, after fire years; how
five years ago she had known him in Devonshire; and so on. But in his
ears the music of her voice detached itself wholly from the meaning of
her words. Thus he missed the assurance which, if he had only listened
intelligently, they might have had for him; the assurance of an
indestructible friendship that welcomed and enfolded his pretty lady
for his sake.
But whatever her almost joyous acceptance of the pretty lady promised
for the future, it could not be said that, conversationally, Lucia was
getting on very fast with Flossie in the present; and Rickman's
abstraction did not make things easier. Therefore she was a little
relieved when Miss Roots joined them, and Rickman, startled into
consciousness, got up and left the room. He feared that lady's
sympathy and shrewdness. Nothing could be hidden from her clever eyes.
And now, perceiving that the conversation flagged, Miss Roots
endeavoured to support it.
"Have you seen _Metropolis_?" she asked in her tired voice.
Lucia shook her head. "I don't know that I want to see it."
"You'd better not say so before Miss Walker."
"Oh, never mind me," said Miss Walker. "I haven't been yet. Is it
good?"
"Some people seem to think so. It depends."
"Yes; there's such a difference in the way they put them on the stage,
too."
Miss Roots' face relaxed, and her fatigued intelligence awoke.
"Who's on in it?" asked Flossie, happy and unconscious; and the spirit
of mischief seized upon Miss Roots.
"I can't tell you. I'm not well posted in these things. But I think
you'd better not ask Mr. Rickman to take you to see _Metropolis_."
Flossie was mystified, and a little indignant. If the play was so
improper, why had Miss Roots taken for granted that she had seen it?
"That wasn't at all nice of her, was it?" said Lucia, smiling as Miss
Roots went away. Her look was a healing touch laid on Flossie's
wounded vanity. "That's the sort of little trap she used to lay for
me."
"I suppose you mean she was rotting me. I always know when other
people are rotting. But that's the worst of her; you never can tell,
and she makes you look so ignorant, doesn't she?"
"She makes me _feel_ ignorant, but that's another thing."
"But whatever did she mean just now?"
"Just now she meant that you knew all about _Metropolis_."
"Why should I? Do _you_ know anything about it?"
"Not much; though it is my cousin's paper. But as Mr. Rickman writes
for it, you see--"
"Well, how was I to know that? He's always writing for something; and
he'd never think of coming to _me_ every time. I never talk shop to
him, and he never talks shop to me. Of course he told me that he'd got
on to some better paying thing," she added, anxious to show that she
was not shut out from the secrets of his heart; "but when you said
_Metropolis_ I didn't take it in."
Lucia made no further attempt to converse. She said good-night and
followed Sophie Roots to her tiny room.
"That was rather dreadful," she said to herself. "I wonder--" But if
she did not linger long over her wondering neither did she stop to
find out why she was so passionately anxious to think well of the
woman who was to be Keith Rickman's wife, and why it was such a relief
to her to be angry with Sophie for teasing the poor child.