He asked himself how it was that he had had no premonition of the
thing that was about to happen to him; that the supreme moment should
have come upon him so casually and with so light a step; that he went
to meet it in a mood so commonplace and unprepared? (Good Heavens! He
remembered that he had been eating pea soup at the time, and wishing
it were artichoke.)
Had he not known that she would come back again, and in just that way?
Had he not looked for her coming five years ago? And what were five
years, after all? How was it that he had heard no summons of the
golden and reverberant hour?
And what was he going to do with it, or it with him, now that it had
come? That was a question that he preferred to leave unanswered for
the present.
It seemed that Lucia was going to stay for a week as Miss Roots'
guest; and it was Mrs. Downey's hope that she would be with them for a
much longer period on her own account. This hope Rickman judged to be
altogether baseless; she would never be able to bear the place for
more than a week. He inquired of Miss Roots early the next morning on
this subject; and at the same time he found out from her what Lucia
had been doing in the last five years. She had not been (as Jewdwine
had allowed him to suppose) abroad all the time with Kitty Palliser.
She had only lived with Miss Palliser in the holidays. The rest of the
year, of the five years, she had been working for her living as music
mistress in a Women's College somewhere in the south of England. To
his gesture of horror Miss Roots replied that this was by no means the
hideous destiny he conceived it to be.
"But--for _her_--" he exclaimed.
"And why not for her?" Miss Roots, B.A., retorted, stung by his
undisguised repugnance. If Lucia _had_ got her post merely by interest
(which Miss Roots seemed to consider as something of a blot on her
career) at the end of her first year she had the pick of the students
waiting for her. Unfortunately Lucia had never been strong; and this
summer her health had completely broken down.
At that he shuddered, and turned abruptly away. Miss Roots looked at
him and wondered why. When he approached her again it was to offer
her, with every delicacy and hesitation, the loan of his study for the
time of Miss Harden's visit. This was not an easy thing to do; but he
was helped by several inspirations. The room, he said, was simply
standing empty all day. He had hardly any use for it now. He would be
kept busy at the office up to the time of his marriage. And he thought
it would be a little more comfortable for Miss Harden than the public
drawing-room.
"I want," he said (lying with a certain splendour), "to pay some
attention to her. You see, she's my editor's cousin--"
Miss Roots turned on him a large look that took him in, his monstrous
mendacity and all. But she nodded as much as to say that the
explanation passed.
"One hardly likes to think of her, you know, sitting in the same room
with Soper."
"We all have to put up with Mr. Soper."
"Yes; but if she isn't strong, she ought to have some place where she
can be alone and rest. Besides, it'll be nicer for _you_. You'll see a
great deal more of her, you know, that way."
In the end the offer was accepted. For, as Miss Roots pointed out to
her friend, it would give him far more pleasure to lend his room than
to sit in it himself.
Certainly it gave him pleasure, a thrilling, subtle, and perfidious
pleasure, every time that he thought of Lucia occupying his room. But
before she could be allowed to enter, he caused it to be thoroughly
cleansed, and purified as far as possible from the tobacco smoke that
lingered in the curtains and the armchairs. He tidied it up with his
own hands, removing or concealing the unlovelier signs of his
presence and profession. He bought several cushions (silk and down)
for the sofa, and a curtain for the door to keep out the draught, and
a soft rug for Lucia's feet; also a tea-table, a brass kettle and a
spirit lamp, and flowers in an expensive pot. He did things to them to
make them look as if they had been some little time in use. He caused
a wrinkle to appear in the smooth blue cheeks of the sofa cushions. He
rubbed some of the youth off the edges of the tea-table. He made the
brass kettle dance lightly on the floor, until, without injury to its
essential beauty, it had acquired a look of experience. It was the
deceit involved in these proceedings that gave him the first clear
consciousness of guilt. He persuaded himself that all these articles
would come in nicely for the little house at Ealing, then remembered
that he had provided most of them already.
In doubt as to the propriety of these preparations, he again
approached Miss Roots. "I say," said he, "you needn't tell her all
these things are mine. I'm going to leave them here in case she wants
to stay on afterwards. She won't have to pay so much then, you know."
He hesitated. "Do you think that's a thing that can be done?"
"Oh yes, it can be done," she replied with an unmistakable emphasis.
"But I mayn't do it? Mayn't I? It's all right if she doesn't know, you
know."
Miss Roots said nothing; but he gathered that she would not betray
him, that she understood.
He could not explain matters half so clearly to himself. He might have
wanted to lend his study to his friend's cousin; he certainly did want
to lend it to Lucia for her own sake; but besides these very proper
and natural desires he had other motives which would not bear too
strict examination. Lucia sitting in the same room with Mr. Soper was
not a spectacle that could be calmly contemplated; but he hoped that
by providing her with a refuge from Mr Soper he might induce her to
stay till the moment of his own departure. And there was another
selfish consideration. It was impossible to see her, to talk to her
with any pleasure in the public drawing-room. Lucia could not come
into his study as long as it was his; but if he gave it up to her and
her friend, it was just possible that he might be permitted to call on
her there. That she accepted him as a friend he could not any longer
doubt. There were so many things that he had to say to her, such long
arrears of explanation and understanding to make up. He could see
that, unlike the Lucia he used to know, she had misunderstood him;
indeed she had owned as much. And for this he had to thank Horace
Jewdwine.
Jewdwine's behaviour gave him much matter for reflection, painful, but
instructive. Jewdwine had not lied to him about Lucia's movements; but
he had allowed him to remain in error. He had kept his cousin
regularly posted in the news she had asked for, as concerning an
unfortunate young man in whom they were both interested; but he had
contrived that no sign of her solicitude should reach the object of
it. It was as if he had been merely anxious to render an account of
his stewardship; to assure her that the unfortunate young man was now
prospering under his protection, was indeed doing so well that there
was no occasion for Lucia to worry herself about him any more.
Apparently he had even gone so far as to admit that there was
friendship between Rickman and himself, while taking care that there
should never be anything of the sort between Rickman and Lucia. He had
constituted himself a way by which news of Rickman might reach Lucia;
but he had sternly closed every path from Lucia to Rickman. That meant
that Lucia might be depended upon; but that Rickman must be allowed no
footing lest he should advance too far. In other words it meant that
they acknowledged, and always would acknowledge, the genius while they
judged it expedient to ignore the man.
But _she_ had not always ignored him. Did it not rather mean, then,
that Jewdwine would not trust her there; that, knowing her nature and
how defenceless it lay before the impulses of its own kindness, he
feared for her any personal communication with his friend? It did not
occur to Rickman that what Jewdwine dreaded more than anything for
Lucia was the influence of a unique and irresistible personal charm.
As far as he could see, Jewdwine was merely desperately anxious to
protect his kinswoman from what he considered an undesirable
acquaintance. And five years ago his fears and his behaviour would
have been justifiable; for Rickman owned that at that period he had
not been fit to sit in the same room with Lucia Harden, far less, if
it came to that, than poor Soper. But his life since he had known her
was judged even by Jewdwine to be irreproachable. As Rickman
understood the situation, he had been sacrificed to a prejudice, a
convention, an ineradicable class-feeling on the part of the
distinguished and fastidious don. It was not the class-feeling itself
that he resented; he could have forgiven Jewdwine a sentiment over
which he had apparently no control; he could have forgiven him
anything, even his silence and his subterfuge, if he had only
delivered Lucia's messages. That was an unpardonable cruelty. It was
like holding back a cup of water from a man dying of thirst. He had
consumed his heart with longing for some word or sign from her; he had
tortured himself with his belief in her utter repudiation of him; and
Jewdwine, who had proof of the contrary, had abandoned him to his
belief. He could only think that, after taking him up so gently, Lucia
had dropped him and left him where he fell. He owned that Jewdwine was
not bound to tell him that Lucia had returned to England, or to
provide against any false impression he might form as to her
whereabouts; and it was not there, of course, that the cruelty came
in. He could have borne the sense of physical separation if, instead
of being forced to infer her indifference from her silence, he had
known that her kind thoughts had returned to him continually; if he
had known that whatever else had been taken from him, he had kept her
friendship. Her friendship--it was little enough compared with what he
wanted--but it had already done so much for him that he knew what he
could have made of it, if he had only been certain that it was his. He
could have lived those five years on the memory of her, as other men
live on hope; sustained by the intangible but radiant presence, by
inimitable, incommunicable ardours, by immaterial satisfactions and
delights. If they had not destroyed all bodily longing, they would at
least have made impossible its separation from her and transference to
another woman. They would have saved him from this base concession to
the folly of the flesh, this marriage which, as its hour approached,
seemed to him more inevitable and more disastrous. Madness lay in the
thought that his deliverance had been near him on the very day when he
fixed that hour; and that at no time had it been very far away. No;
not when two years ago he had stood hesitating on the edge of the
inexpiable, immeasurable folly; the folly that had received, engulfed
him now beyond deliverance and return. If only he had known; if he
could have been sure of her friendship; if he could have seen her for
one moment in many months, one hour in many years, the thing would
never have begun; or, being begun, could never have been carried
through.
Meanwhile the friendship remained. His being married could not make it
less; and his being unmarried would certainly not have made it more.
As there could be neither more nor less of it, he ought to have been
able to regard it as a simple, definite, solidly satisfactory thing.
But he had no sooner realized that so much at least was his than he
perceived that he had only the very vaguest notion as to the nature
and extent of it. Of all human relations, friendship was the
obscurest, the most uncertainly defined. At this point he remembered
one fatal thing about her; it had always been her nature to give
pleasure and be kind. The passion, he imagined, was indestructible;
and with a temperament like that she might be ten times his friend
without his knowing from one day to another how he really stood with
her. And hitherto one means of judging had been altogether denied to
him; he had never had an opportunity of observing her ways with other
men.
This third evening he watched her jealously, testing her dealings with
him by her behaviour to the boarders, and notably to Spinks and Soper.
For Lucia, whether she was afraid of hurting the feelings of these
people, or whether she hesitated to establish herself altogether in
Mr. Rickman's study, had determined to spend the first hours after
dinner in the drawing-room. Miss Roots protested against these weak
concessions to the social order. "You'll never be able to stand them,
dear," she said; "they're terrible."
But Lucia had her way. "You've stood them for five years," said she.
"Yes, but I've had my work, and I'm used to it; and in any case I'm
not Miss Lucia Harden."
"Mr. Rickman stands them."
"Does he? You wouldn't say so if you'd known him for five years."
"I wonder why he stayed."
"Do you? Perhaps Miss Flossie could enlighten you."
"Of course. I was forgetting her."
"Don't forget her," said Miss Roots drily; "she's important."
Miss Roots went up to the study, and Lucia turned into the
drawing-room. She owned to herself that what took her there was not so
much an impulse of politeness as an irresistible desire to know what
manner of people Keith Rickman had had to live among. In those
evenings the scene had grown familiar to her; the long room with the
three tall windows looking on the street; the Nottingham lace curtains
tied with yellow sashes in the middle; the vivid blue-green painting
of the wood-work, a bad match for the wall paper; the oleographs and
pier-glasses in their gilded frames; the carpet, with its monstrous
meaningless design in brown and amber; the table, secretary, and
cabinet of walnut wood whose markings simulated some horrible
discoloration of decay; the base company of chairs, and the villainous
little maroon velvet ottoman, worn by the backs of many boarders; and
beyond the blue-green folding doors the dim little chamber looking on
a mews. And the boarders, growing familiar, too, to her sensitive
impressionable brain; Miss Bramble, upright in her morning gown and
poor little lace cap and collar; Mrs. Downey sitting, flushed and
weary, in the most remote and most uncomfortable chair; Mr. Spinks
reading the paper with an air of a man engaged in profound literary
research; the two girls sitting together on the ottoman under the
gaselier; Mr. Soper wandering uneasily among them, with his
insignificant smile and his offerings of bon-bons; and Keith Rickman
sitting apart, staring at his hands, or looking at Flossie with his
blue, deep-set, profoundly pathetic eyes. For that pretty lady's sake,
how he must have suffered in those five years.
Rickman, from his retreat in the back drawing-room, watched her ways.
She was kind to Miss Bramble. She was kind to that old ruffian
Partridge whose neck he would willingly have wrung. She was kind, good
Heavens! yes, she was kind to Soper. When the commercial gentleman
approached her with his infernal box of bon-bons, she took one. He
could have murdered Soper. He was profoundly depressed by the
spectacle of Lucia's ways. If she behaved like that to every one, what
had he to go upon? Nothing, nothing; it was just her way. And yet, he
did not exactly see her sending messages to Soper.
He rose and opened the grand piano that stood in the back
drawing-room. He went up to her (meeting with a nervous smile
Flossie's inquiring look as he passed). He stood a moment with one arm
on the chimney-piece, and waited, looking down at Lucia. Presently she
raised her head and smiled, as surely she could never have smiled at
Soper.
"Do you want me to play for you?" she said.
"That is exactly what I wanted." He drew the flattering inference
that, while apparently absorbed in conversation with Miss Bramble, she
had been aware of his presence in the background, and of every
movement he had made.
"Well, I must ask our hostess first, mustn't I?"
She went to that lady and bent over her with her request.
If Lucia's aim was to give pleasure she had certainly achieved it.
Mrs. Downey may or may not have loved music, but she was visibly
excited at the prospect of hearing it. So were the boarders. They
settled themselves solemnly in their seats. Spinks crushed his noisy
newspaper into a ball and thrust it behind him; Miss Bramble put away
her clicking needles; while Mr. Soper let himself sink into a chair
with elaborate silence; one and all (with the exception of Mr.
Partridge, who slept) they turned their faces, politely expectant,
towards the inner room. It struck Lucia that in this the poor things
were better mannered than many a more aristocratic audience.
Rickman lit the candles on the piano and seated himself beside her.
"I know what I have got to play." said she.
"What?"
"The Sonata Appassionata, isn't it?"
"Fancy your remembering."
"Of course I remember. It isn't every one who cares for Beethoven. I'm
afraid the others won't like it, though."
"They've got to like it," he said doggedly.
And Lucia, with her fatal passion for giving pleasure, played. And as
the stream of music flowed through the half-lit room, it swept away
all sense of his surroundings, all memory of the love and truth and
honour pledged to his betrothed, and every little scruple of pity or
of conscience. It bore down upon the barriers that stood between him
and Lucia, and swept them away too. And the secret sources of his
inspiration, sealed for so many months, were opened and flowed with
the flowing of the stream; and over them the deep flood of his longing
and his misery rose and broke and mingled with the tumult. And through
it, and high above it all, it was as if his soul made music with her;
turning the Sonata Appassionata into a singing of many voices, a
symphony of many strings.
So lost was he that he failed to perceive the effect of her playing on
the audience of the outer room. Flossie sat there, very quiet in her
awe; Miss Bishop kept her loose mouth open, drinking in the sounds;
Mr. Soper leaned forward breathing heavily in a stupid wonder; there,
over the tops of the chairs, one up-standing ribbon on Miss Bramble's
cap seemed to be beating time to the music all by itself; while Mrs.
Downey flushed and swelled with pride at the astonishing capabilities
of her piano. He did not notice either that, as Lucia played the
tender opening bars of the Sonata, Mr. Partridge shook off the slumber
that bound him at this hour; that, as she struck the thundering chords
that signal the presto Finale, he raised his head like an old
war-horse at the sound of the trumpet. He stared solemnly at Lucia as
she came forward followed by Rickman; then he rose from his own
consecrated chair, heavily but with a certain dignity suited to the
moral grandeur of the act, and made a gesture of abdication.
"I was a professional myself once," said he. "My instrument was the
flute."
There was no doubt about the spirit of Lucia's reception that night.
Perhaps the finest appreciation of connoisseurs had never touched her
more than did the praise of that simple audience. Rickman was the only
one who did not thank her. For when her playing was over he had turned
suddenly very cold, seized with a fierce shivering, the reaction from
the tense fever of his nerves; and it was with difficulty that he
controlled the chattering of his teeth. But before they parted for the
night he asked if he might "call" some afternoon; his tone pointing
the allusion to the arrangement that permitted this approach, "We
can't talk very well here, can we?" he said.
She answered by inviting him and Miss Walker to tea the next day. He
was conscious of a base inward exultation when he heard poor Flossie
say that she could only look in later for a little while. In October,
work was heavy at the Bank, and the Beaver seldom got home till after
tea-time. His conscience asked him sternly if he had reckoned on that
too?
When to-morrow came, Miss Hoots was busy also, and disappeared after
tea. He had certainly reckoned on that disappearance.
There was a moment of embarrassment on his part when he found himself
alone with Lucia in the room (his room) that he had made ready for
her. He had done his work so thoroughly well that the place looked as
if it had been ready for her since the beginning of time.
She was tired. He remembered how tired she used to be at Harmouth; and
he noticed with a pang how little it took to tire her now. She leaned
back in his chair, propped by the cushions he had chosen for her
(chosen with a distinct prevision of the beauty of the white face and
dark hair against that particular shade of greenish blue). She had
been reading one of his books; it lay in her lap. Her feet rested on
his fender, they stretched out towards the warmth of his fire. If only
it were permitted to him always to buy things for her; always to give
her the rest she needed; always to care for her and keep her warm and
well. He wondered how things had gone with her those five years. Had
she been happy in that college in the south? Had they been kind to
her, those women; or had they tortured her, as only women can torture
women, in some devilish, subtle way? Or would overwork account for the
failure of her strength? He thought he saw signs in her tender face of
some obscure, deep-seated suffering of the delicate nerves. Well,
anyhow she was resting now. And in looking at her he rested, too, from
the labour of conscience and the trouble of desire. Heart and senses
were made quiet by her mere presence. If his hands trembled as they
waited on her it was not with passion but with some new feeling,
indescribable and profound. For brought so near to him as this, so
near as to create the illusion of possession, she became for him
something too sacred for his hands to touch.
He could count on about half an hour of this illusion before Flossie
appeared. Afraid of losing one moment of it, he began instantly on the
thing he had to say.
"All this time I've been waiting to thank you for your introduction to
Fielding."
"Oh," she said eagerly, "what did he say? Tell me."
He told her. As she listened he could see how small a pleasure was
enough to give life again to her tired face.
"I am so glad," she said in the low voice of sincerity; "so very
glad." She paused. "That justifies my belief in you. Not that it
needed any justification."
"I don't know. Your cousin, who is the best critic I know, would tell
you that it did."
"My cousin--perhaps. But he _does_ see that those poems are great.
Only he's so made that I think no greatness reconciles him to--well,
to little faults, if they are faults of taste."
"Did you find many faults of taste?"
She smiled. "I found some; but only in the younger poems. There were
none--none at all--in the later ones. Which of course is what one
might expect."
"It is, indeed. Did you look at the dates? Did you notice that all
those later things were written either at Harmouth, or after?"
"I did."
"And didn't that strike you as significant? Didn't you draw any
conclusions?"
"I drew the conclusion that--that the poet I knew had worked out his
own salvation."
"Exactly--the poet you knew. Didn't it occur to you that he might
never have done it, if you hadn't known him?"
He looked at her steadily. The colour on her face had deepened, but
her eyes, as they met his, were grave and meditative. She seemed to be
considering the precise meaning of his words before she answered.
"No, I didn't."
"What, never? Think. Don't you remember how you used to help me?"
She shook her head. "I only remember that I meant to have helped you.
And I was very sorry because I couldn't. But I see now how absurd it
was of me; and how unnecessary."
He knew that she was thinking now of her private secretary.
"It was beautiful of you. But, you know, it couldn't have happened. It
was one of those beautiful things that never can happen."
"That's why I was so sorry. I thought it must look as if I hadn't
meant it."
"But you did mean it. Nothing can alter that, can it?"
"No. You must take the will for the deed."
"I do. The will is the only thing that matters."
"Yes. But--it was absurd of me--but I thought you might have been
counting on it?"
"Did I count on it? I suppose I did; though I knew it was impossible.
You forget that I knew all the time it was impossible. It was only a
beautiful idea."
"I'm sorry, then, that it had to remain an idea."
"Don't be sorry. Perhaps that's the only way it could remain
beautiful. It wouldn't have done, you know. You only thought it could
because you were so kind. It was all very well for me to work for you
for three weeks or so. It would have been very different when you had
me on your hands for a whole year at a stretch. And it's much better
for me that it never came off than if I'd had to see you sorry for it
afterwards."
"If I had been sorry, I should not have let you see it."
"I should have seen it, though, whether you let me or not. I always
see these things."
"But I think, you know, that I wouldn't have been sorry."
"You would! You would! You couldn't have stood me."
"I think I could."
"What, a person with a villainous cockney accent? Who was capable of
murdering the Queen's English any day in your drawing-room?"
"Oh, no; whatever you do you'll never do that."
"Well, I don't know. I'm not really to be trusted unless I've got a
pen in my hand. I'm better than I used to be. I've struggled against
it. Still, a man who has once murdered the Queen's English always
feels, you know, as if he'd got the body under the sofa. It's like
homicidal mania; the poor wretch may be cured, but he lives in terror
of an attack returning. He knows it doesn't matter what he is or what
he does; he may live like a saint or write like an archangel; but one
aitch omitted from his conversation will wreck him at the last."
"You needn't be afraid; you never omit them."
"You mean I never omit them now. But I did five years ago. I couldn't
help it. Everybody about me did it. The only difference between them
and me was that I knew it, and they didn't."
"You _were_ conscious of it, then?"
"Conscious? Do you know, that for every lapse of the sort in your
presence I suffered the torments of the damned? Do you suppose I
didn't know how terrible I was?"
She shook her head, this time with disapproval. "You shouldn't say
these things."
"Do you mean, I shouldn't say them, or shouldn't say them to you?"
"Well, I think you shouldn't say them to me. Don't you see that it
sounds as if I had done or said something to make you feel like that."
"You? Good Heavens! rather not! But whatever you said or did, I
couldn't help knowing how you thought of me."
"And how was that?"
"Well, as half a poet, you know, and half a hair-dresser."
"That's funny; but it's another of the things you shouldn't say.
Because you know it isn't true."
"I only say them because I want you to see how impossible it was."
"For me to help you?"
"Yes."
"I do see it. It _was_ impossible--but not for any of the reasons you
suppose. If it had been possible--"
"What then?"
"Then, perhaps, I needn't have felt so sorry and ashamed. You know I
really _am_ a little bit ashamed of having asked a great poet to be my
private secretary."
It was thus that she extricated herself from the embarrassing position
in which his clumsiness had placed her. For he saw what she meant when
she told him that he should not say these things to her. He had made
her feel that she ought to defend him from the charges he had brought
against himself, when she knew them to be true, when her gentleness
could only have spared him at the expense of her sincerity. How
beautifully she had turned it off. He refrained from the obvious
pretty speeches. His eyes had answered her.
"If you knew that you _had_ done something for me; not a little thing
but a great one--" He paused; and in the silence they heard the sound
of Flossie's feet coming up the stair. He had only just time to finish
his sentence--"Would it please you or annoy you?"
She answered hurriedly; for as she rose, Flossie was knocking at the
door.
"It would please me more than I can say."
"Then," he said in a voice that was too low for Flossie to hear, "you
_shall_ know it."