Lucia lay back in her chair, wondering, not at Edith, but at herself.
Her cousin's visit had been so far effectual that it had made her
aware of the attitude of her own mind. If she had been told beforehand
that she could be happy in a Bloomsbury boarding-house, or within any
reasonable distance of such people as Miss Bishop and Mr. Soper, the
thing would have appeared to her absurd. And yet it was so. She was
happy among these dreadful people, as she had not been happy at
Hampstead among the cultured and refined. But when she came to examine
into the nature of this happiness she found that it contained no
positive element; that it consisted mainly of relief, relief from the
strain of an incessant anxiety and uncertainty. That the strain had
been divided between her and Horace had only made it worse, for she
had had the larger share of the anxiety, he of the uncertainty. Not
that he was more uncertain than in the old days at Harmouth. He was
less so. But she had never been anxious then. For after all they had
understood each other; and apparently it was the understanding now
that failed. Yet Horace had been right when he told himself that Lucia
would never imply anything, infer anything, claim anything, take
anything for granted on the sanction of that understanding. She would
not have hurried by a look or word the slow movements of the love
which somehow he had led her to believe in. Love between man and woman
to her mind was a sort of genius; and genius, as she said long ago to
poor Rickman, must always have about it a divine uncertainty. Yes,
love too was the wind of the divine spirit blowing where it listeth,
the kindling of the divine fire. She had waited for it patiently,
reverently, not altogether humbly, but with a superb possession of her
soul. Better to wait for years than rush to meet it, and so be tossed
by the wind and shrivelled by the fire. Then, when the crash came five
years ago, though she could hardly conceive it as altering her
cousin's attitude, she knew that it must alter hers. The understanding
had been partly a family affair; and her side of the family was now
involved in debt and poverty and dishonour. When the debts were paid
off, and the poverty reduced and the honour redeemed, it would be time
to re-consider the understanding. But, as it was just possible that
Horace, if not exactly fascinated by her debts and all the rest of it,
might feel that these very things bound him, challenged him in some
sort to protection, Lucia withdrew herself from the reach of the
chivalrous delivering arm. She took her stand, not quite outside the
circle of the cousinly relation, but on the uttermost fringe and verge
of it, where she entered more and more into her own possession. They
met; they wrote long letters to each other all about art and
literature and philosophy, those ancient unimpassioned themes; for, if
Lucia assumed nothing herself she allowed Horace to assume that
whatever interested him must necessarily interest her. In short,
perceiving the horrible situation in which poor Horace had been left
by that premature understanding, she did everything she could to help
him out of it.
And she succeeded beyond her own or Horace's expectation.
After three years' hard work, when all the debts were paid, and she
was independent, Lucia thought she might now trust herself to stay
with Horace in his house at Hampstead. She had stayed there already
with Edith when Horace was away, but that was different. And at first
all was well; that is to say, there was no anxiety and no uncertainty.
The calm and successful critic of _The Museion_ knew his own mind; and
Lucia said to herself that she knew hers. The understanding between
them was perfect now. They were simply first cousins; each was the
other's best friend; and they could never be anything else. She stood
very much nearer to the heart of the circle, in a place where it was
warm and comfortable and safe. If Horace could only have let her stay
there, all would have been well still. But a mature Lucia, a Lucia
entirely self-possessed, calm and successful, too, in her lesser way;
a Lucia without any drawbacks, and almost to his mind as uncertain as
himself; a Lucia who might be carried off any day before his eyes by
some one of the many brilliant young men whom it was impossible not to
introduce to her, proved fatally disturbing to Horace Jewdwine. And it
was then that the anxiety and uncertainty began.
They were at their height in the sixth year, when Lucia broke down and
came to Hampstead to recover. Fate (not Lucia, of course; you could
not think such things about Lucia) seemed anxious to precipitate
matters, and Jewdwine in his soul abhorred precipitancy. Edith, too,
was secretly alarmed, and Lucia could read secrets. But it was to
avoid both a grossly pathetic appeal to the emotions and an appearance
of collusion with the intrigues of Fate that Lucia had feigned
recovery and betaken herself to Sophie in Tavistock Place, before, and
(this was subtlety again), well before the return of Horace from his
holiday. And if the awful reflection visited her that this step might
prove to be a more importunate appeal than any, to be a positive
forcing of his hand, Edith had dissipated it by showing very plainly
that the appeal was to their pride and not their pity.
Lucia did not consider herself by any means an object of pity. She was
happy. The absence of intolerable tension was enough to make her so.
As for the society she was thrown with, after the wear of incessant
subtleties and uncertainties there was something positively soothing
in straightforward uninspired vulgarity. These people knew their own
minds, if their minds were not worth knowing; and that was something.
It seemed to her that her own mind was growing healthier every day;
till, by the time Edith visited her, there was no need to feign
recovery, for recovery had come. And with it had come many benign and
salutary things; the old delicious joy of giving pleasure; a new sense
of the redeeming and atoning pathos of the world; all manner of sweet
compunctions and tender tolerances; the divine chance, she told
herself, for all the charities in which she might have failed. There
had come Sophie. And there had come, at last, in spite of everything,
Keith Rickman.
As for Keith Rickman, her interest in him was not only a strong
personal matter, but it had been part of the cool intellectual game
she had played, for Horace's distraction and her own deception; a game
which Horace, with his subterfuges and suppressions, had not played
fair. But when, seeking to excuse him, she began to consider the
possible motives of her cousin's behaviour, Lucia was profoundly
disturbed.
It had come to this: if Horace had cared for her he might have had a
right to interfere. But he did not care. Therefore, no interference,
she vowed, should come between her and her friendship for the poet who
had honoured her by trusting her. She could not help feeling a little
bitter with Horace for the harm he had done her, or rather, might have
done her in Keith Rickman's eyes.
For all that she had now to make amends.