Of the ensuing eighteen months of foreign travel it is irrelevant here
to speak. Suffice it that on my return to England and to Chelsea, the
earliest news which greeted me was that Arabella Lessingham had been
now five weeks married and Heber Pogson a fortnight dead. Lessingham,
dear, good fellow, was my informant, and minded acquainting me, so I
fancied, only a degree less with the first item than with the second.
For some considerable time, he told me, Pogson had been ailing. He grew
inordinately stout, unwieldy to the extent of all exertion, all
movement causing him distress. Suffocation threatened if he attempted
to lie down; so that, latterly, he spent not only all day, but all
night sitting in the big library chair we knew so well. If not actually
in pain, he must still have suffered intolerable discomfort. But he
never complained, and to the last his passion for books never failed.
"We took him any new ones we happened to run across, as you'd take a
sick woman flowers. To the end he read."
"And wrote?" I asked.
"That I can't say," Lessingham replied. "There were things I could not
make out. And I couldn't question him. It didn't seem to be my place,
though I had an idea he'd something on his mind to speak of which would
be a relief. It worried me badly. I felt sure he wanted to tell us, but
couldn't bring himself to the point. He talked of you. He cared for you
more than for any of us; yet--I may be all wrong--it seemed to me he
was glad you weren't here. Once or twice, I thought, he felt almost
afraid you might come back before--before it was all over, you know. It
sounds rather horrible, but I had a feeling he longed to slink off
quietly out of sight--for he did not dread death, I'm certain of that.
What he dreaded was that life had some trick up her sleeve which, if he
delayed too long, might give him away; put him to shame somehow at the
last."
"And Mrs. Pogson?"
Lessingham looked at me absently.
"Oh! Mrs. Pogson? She's never interested me. She's too invertebrate;
but I believe she took care of Pogson all right."
Next day I called at the house in Church Street. After some parley I
was admitted into the studio-library. Neither in Mrs. Pogson nor in the
familiar room did I find any alteration, save that the green had
disappeared from her dress. She wore hanging, trailing, unrelieved
black. And that a piece of red woollen cord was tied across, from arm
to arm, of Pogson's large library chair, forbidding occupation of it.
This pleased me. It struck the positive, the, in a way, aggressive
note, which Mrs. Pogson had once before so strangely, unexpectedly,
sounded in my presence.
I said the things common to such occasions as that of our present
meeting; said them with more than merely conventional feeling and
emphasis. I praised her husband's great gifts, his amazing learning,
his eloquence, the magnetic charm by which he captivated and held us.
Finally I dared the question I had come here to ask, which had burned
upon my tongue, indeed, from the moment I heard of Pogson's death.
"What about the novel? Might we hope for speedy, though posthumous,
publication? We were greedy; the world should know how great a literary
genius it had lost. Was it ready for press, as--did she
remember?--she'd assured me it would certainly be by the time I came
back?"
Mrs. Pogson did not betray any sign of emotion. Her thin hands remained
perfectly still in her crape-covered lap.
"There is no novel," she calmly told me. "There never has been any
novel. Heber did not finish it because he never began it. He did not
possess the creative faculty. You were not content with what he gave.
You asked of him that which he could not give. At first he played with
you--it amused him. You were so gullible, so absurdly ignorant. Then he
hesitated to undeceive you--in that, I admit, he was weak. But he
suffered for his weakness. It made him unhappy. Oh I how I have
hated--how I still hate you!--for I saved him from poverty, from hard
work. I secured him a peaceful, beautiful life, till you came and
spoilt it.... All the money was mine," she said.
"GENIUS"