The Divine Fire

by May Sinclair

CHAPTER LXXIX

Lucia had been lying still all the afternoon on her couch in the drawing-room; so still that Kitty thought she had been sleeping. But Kitty was mistaken.

"Kitty, it's past five, isn't it?"

"Yes, dear; a quarter past."

"It'll be all over by this time to-morrow. Do you think he'll be very terrible?"

"No, dear. I think he'll be very kind and very gentle."

"Not if he thinks I'm shamming."

"He won't think that." ("I wish he could," said Kitty to herself.)

They were waiting for the visit of Sir Wilfrid Spence. The Harmouth doctor had desired a higher light on the mysterious illness that kept Lucia lying for ever on her back. It might have been explained, he said, if she had suffered lately some deep mental or moral shock; but Lucia had not confessed to either, and in the absence of any mental cause it would be as well, said the Harmouth doctor, to look for a physical one. The fear at the back of the Harmouth doctor's mind was sufficiently revealed by his choice of the specialist, Sir Wilfrid Spence.

"Do you think I'm shamming, Kitty? Sometimes I think I am, and sometimes I'm not quite sure. You know, if you think about your spine long enough you can imagine that it's very queer. But I haven't been thinking about my spine. It doesn't interest me. Dr. Robson would have told me if he thought I was shamming, because I asked him to. There's one thing makes me think it isn't fancy. I keep on wanting to do things. I want—you don't know how I want to go to the top of Harcombe Hill. And my ridiculous legs won't let me. And all the while, Kitty, I want to play. It's such a long time since I made my pretty music."

A long time indeed, as Kitty was thinking sadly. Lucia had not made her pretty music since that night six months ago when she had played to please Keith Rickman.

"Things keep on singing in my head, and I want to play them. It stands to reason that I would if I could. But I can't. Oh, how I do talk about myself! Kitty, there must be a fine, a heavy fine, of sixpence, every time I talk about myself."

"I shouldn't make much by it," said Kitty.

Lucia closed her eyes, and Kitty went on with the manuscript she was copying. After a silence of twenty minutes Lucia opened her eyes again. They rested longingly on Kitty at her work.

"Kitty," she said, "Do you know, I sometimes think it would be better to sell those books. I can't bear to do it when he gave them to me. But I do believe I ought to. The worst of it is I should have to ask him to do it for me."

"Don't do anything in a hurry, dear. Wait and see," said Kitty cheerfully.

It seemed to Lucia that there was nothing to wait for now. She wondered why Kitty said that, and whether it meant that they thought her worse than they liked to say and whether that was why Sir Wilfrid Spence was coming?

"Kitty," she said again, "I want you to promise me something. Supposing—it's very unlikely—but supposing after all I were to go and die—"

"I won't suppose anything of the sort. People don't go and die of nervous exhaustion. You'll probably do it fifty years hence, but that is just the reason why I won't have you harrowing my feelings this way now."

"I know I've had such piles of sympathy for my nervous exhaustion that it's horrid of me to try and get more for dying, too. I only meant if I did do it, quite unexpectedly, of something else—you wouldn't tell him, would you?"

"Well, dear, of course I won't mention it if you wish me not to—but he'd be sure to see it in the papers."

"Kitty—you know what I mean. He couldn't see that in the papers. He couldn't see it anywhere unless you told him. And if you did, it might make him very uncomfortable, you know."

Poor Kitty, trying to be cheerful under the shadow of Sir Wilfrid Spence, was tortured by this conversation. She had half a mind to say, "You don't seem to think how uncomfortable you're making me." But she forbore. Any remark of that sort would rouse Lucia to efforts penitential in their motive, and more painful to bear than this pitiful outburst, the first in many months of patience and reserve. She remembered how Lucia had once nursed her through a long illness in Dresden. It had not been, as Kitty expressed it, "a pretty illness," and she had been distinctly irritable in her convalescence; but Lucy had been all tenderness, had never betrayed impatience by any look or word.

"I shouldn't mind anything, if only I'd been with him when he was ill. But perhaps he'd rather I hadn't been there. I think it's that, you know, that I really cannot bear."

Kitty would have turned to comfort her, but for the timely entrance of Robert. He brought a letter for Lucia which Kitty welcomed as an agreeable distraction. It was from Horace Jewdwine. "Any news?" she asked presently.

"Yes. What do you think? He's going to Paris to-morrow. Then he's going on to Italy—to Alassio, with Mr. Maddox."

"Horace Jewdwine and Mr. Maddox? What next?"

"It isn't Horace that's going." She gave the letter to Kitty because she had shrunk lately from speaking of Keith Rickman by his name.

"That's a very different tale," said Kitty

"I'm so glad he's going. That was what he always wanted to do. Do you remember how I asked him to be my private secretary? Now I'm his private secretary; which is as it should be."

"You mean I am."

"Yes. Do you think you could hurry up so that he'll get them before he goes? Poor Kitty—I can't bear your having all these things to do for me."

"Why not? You'd do them for me, if it was I, not you."

"I wish it were you. I mean I wish I were doing things for you. But you haven't done them all, Kitty. I did some. I forget how many."

"You did three, darling."

"Only three? And there are nine and twenty. Still, he'll see that I began them. Kitty—do you think he'll wonder and guess why I left off?"

"Oh no, he isn't as clever as all that."

"You mustn't tell him. You're writing the letter, dear, now, aren't you? You mustn't say a word about my illness. Only tell him I'm so glad to hear he's going to Alassio with Mr. Maddox."

"I don't think any the better of him for that. Fancy going to Italy with that brute of a man!"

"He wasn't really a brute. He only said those things because he cared for him. You can't blame him for that."

"I don't blame him for that. I blame him for being a most appalling bounder."

"Do you mind not talking about him any more?"

"No dear, I don't a bit."

Lucia lay very quiet for some time before she spoke again. "They can't say now I sacrificed his genius to my pride. You will catch the post, won't you? What a plague I am, but if they're posted before seven he'll get them in the morning and he'll have time to write. Perhaps he won't be starting till the afternoon."

In the morning she again betrayed her mind's preoccupation. "He must have got them by now. Kitty, did you hear how the wind blew in the night? He'll have an awful crossing."

"Well then, let's hope he won't be very ill; but he isn't going by the Bay of Biscay, dear."

The wind blew furiously all morning, and when it dropped a little towards evening it was followed by a pelting rain.

"He's at Dover now."

"In a mackintosh," said Kitty by way of consolation. But Lucia, uncomforted, lay still, listening to the rain. It danced like a thousand devils on the gravel of the courtyard. Suddenly she sat up, raising herself by her hands.

"Kitty!" she cried. "He's coming. He is really. By the terrace. Can't you hear?"

Kitty heard nothing but the rain dancing on the courtyard. And the terrace led into it by the other wing. It was impossible that Lucia could have heard footsteps there.

"But I know, Kitty, I know. It's his walk. And he always came that way."

She slipped her feet swiftly on to the floor, and to Kitty's amazement sat up unsupported. Kitty in terror ran to her and put her arm round her, but Lucia freed herself gently from her grasp. She was trembling in all her body. Kitty herself heard footsteps in the courtyard now. They stopped suddenly and the door-bell rang.

"Do go to him, Kitty—and tell him. And send him here to me."

Kitty went, and found Keith Rickman standing in the hall. Her instinct told her that Lucia must be obeyed. And as she sent him in to her, she saw through the open door that Lucia rose to her feet, and came to him and never swayed till his arms held her.

She clung to him and he drew her closer and lifted her and carried her to her couch, murmuring things inarticulate yet so plain that even she could not misunderstand.

"I thought you were going to Paris?" she said.

"I'm not. I'm here."

She sat up and laid her hands about him, feeling his shoulders and his sleeves.

"How wet your coat is."

He kissed her and she held her face against his that was cold with the wind and rain; she took his hands and tried to warm them in her own, piteously forgetful of herself, as if it were he, not she, who needed tenderness.

"Lucy—are you very ill, darling?"

"No. I am very, very well."

He thought it was one of those things that people say when they mean that death is well. He gathered her to him as if he could hold her back from death. She looked smiling into his face.

"Keith," she said, "you didn't have a mackintosh. You must go away at once to Robert and get dry."

"Not now, Lucy. Let me stay."

"How long can you stay?"

"As long as ever you'll let me."

"Till you go to Italy?"

"Very well. Till I go to Italy."

"When are you going?"

"Not till you're well enough to go with me."

"How did you know I was ill?"

"Because I saw that Kitty had had to finish what your dear little hands had begun."

"Ah—you should have had them sooner—"

"Why should I have had them at all? Do you think I would have published them before I knew I had dedicated them to my wife?"

"Keith—dear—you mustn't talk about that yet."

She hid her face on his shoulder; he lifted it and looked at it as if it could have told him what he had to know. It told him nothing; it had not changed enough for that. It was like a beautiful picture blurred, and the sweeter for the blurring.

He laid his hand over her heart. At his touch it leapt and throbbed violently, suggesting a new terror.

"Darling, how fast your heart beats. Am I doing it harm?"

"No, it doesn't mind."

"But am I tiring it?"

"No, no, you're resting it."

She lay still a long time without speaking, till at last he carried her upstairs and delivered her into Kitty's care. At the open door of her room he saw a nurse in uniform standing ready to receive her. Her presence there was ominous of the unutterable things he feared.

"Kitty," said Lucia, when they were alone. "It looks as if I had been shamming after all. What do you think of me?"

"I think perhaps Sir Wilfrid Spence needn't come down to-morrow."

"Perhaps not. And yet it would be better to know. If there really is anything wrong I couldn't let him marry me. It would be awful. I want to be sure, Kitty, for his sake."

Kitty felt sure enough; and her certainty grew when Lucia came down the next morning. But she was unable to impart her certainty to Keith. The most he could do was to hide his anxiety from Lucia. It wanted but a day to the coming of the great specialist; and for that day they made such a brave show of happiness that they deceived both Kitty and themselves. Kitty, firm in her conviction, left them to themselves that afternoon while she went into Harmouth to announce to Lucia's doctor the miracle of her recovery.

When she had left the house a great peace fell on them. They had so much to say to each other, and so little time to say it in, when to-morrow might cut short their happiness. But Lucia was sorry for Kitty.

"Poor Kitty," said she, "she's going to marry her cousin Charlie Palliser. But that won't be the same."

"The same as what?"

"The same as my marrying you. Oh, Keith, that's one of the things I said we weren't to say. Do you know, once Kitty was angry with me. She said I was playing with fire—the divine fire. Ought I to have been afraid of it? Just a little bit in awe?"

"What? Of the divine fire? I gave it you, dearest, to play with—or to warm your little hands by."

"And now you've given it me to keep, to put my hands round it—so—and take care of it and see that it never goes out. I can do that, can't I, whatever happens?"

There was always that refrain: Whatever happens.

"I keep forgetting it doesn't really belong to me; it belongs to everybody, to the whole world. I believe I'm jealous."

"Of the British public? It doesn't really love me, Lucy, nor I it."

"Whether it does or not, you do remember that I loved you first—before anybody ever knew?"

"I do indeed."

"It is a shame to be so glad because Kitty is away."

Yet she continued to rejoice in the happiness that came of their solitude. It was Keith, not Kitty, who arranged her cushions for her and covered her feet; Keith, not Kitty, who poured out tea for her, and brought it her, and sat beside her afterwards, leaning over her and stroking her soft hair, as Kitty loved to do.

"Lucy," he said suddenly, "can you stand living with me in a horrid little house in a suburb?"

"I should love it. Dear little house."

"Maddox is in it now; but we'll turn him out. You don't know Maddox?"

She shuddered, and he drew the rug in closer about her.

"It's such a tiny house, Lucy; it would all go into this room."

"This room," said Lucy, "is much too large."

"There's only room for you and me in it."

"All the better, so long as there's room for me."

"And the walls are all lath and plaster. When Maddox is in another room I can hear him breathing."

"And when I'm in another room I shall hear you breathing; and then I shall know you're alive when I'm afraid you're not. I'm glad the walls are all lath and plaster."

"But it isn't a pretty house, Lucy."

"It will be a pretty house when I'm in it," said she, and was admitted to have had the best of the argument.

"Then, if you really don't mind, we shan't have to wait. Not a week, if you're ready to come to me."

But Lucia's face was sad. "Keith—darling—don't make plans till we know what Sir Wilfrid Spence says."

"I shall, whatever he says. But I suppose I must consult him before I take you to Alassio."

For still at his heart, under all its happiness, there lay that annihilating doubt; the doubt and the fear that had been sown there by Horace Jewdwine. He could see for himself that one of his terrors was baseless; but there remained that other more terrible possibility. None of them had dared to put it into words; but it was implied, reiterated, in the name of Sir Wilfrid Spence. He had moreover a feeling that this happiness of his was too perfect, that it must be taken away from him.

He confided his trouble to Kitty that night, sitting up over the drawing-room fire. Lucia's doctor had come and gone.

"What did he say, Kitty?"

"He says there's no need for Sir Wilfrid Spence to see her at all. He is going to wire to him not to come."

He gave a sigh of relief. Then his eyes clouded.

"No. He must come. I'd rather he came."

"But why? He isn't a nerve specialist."

He shuddered. "I know. That's why I must have him. I can't trust these local men."

"It will be horribly expensive, Keith. And it's throwing money away. Dr. Robson said so."

"That's my affair."

"Oh well, as for that, it was all arranged for."

"Nobody has any right to arrange for it but me."

"Much better arrange for a good time at Alassio."

"No. I want to be absolutely certain. You tell me she's perfectly well, and that doctor of yours swears she is, and I think it; and yet I can't believe it. I daren't."

"That's because you're not feeling very well yourself."

"I know that in some ways she is getting stronger every minute; but you see, I can't help thinking what that other man said."

"What other man?"

"Well, the Jewdwines' doctor."

"What did he say?"

"Nothing. It was Jewdwine. He told me—well—that was why their engagement was broken off. Because she wasn't strong enough to marry."

Kitty's eyes blazed. "He told you that?"

"Not exactly. He couldn't, you know. I only thought their doctor must have told him—something terrible."

"I don't suppose he told him anything of the sort."

"Oh well, you know, he didn't say so. But he let me think it."

"Yes. I know exactly how it was done. He wouldn't say anything he oughtn't to. But he'd let you think it. It was just his awful selfishness. He thought there was an off chance of poor Lucy being a sort of nervous invalid, and he wouldn't risk the bother of it. But as for their engagement, there never was any. That was another of the things he let you think. I suppose he cared for Lucy as much as he could care for anybody; but the fact is he wants to marry another woman, and he couldn't bear to see her married to another man."

"Oh, I say, you know—"

"It sounds incredible. But you don't know how utterly I distrust that man. He's false through and through. There's nothing sound in him except his intellect. I wish you'd never known him. He's been the cause of all your—your suffering, and Lucy's too. You might have been married long ago if it hadn't been for him."

"No, Kitty. I don't think that."

"You might, really. If he hadn't been in the way she would have known that she cared for you and let you know it, too. But nothing that he ever did or didn't do comes up to this."

"The truth is, Kitty, he thinks I'm rather a bad lot, you know."

"My dear Keith, he thinks that if he doesn't marry Lucy he'd rather you didn't. He certainly hit on the most effectual means of preventing it."

"Oh, did he! He doesn't know me. I shall marry her whatever Sir Wilfrid Spence says. If she's ill, all the more reason why I should look after her. I'm only afraid lest—lest—"

She knew what he thought and could not say—lest it should not be for very long.

"There are some things," he said quietly, "that can't be taken away from me."

Kitty was silent; for she knew what things they were.

"You can trust her to me, Kitty?"

"I can indeed."

And so on Sunday the great man came down.

It was over in half an hour. That half-hour Keith spent in pacing up and down the library, the place of so many dear and tender and triumphant memories. They sharpened his vision of Lucy doomed, of her sweet body delivered over to the torture.

He did not hear Kitty come in till she laid her hand upon his arm. He turned as if at the touch of destiny.

"Don't Keith, for Goodness' sake. It's all right. Only—he wants to see you."

Sir Wilfrid Spence stood in the morning-room alone. He looked very grave and grim. He had a manner, a celebrated manner that had accomplished miracles by its tremendous moral effect. It had helped to set him on his eminence and he was not going to sacrifice it now. He fixed his gaze on the poet as he entered and held him under it for the space of half a minute without speaking. He seemed, this master of the secrets of the body, to be invading despotically the province of the soul. It struck Rickman that the great specialist was passing judgement on him, to see whether in all things he were worthy of his destiny. The gaze thus prolonged became more than he could bear.

"Do you mind telling me at once what's wrong with her?"

"There isn't anything wrong with her. What fool ever told you that there was? She has been made ill with grief."

Lucia herself came to him there and led him back into the library. They sat together in the window-seat, held silent for a little while by the passing of that shadow of their fear.

"Keith," she said at last. "Is it true that you loved me when you were with me, here, ever so long ago?"

He answered her.

"And when you came to me and I was horrid to you, and when I sent you away? And when I never wrote to you, and Horace made you think I'd forgotten you? Did you love me then?"

"Yes, more than I did before, Lucy."

"But—Keith—you didn't love me when you were loving somebody else?"

"I did, more than ever then. That happened because I loved you."

"I can understand all the rest; but I can't understand that."

"I think I'd rather you didn't understand it, darling."

She sighed, puzzled over it and gave it up. "But you didn't love me when you—when I—when you wouldn't have me?"

He answered her; but not with words.

"And now," said she, "you're going to Paris to-morrow."

"Perhaps."

"You must. Perhaps they'll be calling for you."

"And perhaps I shan't be there. Do you know, Lucy, you've got violets growing among the roots of your hair?"

"I know you're going to Paris, to-morrow, to please me."

"Perhaps. And after that we're going to Alassio, and after that to Florence and Rome; all the places where your private secretary—"

"And when," said she, "is my private secretary going to take me home?"

"If his play succeeds, dear, he won't have to take you to that horrid house of his."

"Won't he? But I like it best of all."

"Why, Lucy?"

"Oh, for such a foolish reason. Because he's been in it."

"I'm afraid, darling, some of the houses he's been in—"

At that she fell to a sudden breathless sobbing, as if the life that had come back to her had spent itself again.

In his happiness he had forgotten Howland Street; or if he thought of it at all he thought of it as an enchanted spot, the stage that had brought him nearest to the place of his delight.

"Lucy, Lucy, how did you know? I never meant you to."

"Some one told me. And I—I went to see it."

"Good God!"

"I saw your room, the room they carried you out of. If I'd only known! My darling, why didn't you come to me then? Why didn't you? I had plenty. Why didn't you send for me?"

"How could I?"

"You could, you could—"

"But sweetest, I didn't even know where you were."

"Wherever I was I would have come to you. I would have taken you away."

"It was worth it, Lucy. If it hadn't been for that, I shouldn't be here now. Looking back it seems positively glorious. And whatever it was I'd go through years of it, for one hour with you here. One of those hours even when you didn't love me."

"I've always loved you, all my life long. Only I didn't know it was you. Do you remember my telling you that your dream was divorced from reality? It wasn't true. That was what was wrong with me."

"I'm afraid I wasn't always very faithful to my dream."

"Because your dream wasn't always faithful to you. And yet it was faithful."

"Lucy, do you remember the things I told you? Can you forgive me for being what I was?"

"It was before I knew you."

"Yes, but after? That was worse; it was the worst thing I ever did, because I had known you."

She wondered why he asked forgiveness of her now, of all moments; and as she wondered the light dawned on her.

"I forgive you everything. It was my fault. I should have been there, and I wasn't."

Then he knew that after all she had understood. Her love was in her eyes, in their light and in their darkness. They gathered many flames of love into that tender tragic gaze, all pitying, half maternal. Those eyes had never held for him the sad secrets of mortality. Love in them looked upon things invisible, incorruptible; divining, even as it revealed, the ultimate mystery. He saw that in her womanhood Nature was made holy, penetrated by the spirit and the fire of God. He knelt down and laid his face against her shoulder, and her arm, caressing, held him there, as if it were she who sheltered and protected.

"Keith," she whispered, "did you mean to marry me before you came this time, or after?"

"Before, oh before."

"You thought—that terrible thing had happened to me; you thought you would always have me dragging on you? And yet you came? It made no difference. You came."

"I came because I wanted to take care of you, Lucy. I wanted nothing else. That was all."

Lucia's understanding was complete.

"I knew you were like that," said she; "I always knew it."

She bent towards his hidden face and raised it to her own.