CHAPTER LXXVII
Meanwhile the Junior Journalists found amusement in discussing whether the great dramatist were Maddox's discovery or Jewdwine's. With the readers of Metropolis he passed as Jewdwine's—which was all that Jewdwine wanted. With the earnest aspiring public, striving to admire Keith Rickman because they had been told they ought to, he passed as their own. The few who had known him from the first knew also that poets like Rickman are never discovered until they discover themselves. Maddox, whom much worship had made humble, gave up the absurd pretension. Enough that he lived, and was known to live, with Rickman as his friend.
They shared that little house at Ealing, which Rickman, in the ardour of his self-immolation, had once destined for the young Delilah, his bride. It had now become a temple in which Maddox served with all the religious passion of his half-Celtic soul.
The poet had trusted the honour and the judgement of his friend so far as to appoint him his literary executor. Thus Maddox became possessed of the secret of the Sonnets. And here a heavy strain was put upon his judgement and his honour. Maddox had guessed that there was a power in Rickman's life more terrible than Jewdwine, who after all had never really touched him. There was, Maddox had always known, a woman somewhere. A thousand terrors beset the devotee when he noticed that since fame had lighted upon Rickman the divinity had again begun to furnish his part (the holy part) of the temple in a manner unmistakably suggestive of mortality. Maddox shuddered as he thought of the probable destination of that upper chamber which was the holiest of all. And now this terror had become a certainty. The woman existed; he knew her name; she was a cousin of the detestable Jewdwine; the Sonnets could never be given to the world as long as she withheld her consent, and apparently she did withhold it. More than this had not been revealed to Maddox, and it was in vain that he tried to penetrate the mystery.
His efforts were not the most delicate imaginable. One evening, sitting with Rickman in that upper chamber, he entered on the subject thus—
"Seen anything of the Spinkses lately?"
"I called there last Saturday."
"How is the divine Flossie?"
"Flourishing. At least there's another baby. By the way Maddy you were grossly wrong about her there. The Beaver is absolutely devoid of the maternal instinct. She's decent to the baby, but she's positively brutal to Muriel Maud. How Spinky—He protests and there are horrid scenes; but through them all I believe the poor chap's in love with her."
"Curious illusion."
Curious indeed. It had seemed incredible to Rickman when he had seen the Beaver pushing her first-born from her knee.
"Good Heavens, Rickman, what a deliverance for you."
"I wonder if he's happy."
"Can't say; but possibly he holds his own. You see, Spinky's position is essentially sound. My theory is—"
But Rickman had no desire for a theory of marriage as propounded by Maddox. He had always considered that in these matters Maddox was a brute.
Maddox drew his own conclusions from the disgusted protest. He remembered how once, when he had warned Rickman of the love of little women, Rickman had said it was the great women who were dangerous. The lady to whom he had entrusted the immortality of his Sonnets would be one of these. As the guardian of that immortality Maddox conceived it was his duty to call on the lady and prevail on her to give them up. Under all his loyalty he had the audacity of the journalist who sticks at nothing for his own glorious end.
There was after all a certain simplicity about Maddox. He considered himself admirably equipped by nature for this delicate mission. He was, besides, familiar with what he called the "society woman," and he believed that he knew how to deal with her. Maddox always had the air of being able to push his way anywhere by the aid of his mighty shoulders. He sent in his card without a misgiving.
Lucia knew that Maddox was a friend of Keith Rickman's, and she received him with a courtesy that would have disarmed a man less singularly determined. It was only when he had stated his extraordinary purpose that her manner became such that (so he described it afterwards) it would have "set a worm's back up." And Maddox was no worm.
It was a little while before Lucia realized that this rather overpowering visitor was requesting her to "give up" certain sonnets of Keith Rickman's, written in ninety-three. "I don't quite understand. Are you asking me to give you the manuscript or to give my consent to its publication?"
"Well—both. I have to ask you because he never would do it himself."
"Why should he not?"
"Oh, well, you know his ridiculous notions of honour."
"I do indeed. I daresay some people would consider them ridiculous."
It was this speech, Maddox confessed, that first set his back up. He was irritated more by the calm assumption of proprietorship in Rickman than by the implied criticism of himself.
"Do you mind telling me," she continued, still imperturbably, "how you came to know anything about it?"
Maddox stiffened. "I am Mr. Rickman's oldest and most intimate friend, and he has done me the honour to make me his literary executor."
"Did he also give you leave to settle his affairs beforehand?"
Maddox shrugged his shoulders by way of a reply.
"If he did not," said Lucia, "there's nothing more to be said."
"Pardon me, there is a great deal more to be said. I don't know whether you have any personal reason for objecting—"
She coloured and was silent.
"If it's pride, I should have thought most women would have been prouder—" (A look from Lucia warned him that he would do well to refrain from thinking.) "Oh, well, for all I know you might have fifty good reasons. The question is, are you justified in sacrificing a work of genius to any mere personal feeling?"
He had her there, and she knew it. She was silently considering the question. Three years ago she would have had no personal feeling in the matter beyond pride in the simple dedication. Now that personal feeling had come in and had concentrated itself upon that work of genius, and made it a thing so sacred and so dear to her, she shrank with horror from the vision of publicity. Besides, it was all of Keith Rickman that was left to her. His other works were everybody's property; therefore she clung the more desperately to that one which, as he had said, belonged to nobody but her. And Mr. Maddox had no right to question her. Instead of answering him she moved her chair a little farther from him and from the light.
Now Maddox had the coldness as well as the passion of the Celt. He was not touched by Lucia's beauty, nor yet by the signs of illness or fatigue manifest in her face and all her movements. Her manner irritated him; it seemed the feminine counterpart of her cousin's insufferable apathy. He felt helpless before her immobility. But he meant to carry his point—by brute force if necessary.
But not yet. "I'm not asking you to give up a mere copy of verses. The Sonnets are unique—even for Rickman; and for one solitary lady to insist on suppressing them—well, you know, it's a large order."
This time she indeed showed some signs of animation. "How do you know they are unique? Did he show you them?"
"No, he did not. I found them among his papers when he was in hospital."
"In hospital?" She sat up and looked at him steadily and without emotion.
"Yes; I had to overhaul his things—we thought he was dying—and the Sonnets—"
"Never mind the Sonnets now, please. Tell me about his illness. What was it?"
Again that air of imperious proprietorship! "Enteric," he said bluntly, "and some other things."
"Where was he before they took him to the hospital?"
"He was—if you want to know—in a garret in a back street off Tottenham Court Road."
"What was he doing there?"
"To the best of my belief, he was starving. Do you find the room too close?"
"No, no. Go on."
Maddox went on. He was enjoying the sensation he was creating. He went on happily, piling up the agony. Since she would have it he was not reticent of detail. He related the story of the Rankins' dinner. He described with diabolically graphic touches the garret in Howland Street. "We thought he'd been drinking, you know, and all the time he was starving."
"He was starving—" she repeated slowly to herself.
"He was not doing it because he was a poet. It seems he had to pay some debt, or thought he had. The poor chap talked about it when he was delirious. Oh—let me open that window."
"Thank you. You say he was delirious. Were you with him then?"
Maddox leapt to his conclusion. Miss Lucia Harden had something to conceal. He gathered it from her sudden change of attitude, from her interrogation, from her faintness and from the throbbing terror in her voice. That was why she desired the suppression of the Sonnets.
"Were you with him?" she repeated.
"No. God forgive me!"
"Nobody was with him—before they took him to the hospital?"
"Nobody, my dear lady, whom you would call anybody. He owes his life to the charity of a drunken prostitute."
She was woman, the eternal, predestined enemy of Rickman's genius. Therefore he had determined not to spare her, but to smite her with words like sledge-hammers.
And to judge by the look of her he had succeeded. She had turned away from him to the open window. She made no sign of suffering but for the troubled rising and falling of her breast. He saw in her a woman mortally smitten, but smitten, he imagined, in her vanity.
"Have I persuaded you," he said quietly, "to give up those Sonnets?"
"You shall have a copy. If Mr. Rickman wants the original he must come for it himself."
"Thanks." Maddox had ceased to be truculent, having gained his end. His blue eyes twinkled with their old infantile devilry. "Thanks. It's awfully nice of you. But—couldn't you make it seem a little more spontaneous? You see, I don't want Rickman to know I had to ask you for them." He had a dim perception of inconsistency in his judgement of the lady; since all along he had been trusting her generosity to shelter his indiscretion.
Lucia smiled even in her anguish. "That I can well imagine. The copy shall be sent to him."
And Maddox considered himself dismissed. He wondered why she called him back to ask for the number of that house in Howland Street.
That afternoon she dragged herself there, that she might torture her eyes because they had not seen, and her heart because it had not felt.