CHAPTER LXXVIII
At Jewdwine's heart there was trouble and in his mind perfect peace. For he knew his own mind at last, though he was still a little indefinite as to the exact condition of his heart.
Three days after Maddox's extraordinary disclosures Lucia had become most obviously and inconsiderately ill; and had given her cousin Edith a great deal of trouble as well as a severe fright, till Kitty, also frightened, had carried her off to Devonshire out of the house of the Jewdwines. To Horace the working of events was on the whole beneficent. Lucia's change of attitude, her illness, her abrupt departure, though too unpleasant for his fastidious mind to dwell upon, had committed that mind irretrievably to the path of prudence.
So prudent was he, that of his saner matrimonial project the world in general took no note. Secure of the affections of Miss Fulcher, he had propitiated rumour by the fiction of his engagement to Lucia. Rumour, adding a touch of certainty to the story, had handed it on to Rickman by way of Maddox and Miss Roots. He there upon left off beautifying his house at Ealing, and agreed with Maddox that after Paris in November they should go on to Italy together, and that he would winter there for his health.
But by November there came more rumours, rumours of the breaking off of the engagement; rumours of some mysterious illness of Lucia's as the cause. They reached Rickman in the week before the date fixed for the production of The Triumph of Life in Paris. He was paying a farewell call on Miss Roots, who became inscrutable at the mention of Lucia's name. He accused her with violence of keeping the truth from him, and implored her with pathos to tell it him at once. But Miss Roots had no truth, no certain truth to tell; there were only rumours. Miss Roots knew nothing but that Lucia had been lying on her back for months; she conjectured that possibly there might be something the matter with her spine. Her mother had been delicate, and Sir Frederick, well, the less said about Sir Frederick the better. Rickman retreated, followed by Miss Roots. As for an engagement, she was not aware that there ever had been one; there was once, she admitted half-way downstairs, an understanding, probably misunderstood. He had better ask Horace Jewdwine straight out. "But," she assured him from the doorstep, "it would take an earthquake to get the truth out of him."
He flung himself into a hansom, and was one with the driver in imprecation at the never-ending, ever-increasing gradient of the hill. The delay, however, enabled him to find Jewdwine at home and alone. He was aware that the interview presented difficulties, but none deterred him.
Jewdwine, questioned as to his engagement, betrayed no surprise; for with Rickman the unusual was to be expected. He might not have condescended to answer Rickman, his obscure disciple, but he felt that some concession must be made to the illustrious dramatist.
There had been, he admitted, an understanding between him and Miss Harden. It hardly amounted to an engagement; and it had been cancelled on the score of health.
"Of her health?"
The compression of Jewdwine's lips intimated that the great poet had sinned (not for the first time) against convention.
"She is ill, then?"
"I said on the score of health. We're first cousins, and it is not always considered advisable—"
"I see. Then that's all over."
"At any rate I'm not going to take any risks."
Rickman pondered that saying for a while. "Do you mean you're not going to let her take any risks?"
Jewdwine said nothing, but endeavoured to express by his manner a certain distaste for the conversation.
("Or does he mean," thought Rickman, "that he won't risk having a delicate wife on his hands?")
"It's not as if I didn't know," he persisted, "I know she—she lies on her back and can't move. Is it her spine?"
"No."
"Or her heart?"
"Not to my knowledge."
"Is it something worse?"
Jewdwine was silent.
And in the silence Rickman's mind wandered free among all imaginable horrors and forebodings. At last, out of the silence, there appeared to him one more terrible than the rest. He saw what Jewdwine must have meant. He gathered it, not from anything he had said, but from what he refused to say, from the sternness of his face, from his hesitations, his reserves. Jewdwine had created the horror for him as vividly as if he had shaped it into words.
"You needn't tell me what it is. Do you mind telling me whether it's curable or not?"
"My dear Rickman, if I knew why you are asking all these questions—"
"They must seem extraordinary. And my reason for asking them is more extraordinary still."
They measured each other with their eyes. "Then, I think," said Jewdwine quietly, "I must ask you for your reason."
"The reason is that if you're not going to marry her I am."
"That," said Jewdwine, "is by no means certain. There is not a single member of her family living except my sister and myself. Therefore I consider myself responsible. If I were her father or her brother I would not give my consent to her marrying, and I don't give it now."
"Oh. And why not?"
"For many reasons. Those that applied in my own case are sufficient."
"You only said there was a risk, and that you weren't going to take it. Now I mean to take it. You see, those fools of doctors may be mistaken. But whether they're mistaken or not, I shall marry her just the same."
"The risk, you see, involves her happiness; and judging by what I know of your temperament—"
"What do you know about my temperament?"
"You know perfectly well what I know about it."
"I know. You don't approve of my morals. I don't altogether blame you, considering that since I knew Miss Harden I very nearly married someone else. My code is so different from yours that I should have considered marrying that woman a lapse from virtue. So the intention may count against me, if you like."
"Look here, Rickman, that is not altogether what I mean. Neither of us is fit to marry Miss Harden—and I have given her up." He said it with the sublime assurance of Jewdwine, the moral man.
"Does it—does her illness—make all that difference? It makes none to me."
"Oh, well—all right—if you think you can make her happy."
"My dear Jewdwine, I don't think, I know." He smiled that smile that Jewdwine had seen once or twice before. "It may be arrogant to suppose that I'll succeed where better men might fail; still—" He rose and drew himself up to all his slender height—"in some impossible things I have succeeded."
"They are not the same things."
"No; but in both, you see, it all depends upon the man." With that he left him.
As Rickman's back turned on him, Jewdwine perceived his own final error. As once before in judging the genius he had reckoned without the man, so now, in judging the man he had reckoned without his genius.
This horrid truth came home to him in his solitude. In the interminable watches of the night Jewdwine acknowledged himself a failure; and a failure for which there was no possible excuse. He had had every conceivable advantage that a man could have. He had been born free; free from all social disabilities; free from pecuniary embarrassment; free from the passions that beset ordinary men. And he had sold himself into slavery. He had opinions; he was packed full of opinions, valuable opinions; but he had never had the courage of them. He had always been a slave to other people's opinions. Rickman had been born in slavery, and he had freed himself. When Rickman stood before him, superb in his self-mastery, he had felt himself conquered by this man, whom, as a man, he had despised. Rickman's errors had been the errors of one who risks everything, who never deliberates or counts the cost. And in their repeated rivalries he had won because he had risked everything, when he, Jewdwine, had lost because he would risk nothing.
He had lost ever since the beginning. He had meant to discover this great genius; to befriend him; to protect him with his praise; eventually to climb on his shoulders into fame. And he had not discovered him; and as for climbing on his shoulders, he had been shaken off with one shrug of them. There had been risk in passing judgement on young Rickman, and he had not taken the risk. Therefore he had failed as a critic. He had waited to found an incorruptible review. It had been a risky proceeding, and he had not taken the risk. His paper was a venal paper, sold like himself to the public he despised. Of all that had ever appeared in it, nothing would live, nothing but a few immortal trifles, signed S.K.R. He had failed pretty extensively as an editor. Last of all he had wanted to marry his cousin Lucia; but there was risk in marrying her, and he would not take the risk, and Rickman would marry her. He had failed most miserably as a man.
With that Jewdwine turned on his pillow, and consoled himself by thinking of Miss Fulcher and her love.