CHAPTER LVII
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.