The Divine Fire
May Sinclair
CHAPTER XXI Page 3
"Oh--if you're aiming at perfection."
"Why, what else in Heaven's name should I aim at?"
Lucia was silent; and he mistook her silence for distrust.
"I don't want you to judge me by that sonnet."
"But I shouldn't dream of judging you by that sonnet, any more than I should judge that sonnet by its last two lines. They're not the last you'll ever write."
"They're the last you will ever read."
"Well, it's something to have written one good sonnet."
"One swallow doesn't make a spring."
"No; but it tells us spring is coming, and the other swallows."
"There won't be any other swallows. All my swallows have flown."
"Oh, they'll fly back again, you'll see, if you wait till next spring."
"You weren't serious just now when you asked me if I was a poet. _I_ was serious enough when I said I didn't know."
Something passed over Lucia's face, a ripple of shadow and flame, some moving of the under currents of the soul that told him that he was understood, that something had happened there, something that for the moment permitted him to be personal.
"What made you say so?"
"I can't tell you. Not natural modesty. I'm modest about some things, but not about that."
"Yet surely you must know?"
"I did yesterday."
"Yesterday?"
"Yesterday--last night; in fact up to eleven o'clock this morning I firmly believed that I had genius, or something uncommonly like it. I still believe that I _had_ it."
He seemed to himself to have become almost grossly personal; but to Lucia he had ceased to be personal at all; he had passed into the region of realities; and in so passing had become intensely interesting. To Lucia, with the blood of ten generations of scholars in her veins, the question of a man's talent was supremely important; the man himself might not matter, but his talent mattered very much; to discuss it with him was entirely natural and proper. So she never once stopped to ask herself why she was standing on Harcombe Hill, holding this really very intimate conversation with Mr. Rickman.
"The things," he continued, "the things I've written prove it. I can say so without the smallest conceit, because I haven't it now, and never shall have it again. I feel as if it had belonged to somebody else."
Mr. Rickman was losing all likeness to his former self. He spoke no longer impulsively, but in the steady deliberate tones of unalterable conviction. And Lucia no longer heard the Cockney accent in this voice that came to her out of a suffering so lucid and so profound. She forgot that it came from the other side of the social gulf. If at any point in that conversation she had thought of dismissing him, she could not have dismissed him now. There was very little use in having saved his neck if she abandoned him to his misery.
Instead of abandoning him she sat down on a rough seat by the roadside to consider Mr. Rickman's case in all its bearings. In doing so she found herself for the first time contemplating his personal appearance as such; and that not altogether with disapproval. Though it was not in the least what she would have expected, he showed to advantage in the open air. She began to perceive the secret of his extravagant and preposterous charm. There was something about him--something that he had no right to have about him, being born a dweller in cities, which none the less he undeniably and inevitably had, something that made him one with this moorland setting, untamed and beautiful and shy. The great natural features of the landscape did him no wrong; for he was natural too.
Well, she had found his sonnet for him; but could she help him to recover what he had lost now?
"I hope you won't mind my asking, but don't you know any one who can help you?"
"Not any one who can help me out of this."
"I believe it must have been you Sir Joseph Harden used to talk about. I think he saw you once when you were a boy. I know if he were alive he would have been glad to help you."
"He did help me. I owe my education to the advice he gave my father."
"Is that the case? I am very glad."
She paused, exultant; she felt she was now upon the right track. "You said you had written other things. What have you written?"
"A lyrical drama for one thing. That sonnet was meant for a sort of motto to it."
A lyrical drama? She was right, then; he was Horace Jewdwine's great "find." If so, the subject was fenced around with difficulty. She must on no account give Horace away. Mr. Rickman had seemed annoyed because she had read his sonnet (which was printed); he would be still more annoyed if he knew that she had read his lyrical drama in manuscript. He was inclined to be reticent about his writings.
Lucia was wrong. Mr. Rickman had never been less inclined to reticence in his life. He wished she had read his drama instead of his sonnet. His spring-time was there; the swift unreturning spring-time of his youth. If she had read his drama she would have believed in his pursuit of the intangible perfection. As it was, she never would believe.
"I wonder," she said, feeling her ground carefully, "if my cousin Horace Jewdwine would be any good to you?"
"Mr. Jewdwine?"
"Do you know him?"
"Yes, slightly. That is--he knows--he knows what I can do. I mean what I've done."
Rickman laughed as he recalled his last conversation the critic. "He says I'm one-seventh part a poet.
"Does he? Then you may be very sure you are a great deal more. My cousin is most terribly exacting. I should be glad if I succeeded in satisfying him; but I don't think I should be seriously unhappy if--if I failed. Did he say anything to discourage, to depress you?"
"Not he. I don't think I should have minded if he had. I felt strong enough for anything then. It was this morning. I was sitting out here, looking at all this beautiful inspiring scenery, when it came to me, that notion that I should never do anything again."
He laughed again, a healthy honest laugh. "Oh, dear me, no! I don't worry about recognition. That would be all right if I could go on. But I can't go on."
"Have you ever felt like this before?"
"N--no. No, never. And for the life of me I can't think why I should now."
"And yet you've been making catalogues for years, haven't you?"
Lucia had said to herself, "It's that catalogue _raisonné_, I know."
"Well, under ordinary circumstances it isn't exactly what you'd call exciting. But I'm afraid that hasn't got anything to do with it this time."
"It may have everything to do with it--such a dreadful kind of work."
"No. It isn't the work that's dreadful."
"Then perhaps it's the worry? And I'm afraid I'm responsible for that."
He started, shaken out of his admirable self-possession by that glaring personality. "How could you be?"
"By insisting on engaging you as I did. From what you told me it's very evident that you had something on your mind, and that the work has been very dreadful, very difficult."
"I _have_ something on my mind and--it _has_ been difficult--all the same--"
"I wouldn't have pressed you if I had really known. I'm very sorry. Is it too late? Would it be any good if I released you now?"
If she released him!
"Miss Harden, you are most awfully good to me."
"_Would_ that help you?"
"It wouldn't help me. The best thing I can do is to stay where I am and finish."
"Is that the truth?"
"Nothing but the truth."
("But not the whole truth," thought Lucia.)
"Well," she said, rising, "whatever you do, don't lose heart."
He smiled drearily. It was all very well to say that, when his heart was lost already.
"Wait--wait till next spring comes."
He could put what meaning he liked into graceful little commonplace. But it dismissed at the same time that it reassured him. The very ease and delicacy with which it was done left him no doubt on that point.
He was not going to accept his dismissal then and there. A bold thought leapt in his brain. Could he--might he--? She had read his sonnet; would it do to ask her to read his drama also? To be sure the sonnet had but fourteen lines, while the drama had twice as many hundred. But the drama, the drama, his beautiful _Helen in Leuce_, was his ultimate achievement, the highest, completest expression of his soul. And what he required of Lucia Harden was not her praise, but fuller, more perfect comprehension. He stood in a cruel and false position, and he longed for her to know the finest and the best of him, before she knew (as she must know) the worst.
"Miss Harden--"
"Yes?"
She turned. His heart beat violently. He was afraid to look up lest his face should betray his emotion; it must seem so disproportioned to its cause. And yet he was going to ask her for leave to put his drama, the fine offspring of his soul, into her hands.
"May I send you the drama I spoke of? I would like you to see it."
"Nothing would give me greater pleasure."
He tried to stammer out some words of thanks; but they died before utterance.
"You know your way now, don't you?" said she.
"Yes, thanks."
Her hand was on the gate; he opened it to let her pass. He also made a movement as though he would have held out his hand, but thought better of it, raising his hat instead.
He stood uncovered until she had passed.
He knew now the meaning of his great misery; and it was misery no longer. The veil was lifted from the face of Nature; and it was a face that he had never yet seen. It had lost that look of mysterious, indefinable reproach. It was as if the beauty of the land, seeking after the heart that should love it, was appeased and reconciled. He could hear the lyric soul of things most clearly and unmistakably, and it was singing a new song. A strange, double-burdened contradictory song. There was sorrow in it, such sorrow as her children drink from the breast of the tragic earth; and through it all and over it the laughter as of some yet virgin and imperishable joy.
For Nature sings to every poet the song of his own soul.
He spent the last of that Easter Sunday in his shabby little bedroom in the Marine Hotel, where with windows open to the wind and sea he sat writing long past midnight. And hope rose again in him as he surveyed the first rough draft--that wild battlefield and slaughter-ground of lines, lines shooting and flying in all directions, lines broken and scattered and routed by other lines, over-ridden and trampled down by word upon triumphing word. Above the hideous confusion at least two verses shone luminous and clear; they had come swinging into the pure ether, full-formed and golden from their birth. And over the whole he wrote in legible characters, "_On Harcombe Hill_."
His doubt had died there; and on Easter Monday he awoke exulting in another blessed day.