The Divine Fire
May Sinclair
CHAPTER LV Page 2
Rickman, from his retreat in the back drawing-room, watched her ways. She was kind to Miss Bramble. She was kind to that old ruffian Partridge whose neck he would willingly have wrung. She was kind, good Heavens! yes, she was kind to Soper. When the commercial gentleman approached her with his infernal box of bon-bons, she took one. He could have murdered Soper. He was profoundly depressed by the spectacle of Lucia's ways. If she behaved like that to every one, what had he to go upon? Nothing, nothing; it was just her way. And yet, he did not exactly see her sending messages to Soper.
"Do you want me to play for you?" she said.
"is exactly what I wanted." He drew the flattering inference that, while apparently absorbed in conversation with Miss Bramble, she had been aware of his presence in the background, and of every movement he had made.
She went to that lady and bent over her with her request.
If Lucia's aim was to give pleasure she had certainly achieved it. Mrs. Downey may or may not have loved music, but she was visibly excited at the prospect of hearing it. So were the boarders. They settled themselves solemnly in their seats. Spinks crushed his noisy newspaper into a ball and thrust it behind him; Miss Bramble put away her clicking needles; while Mr. Soper let himself sink into a chair with elaborate silence; one and all (with the exception of Mr. Partridge, who slept) they turned their faces, politely expectant, towards the inner room. It struck Lucia that in this the poor things were better mannered than many a more aristocratic audience.
"I know what I have got to play." said she.
"What?"
"The Sonata Appassionata, isn't it?"
"Fancy your remembering."
"Of course I remember. It isn't every one who cares for Beethoven. I'm afraid the others won't like it, though."
"They've got to like it," he said doggedly.
And Lucia, with her fatal passion for giving pleasure, played. And as the stream of music flowed through the half-lit room, it swept away all sense of his surroundings, all memory of the love and truth and honour pledged to his betrothed, and every little scruple of pity or of conscience. It bore down upon the barriers that stood between him and Lucia, and swept them away too. And the secret sources of his inspiration, sealed for so many months, were opened and flowed with the flowing of the stream; and over them the deep flood of his longing and his misery rose and broke and mingled with the tumult. And through it, and high above it all, it was as if his soul made music with her; turning the Sonata Appassionata into a singing of many voices, a symphony of many strings.
So lost was he that he failed to perceive the effect of her playing on the audience of the outer room. Flossie sat there, very quiet in her awe; Miss Bishop kept her loose mouth open, drinking in the sounds; Mr. Soper leaned forward breathing heavily in a stupid wonder; there, over the tops of the chairs, one up-standing ribbon on Miss Bramble's cap seemed to be beating time to the music all by itself; while Mrs. Downey flushed and swelled with pride at the astonishing capabilities of her piano. He did not notice either that, as Lucia played the tender opening bars of the Sonata, Mr. Partridge shook off the slumber that bound him at this hour; that, as she struck the thundering chords that signal the presto Finale, he raised his head like an old war-horse at the sound of the trumpet. He stared solemnly at Lucia as she came forward followed by Rickman; then he rose from his own consecrated chair, heavily but with a certain dignity suited to the moral grandeur of the act, and made a gesture of abdication.
"I was a professional myself once," said he. "My instrument was the flute."
There was no doubt about the spirit of Lucia's reception that night. Perhaps the finest appreciation of connoisseurs had never touched her more than did the praise of that simple audience. Rickman was the only one who did not thank her. For when her playing was over he had turned suddenly very cold, seized with a fierce shivering, the reaction from the tense fever of his nerves; and it was with difficulty that he controlled the chattering of his teeth. But before they parted for the night he asked if he might "call" some afternoon; his tone pointing the allusion to the arrangement that permitted this approach, "We can't talk very well here, can we?" he said.
She answered by inviting him and Miss Walker to tea the next day. He was conscious of a base inward exultation he heard poor Flossie say that she could only look in later for a little while. In October, work was heavy at the Bank, and the Beaver seldom got home till after tea-time. His conscience asked him sternly if he had reckoned on that too?
When to-morrow came, Miss Hoots was busy also, and disappeared after tea. He had certainly reckoned on that disappearance.
There was a moment of embarrassment on his part when he found himself alone with Lucia in the room (his room) he had made ready for her. He had done his work so thoroughly well that the place looked as if it had been ready for her since the beginning of time.
She was tired. He remembered how tired she used to be at Harmouth; and he noticed with a pang how little it took to tire her now. She leaned back in his chair, propped by the cushions he had chosen for (chosen with a distinct prevision of the beauty of the white face and dark hair against that particular shade of greenish blue). She had been reading one of his books; it lay in her lap. Her feet rested on his fender, they stretched out towards the warmth of his fire. If only it were permitted to him always to buy things for her; always to give her the rest she needed; always to care for her and keep her warm and well. He wondered how things had gone with her those five years. Had she been happy in that college in the south? Had they been kind to her, those women; or had they tortured her, as only women can torture women, in some devilish, subtle way? Or would overwork account for the failure of strength? He thought he saw signs in her tender face of some obscure, deep-seated suffering of the delicate nerves. Well, anyhow she was resting now. And in looking at her he rested, too, from the labour of conscience and the trouble of desire. Heart and senses were made quiet by her mere presence. If his hands trembled as they waited on her it was not with passion but with some new feeling, indescribable and profound. For brought so near to him as this, so near as to create the illusion of possession, she became for him something too sacred for his hands to touch.
He could count on about half an hour of this illusion before Flossie appeared. Afraid of losing one moment of it, he began instantly on the thing he had to say.
"All this time I've been waiting to thank you for your introduction to Fielding."
"Oh," she said eagerly, "what did he say? Tell me."
He told her. As she listened he could see how small a pleasure was enough to give life again to her tired face.
"I am so glad," she said in the low voice of sincerity; "so very glad." She paused. "That justifies my belief in you. Not that it needed any justification."
"I don't know. Your cousin, who is the best critic I know, would tell you that it did."
"My cousin--perhaps. But he _does_ see those poems are great. Only he's so made that I think no greatness reconciles him to--well, to little faults, if they are faults of taste."
"Did you find many faults of taste?"
She smiled. "I found some; but only in the younger poems. There were none--none at all--in the later ones. Which of course is what one might expect."
"I did."
"And didn't that strike you as significant? Didn't you draw any conclusions?"
"I drew the conclusion that--that the poet I knew had worked out his own salvation."
He looked at her steadily. The colour on her face had deepened, but her eyes, as they met his, were grave and meditative. She seemed to be considering the precise meaning of his words before she answered.
"No, I didn't."
"What, never? Think. Don't you remember how you used to help me?"
She shook her head. "I only remember that I meant to have helped you. And I was very sorry because I couldn't. But I see now absurd it was of me; and how unnecessary."
He knew that she was thinking now of her private secretary.
"It was beautiful of you. But, you know, it couldn't have happened. It was one of those beautiful things that never can happen."
"That's why I was so sorry. I thought it must look as if I hadn't meant it."
"But you did mean it. Nothing can alter that, can it?"
"No. You must take the will for the deed."
"I do. The will is the only thing that matters."
"Yes. But--it was absurd of me--but I thought you might have been counting on it?"
"Did I count on it? I suppose I did; though I knew it was impossible. You forget that I knew all the time it was impossible. It was only a beautiful idea."
"I'm sorry, then, that it had to remain an idea."
"If I had been sorry, I should not have let you see it."
"But I think, you know, that I wouldn't have been sorry."
"You would! You would! You couldn't have stood me."
"I think I could."
"What, a person with a villainous cockney accent? Who was capable of murdering the Queen's English any day in your drawing-room?"
"Oh, no; whatever you do you'll never do that."
"Well, I don't know. I'm not really to be trusted unless I've got a pen in my hand. I'm better than I used to be. I've struggled against it. Still, a man who has once murdered the Queen's English always feels, you know, as if he'd got the body under the sofa. It's like homicidal mania; the poor wretch may be cured, but he lives in terror of an attack returning. He knows it doesn't matter what he is or what he does; he may live like a saint or write like an archangel; but one aitch omitted from his conversation will wreck him at the last."
"You needn't be afraid; you never omit them."
"You mean I never omit them now. But I did five years ago. I couldn't help it. Everybody about me did it. The only difference between them and me was I knew it, and they didn't."
"You _were_ conscious of it, then?"
"Conscious? Do you know, that for every lapse of the sort in your presence I suffered the torments of the damned? Do you suppose I didn't know how terrible I was?"
She shook her head, this time with disapproval. "You shouldn't say these things."
"Do you mean, I shouldn't say them, or shouldn't say them to you?"
"Well, I think you shouldn't say them to me. Don't you see that it sounds as I had done or said something to make you feel like that."
"You? Good Heavens! rather not! But whatever you said or did, I couldn't help knowing how you thought of me."
"And how was that?"
"Well, as half a poet, you know, and half a hair-dresser."
"That's funny; but it's another of the things you shouldn't say. Because you know it isn't true."
"For me to help you?"
"Yes."
"I do see it. It _was_ impossible--but not for any of the reasons you suppose. If it had been possible--"
"What then?"
"Then, perhaps, I needn't have felt so sorry and ashamed. You know I really _am_ a little bit ashamed of having asked a great poet to be my private secretary."
It was thus that she extricated herself from the embarrassing position in which his clumsiness had placed her. For he saw what she meant when she told him that he should not say these things to her. He had made her feel that she ought to defend him from the charges he had against himself, when she knew them to be true, when her gentleness could only have spared him at the expense of her sincerity. How beautifully she had turned it off. He refrained from the obvious pretty speeches. His eyes had answered her.
"If you knew that you _had_ done something for me; not a little thing but a great one--" He paused; and in the silence they heard the sound of Flossie's feet coming up the stair. He had only just time to finish his sentence--"Would it please you or annoy you?"
"It would please me more than I can say."
"Then," he said in a voice that was too low for Flossie to hear, "you _shall_ know it."