The Divine Fire Part 25

Rickman laughed as he recalled his last conversation with 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."

"Is it--" her hesitations were delightful to him--"is it the want of recognition that disheartens you?"

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 _raisonne_, I know."

"Do you like making catalogues?"

"Well, under ordinary circ.u.mstances 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?"

He looked at her. Over her face there ran again that little ripple of thought and sympathy, like shadow and flame. One fear was removed from him. Whatever happened Miss Harden would never misunderstand him. At the same time he realized that any prospect, however calamitous, would be more endurable than the course she now proposed.

"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 that graceful little commonplace. But it dismissed at the same time that it rea.s.sured 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.

She was turning away; but there was a closed gate between her and the hill-path that led down into the valley.

"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 pa.s.s. 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 pa.s.sed.

He walked up and down the road, giving her time to get well out of sight. Then he returned to the place where he had suffered, and stood a long while looking over the valley.

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.