The Divine Fire Part 84

"Well, that was long enough, wasn't it?"

"Quite long enough for all I had to say."

Now that was playing into Flossie's hands, for it meant that he had had nothing to say after her arrival. And she was sharp enough to see it.

"That's all very well, Keith," said she, apparently ignoring her advantage, "but Ada says they'll be talking if she keeps on asking you up there just when she's all by herself. It's not the thing to do. I wouldn't do it if it was me, no more would Ada."

"My dear child, Miss Harden may do a great many things that you and Ada mayn't. Because, you see, she knows how to do them and you don't."

"Oh well, if you're satisfied. But it isn't very nice for me to 'ave you talked about, just when we're going to be married, is it?"

"I think you needn't mind Ada. Miss Harden knows that I _have_ to see her sometimes, and that I can't very well see her in any other way.

And I think you might know it too."

"Oh, don't you go thinking I'm jealous. I know _you're_ all right."

"If I'm all right, who's wrong?"

"Well--of course I understand what you want with _her_; but I can't see what she wants with you."

"You _little_ fool. What should she want, except to help me?"

Flossie said nothing to that, for indeed her mind had not formulated any clear charge against Miss Harden. Keith had annoyed her and she wanted to punish him a little. She was also curious to see in what manner the chivalry that had deserted her would defend Miss Harden.

He stood still and looked at her with brilliant, angry eyes.

"You don't understand a great deal, Flossie; but there's one thing you _shall_ understand--You are not to say these things about Miss Harden.

Not that you'll do her any harm, mind, by saying them. Think for one minute who and what she is, and you'll see that the only person you are harming is yourself."

Flossie did think for a minute, and remembered that Lucia was the daughter of a baronet and the cousin of an editor; and she did see that this time she had gone a bit too far.

"And in injuring yourself, you know, you injure me," he said more gently. "I don't know whether that will appeal at all to you."

It did appeal to her in the sense in which her practical mind understood that injury.

"Do you really think she'll be able to help you to a good thing?"

He laughed aloud. "I think she'll help me to many good things. She has done that already.

"Oh, well then, I suppose it's all right."

Though he said it was all right he knew that it was all wrong; that she was all wrong too. He wondered again how it was that he had never noticed it before. It seemed to him now that he must always have seen it, and that he had struggled not to see it, as he was struggling now.

Struggle as he would, he knew that he was only putting off the inevitable surrender. Putting off the moment that must face him yet, at some turning of the stair or opening of a door, as they went from room to room of the house that, empty, had once seemed to him desirable, and now, littered with the solid irrevocable results of Flossie's furnis.h.i.+ng, inspired him with detestation and despair. How could he ever live in it? He and his dream, the dream that Lucia had told him was divorced from reality? She had told him too that his trouble all lay there, and he remembered that then as now she had advised a reconciliation. But better a divorce than reconciliation with any of the realities that faced him now. Better even illusion than these infallible perceptions. Better to be decently, charitably blind where women are concerned, than to see them so; to see poor Flossie as she was, a reality divorced from any dream.

A foolish train of thought that. As if he were only a dreamer. As if it were a dream that had to do with it. As if his dream had not long ago loved, followed, and embraced a divine reality. As if it had ever fallen away after that one superb act of reconciliation.

He had done poor Flossie some injustice. She suffered in his eyes because she came short, not of the dream, but of the reality. To be placed beside Lucia Harden would have been a severe test for any woman; but for Flossie it was cruelty itself. He had never subjected her to that, not even in thought; for he felt that the comparison, cruel to one woman, was profanation to the other. It was only feminine Fate who could be so unkind as to put those two side by side, that he might look well, and measure his love for Flossie by his love for Lucia, seeing it too as it was. Maddox had not been far wrong there.

For anything spiritual in that emotion, he might as well have gone back to Poppy Grace. Better; since between him and Flossie that gross tie, once formed, could not be broken. Better; since there had at least been no hypocrisy in his relations with the joyous Poppy. Better anything than this baseness skulking under the superst.i.tion of morality. If a man has no other feeling for an innocent woman than that, better that a mill-stone should be hanged about his neck than that he should offend by marrying her.

And yet there had been something finer and purer in this later love than in the first infatuation of his youth. On that day, seven days ago, the last day it had to live, he had been touched by something more sacred, more immortal than desire. There had been no illusion in the poetry that clothed the figure of a woman standing in an empty room, dearer to her than the bridal chamber; a woman whose face grew soft as her instinct outran the bridal terror and the bridal joy, divining beyond love the end that sanctifies it.

But beyond all that again he could see that, whereas the love of all other women had torn him asunder, the love of Lucia made him whole.

Poppy had drawn him by his senses; Flossie by his senses and his heart; Lucia held him by his senses, his heart, his intellect, his will, by his spirit, by his genius, by the whole man. Long after his senses had renounced their part in her, the rest of him would cling to her, satisfied and appeased. And but for Flossie it would have been so even now. Though his senses had rest in Lucia's presence, their longing for her was reawakened, not only by the thought of his approaching marriage, but by the memory of that one moment when he had realized the mystery of it, the moment of poor Flossie's transfiguration, when he had seen through the thick material veil, deep into the spiritual heart of love. With Lucia the veil had been transparent from the first. It was not with her as it was with those women who must wait for the hour of motherhood to glorify them. Of those two years of his betrothal what was there that he would care to keep? Only one immortal moment, that yet knew of the mortality before and after it. While of the last seven days Lucia had made a whole heavenly procession of ascending hours, every moment winged with the immortal fire. Flying moments; but flame touched flame in flying, and they became one life.

But he was going to marry Flossie.

And she, the child that was to have borne the burden of his genius and his pa.s.sion, poor little blameless victim of the imagination that glorifies desire, how would it be with her in this empty house, empty of the love she had looked for and would never find? How would it be with him? Had he pledged himself to a life of falsehood, and had he yet to know what torment awaited him at the hands of the avenging truth? Truth, as he had once defined it, was the soul of the fact. It was the fact that he was going to marry Flossie; but it was not the truth. Only love could have given it a soul and made it true. If he was bound to maintain that it had a soul when it hadn't, that was where the falseness would come in.

Yet no. He might go mad by thinking about it, but life after all was simpler than thought. Things righted themselves when you left off thinking about them. He would be unhappy; but that could only make Flossie unhappy if she cared for him. And in a year's time, when he had left off thinking, she would have left off caring. He had shrewdly divined that what Flossie chiefly wanted was to have children; or if she did not want it, Nature wanted it for her, which came to the same thing. As for mating her to a man of genius, that was just Nature's wanton extravagance. Maddox had once said that any man would have done as well, perhaps better; Flossie wouldn't care. Well, he would give her children, and she would care for them. Indeed, he sincerely hoped that for him she would not care. It would make things simpler.

Maddox, he remembered, had also said that she was the sort of woman who would immolate her husband for her children; whereas Poppy--but then, Maddox was a beast.

It never occurred for a moment to him to throw Flossie over. That, he had settled once for all, could not now be done. Circ.u.mstances conspired to make the thing irrevocable. Her utter dependence on him, the fact that she had no home but the one he offered her, no choice between marriage and earning her own living in a way she hated, the flagrant half-domestic intimacy in which they had been living, more than all, the baseness of his past love, and the inadequacy of his present feeling for her, both calling on him to atone, all these things made a promise of marriage as binding as the actual tie. Their engagement might possibly have been broken off at any of its earlier stages without profound dishonour. It was one thing to jilt a girl within a decent interval of the first congratulations; another thing altogether to abandon her with her trousseau on her hands. It had gone so far that his failure at the last moment would be the grossest insult he could offer her.

Gross indeed; yet not so gross but that he could think of one still grosser--to let her marry him when he had no feeling to offer her but such indifference as marriage deepens to disgust, or such disgust as it tones down into indifference. Would he go on shuddering and wincing as he had shuddered and winced to-day? Pa.s.sion that might have condoned her failings was out of the question; but would it be possible to keep up the decent appearance of respect?

And yet he was going to marry her.

That was impressed on him by Flossie's voice saying that if he wouldn't decide which of those two rooms was to be _their_ room, she must. Because the men wanted to put up the bedstead.

It was an intimation that he was bound to her, not by any fine ties of feeling or of honour, but by a stout unbreakable chain of material facts. He looked out of the window. The vans were unloading in the street. It seemed to him that there was something almost grossly compromising in the wash-stand, dumped down there in the garden; and as the bedstead was being borne into the house in portions, reverentially, processionally, he surrendered before that supreme symbol of finality. As he had made his bed, he must lie; even if it was a bra.s.s bed with mother-o'-pearl ornaments; and he refused to listen to the inner voice which suggested that the bed was not made yet, it was not even paid for, and that he would be a fool to lie on it. He turned sad eyes on the little woman so flushed and eager over her packages. He had committed himself more deeply with every purchase they had made that day. How carefully he had laboured at his own destruction.

He had gone so far with these absurd reflections, that when Flossie exclaimed, "There, after all I've forgotten the kitchen hammer," his nerves relaxed their tension, and he experienced a sense of momentary but divine release. And when she insisted on repairing her oversight as they went back, he felt that the kitchen hammer had clinched the matter; and that if only they had not bought it he might yet be free.

There was something in the Beaver's building, after all.

CHAPTER LIX

He did not appear that evening, not even to listen to Lucia's music, for his misery was heavy upon him. Mercifully, he was able to forget it for a while in attending to the work that waited for him; an article for _The Planet_ to be written; proofs to correct and ma.n.u.scripts to look through for _Metropolis_; all neglected till the last possible moment, which moment had now come. For once he reaped the benefit of his reckless habits of postponement.

But four hours saw him through it; and midnight recalled him to his care. Instead of undressing he refilled his lamp, made up his fire, and drew his chair to the hearth. There was a question, put off, too, like his work, from hour to hour, and silenced by the scuffling, meaningless movements of the day. It related to the promise he had made to Lucia Harden at the end of their last interview. He had then said to her that, since she desired it, she should know what it was that she had done for him. Hitherto he had determined that she should not know it yet; not know it till death had removed from her his embarra.s.sing, preposterous personality. The gift of knowledge that she might have refused from the man, she could then accept from the poet.

The only condition that honour, that chivalry insisted on was the removal of the man. But there were other ways of getting rid of a man besides the clumsy device of death. Might he not be considered to have effaced himself sufficiently by marriage? As far as Lucia was concerned he could see very little difference between the two processes; in fact, marriage was, if anything, the safer. For the important thing was that she should know somehow; that he should hand over his gift to her before it was too late. And suppose--suppose he should fail to remove himself in time? Beholding the years as they now stretched before him, it seemed to him that he would never die.

There was another consideration which concerned his honour, not as a man but as a poet. He knew what it was in him to do. The nature of the gift was such that if he brought it to her to-day she would know that he had given her his best; if he kept it till to-morrow it would be his best no longer. Besides, it was only a gift when you looked at it one way. He was giving her (as he believed) an immortal thing; but its very immortality gave it a certain material value. The thing might be sold for much, and its price might go far towards covering that debt he owed her, or it might be held by her as a sort of security. He could see that his marriage would be a hindrance to speedy payment on any other system.

He rose, unlocked a drawer, and took from it the ma.n.u.script of the nine and twenty sonnets and the sealed envelope that contained his testament concerning them. He had looked at them but once since he had put them away three years ago, and that was on the night of his engagement. Looking at them again he knew he was not mistaken in his judgement, when calmly, surely, and persistently he had thought of the thing as immortal. But according to another condition that his honour had laid down, its immortality depended upon her. At this point honour itself raised the question whether it was fair to throw on her the burden of so great a decision? She might hesitate to deny him so large a part of his immortality, and yet object to being so intimately, so personally bound up with it. He could see her delicate conscience straining under the choice.

But surely she knew him well enough to know that he had left her free?

She would know that he could accept nothing from her pity, not even a portion of his immortality. She would trust his sincerity; for that at any rate had never failed her. And since what he had written he had written, she would see that unless he destroyed it with his own hands the decision as to publication must rest with her. It concerned her so intimately, so personally, that it could not be given to the world without her consent. Whether what he had written should have been written was another matter. If she thought not, if her refinement accused him of a sin against good taste, that would only make his problem simpler. Even if her accusation remained unspoken, he would know it, he would see it, through whatever web her tenderness wrapped round it. His genius would contend against her judgement, would not yield a point to her opinion, but his honour would take it as settling the question of publication. In no case should she be able to say or think that he had used his genius as a cover for a cowardly pa.s.sion, or that by compelling her admiration he had taken advantage of her pride.

But would she say it or think it? Not she. He knew her. And if his knowledge had brought much misery, it brought consolation too. Where Lucia was concerned he had never been sustained by any personal conceit; he had never walked vainly in the illusion of her love. At that supreme point his imagination had utterly broken down; he had never won from it a moment's respite from his intolerable lucidity.

There was a certain dignity about his despair, in that of all the wonderful web of his dreams he had made no fine cloak to cover it. It s.h.i.+vered and suffered in a n.o.ble nakedness, absolutely unashamed. But one thing he knew also, that if Lucia did not love him, she loved his genius. Even when lucidity made suffering unendurable, he had still the a.s.surance that his genius would never suffer at her hands. For did she not know that G.o.d gives the heart of a poet to be as fuel to his genius, for ever consumed and inconsumable? That of all his pa.s.sions his love is the nearest akin to the divine fire? She of all women would never deny him the eternal right to utterance.

Neither could she well find fault with the manner of it. He went through the sonnets again, trying to read them with her woman's eyes.

There was nothing, nothing, not an image, not a word that could offend. Here was no "flaming orgy of individuality." He had chosen purposely the consecrated form that pledged him to perfection, bound him to a magnificent restraint.