Maddox stiffened. "I am Mr. Rickman's oldest and most intimate friend, and he has done me the honour to make me his literary executor."

"Did he also give you leave to settle his affairs beforehand?"

Maddox shrugged his shoulders by way of a reply.

"If he did not," said Lucia, "there's nothing more to be said."

"Pardon me, there is a great deal more to be said. I don't know whether you have any personal reason for objecting--"

She coloured and was silent.

"If it's pride, I should have thought most women would have been prouder--" (A look from Lucia warned him that he would do well to refrain from thinking.) "Oh, well, for all I know you might have fifty good reasons. The question is, are you justified in sacrificing a work of genius to any mere personal feeling?"

He had her there, and she knew it. She was silently considering the question. Three years ago she would have had no personal feeling in the matter beyond pride in the simple dedication. Now that personal feeling had come in and had concentrated itself upon that work of genius, and made it a thing so sacred and so dear to her, she shrank with horror from the vision of publicity. Besides, it was all of Keith Rickman that was left to her. His other works were everybody's property; therefore she clung the more desperately to that one which, as he had said, belonged to n.o.body but her. And Mr. Maddox had no right to question her. Instead of answering him she moved her chair a little farther from him and from the light.

Now Maddox had the coldness as well as the pa.s.sion of the Celt. He was not touched by Lucia's beauty, nor yet by the signs of illness or fatigue manifest in her face and all her movements. Her manner irritated him; it seemed the feminine counterpart of her cousin's insufferable apathy. He felt helpless before her immobility. But he meant to carry his point--by brute force if necessary.

But not yet. "I'm not asking you to give up a mere copy of verses. The Sonnets are unique--even for Rickman; and for one solitary lady to insist on suppressing them--well, you know, it's a large order."

This time she indeed showed some signs of animation. "How do you know they are unique? Did he show you them?"

"No, he did not. I found them among his papers when he was in hospital."

"In hospital?" She sat up and looked at him steadily and without emotion.

"Yes; I had to overhaul his things--we thought he was dying--and the Sonnets--"

"Never mind the Sonnets now, please. Tell me about his illness. What was it?"

Again that air of imperious proprietorship! "Enteric," he said bluntly, "and some other things."

"Where was he before they took him to the hospital?"

"He was--if you want to know--in a garret in a back street off Tottenham Court Road."

"What was he doing there?"

"To the best of my belief, he was starving. Do you find the room too close?"

"No, no. Go on."

Maddox went on. He was enjoying the sensation he was creating. He went on happily, piling up the agony. Since she would have it he was not reticent of detail. He related the story of the Rankins' dinner. He described with diabolically graphic touches the garret in Howland Street. "We thought he'd been drinking, you know, and all the time he was starving."

"He was starving--" she repeated slowly to herself.

"He was not doing it because he was a poet. It seems he had to pay some debt, or thought he had. The poor chap talked about it when he was delirious. Oh--let _me_ open that window."

"Thank you. You say he was delirious. Were you with him then?"

Maddox leapt to his conclusion. Miss Lucia Harden had something to conceal. He gathered it from her sudden change of att.i.tude, from her interrogation, from her faintness and from the throbbing terror in her voice. _That_ was why she desired the suppression of the Sonnets.

"Were you with him?" she repeated.

"No. G.o.d forgive me!"

"n.o.body was with him--before they took him to the hospital?"

"n.o.body, my dear lady, whom you would call anybody. He owes his life to the charity of a drunken prost.i.tute."

She was woman, the eternal, predestined enemy of Rickman's genius.

Therefore he had determined not to spare her, but to smite her with words like sledge-hammers.

And to judge by the look of her he had succeeded. She had turned away from him to the open window. She made no sign of suffering but for the troubled rising and falling of her breast. He saw in her a woman mortally smitten, but smitten, he imagined, in her vanity.

"Have I persuaded you," he said quietly, "to give up those Sonnets?"

"You shall have a copy. If Mr. Rickman wants the original he must come for it himself."

"Thanks." Maddox had ceased to be truculent, having gained his end.

His blue eyes twinkled with their old infantile devilry. "Thanks. It's awfully nice of you. But--couldn't you make it seem a little more spontaneous? You see, I don't want Rickman to know I had to ask you for them." He had a dim perception of inconsistency in his judgement of the lady; since all along he had been trusting her generosity to shelter his indiscretion.

Lucia smiled even in her anguish. "That I can well imagine. The copy shall be sent to him."

And Maddox considered himself dismissed. He wondered why she called him back to ask for the number of that house in Howland Street.

That afternoon she dragged herself there, that she might torture her eyes because they had not seen, and her heart because it had not felt.

CHAPTER LXXVIII

At Jewdwine's heart there was trouble and in his mind perfect peace.

For he knew his own mind at last, though he was still a little indefinite as to the exact condition of his heart.

Three days after Maddox's extraordinary disclosures Lucia had become most obviously and inconsiderately ill; and had given her cousin Edith a great deal of trouble as well as a severe fright, till Kitty, also frightened, had carried her off to Devonshire out of the house of the Jewdwines. To Horace the working of events was on the whole beneficent. Lucia's change of att.i.tude, her illness, her abrupt departure, though too unpleasant for his fastidious mind to dwell upon, had committed that mind irretrievably to the path of prudence.

So prudent was he, that of his saner matrimonial project the world in general took no note. Secure of the affections of Miss Fulcher, he had propitiated rumour by the fiction of his engagement to Lucia. Rumour, adding a touch of certainty to the story, had handed it on to Rickman by way of Maddox and Miss Roots. He there upon left off beautifying his house at Ealing, and agreed with Maddox that after Paris in November they should go on to Italy together, and that he would winter there for his health.

But by November there came more rumours, rumours of the breaking off of the engagement; rumours of some mysterious illness of Lucia's as the cause. They reached Rickman in the week before the date fixed for the production of _The Triumph of Life_ in Paris. He was paying a farewell call on Miss Roots, who became inscrutable at the mention of Lucia's name. He accused her with violence of keeping the truth from him, and implored her with pathos to tell it him at once. But Miss Roots had no truth, no certain truth to tell; there were only rumours.

Miss Roots knew nothing but that Lucia had been lying on her back for months; she conjectured that possibly there might be something the matter with her spine. Her mother had been delicate, and Sir Frederick, well, the less said about Sir Frederick the better. Rickman retreated, followed by Miss Roots. As for an engagement, she was not aware that there ever had been one; there was once, she admitted half-way downstairs, an understanding, probably misunderstood. He had better ask Horace Jewdwine straight out. "But," she a.s.sured him from the doorstep, "it would take an earthquake to get the truth out of _him_."

He flung himself into a hansom, and was one with the driver in imprecation at the never-ending, ever-increasing gradient of the hill.

The delay, however, enabled him to find Jewdwine at home and alone. He was aware that the interview presented difficulties, but none deterred him.

Jewdwine, questioned as to his engagement, betrayed no surprise; for with Rickman the unusual was to be expected. He might not have condescended to answer Rickman, his obscure disciple, but he felt that some concession must be made to the ill.u.s.trious dramatist.