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He had certainly reckoned on that disappearance. 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 had been reading one of his books; it lay in her lap.
Yesterday London seemed as far away from Harmouth as Babylon from Arcadia, and Rickman was not more infinitely removed from Lucia than Lucia was from Poppy; yet here they were, all three tangled together in Dicky's complicated draw-net. He held them all, Lucia by her honour, Poppy by her vanity, and him, Rickman, by the lusts and follies of his youth.
Her eyes were full of discernment and of an infinite tenderness and compassion. They kindled in him the desire that fulfils itself in its own utterance. That this Lucia was not wholly the creature of his imagination he was assured by his memory of certain passages in his life at Harmouth, a memory that had all the vividness and insistence of the other.
On the twenty-fifth of May she had a cable that changed the face of events. It was from Montevideo. Have found Simeon. Desperately ill. On our way home. The news spread over the town like wildfire. The local paper issued an extra; a thing it had not done since the assassination of Mr. McKinley. As soon as Harmouth knew Mrs. Ponsonby's exact status it became distinctly friendly.
When Stephen came for her they would go away from Harmouth just for a little while, till the memories faded and, in a future of perfect love, think kindly, gratefully, pitifully, of Simeon. You see, she was desperately in love, poor child, and at last heart and conscience were in accord.
The lights of Harmouth opened out a thin line to the esplanade, dividing the sea from the land by fire instead of foam; strewn in the bed of the valley they revealed, as through some pure and liquid medium, its darkness and its depth. Above them the great flank of Muttersmoor stretched like the rampart of the night. Night itself was twilight against that black and tragic line.
Once Jewdwine had hung about the shop for half an hour talking; the interview being broken by Rickman's incessant calls to the counter. Once, they had taken a walk together down Cheapside, which from that moment became a holy place. Then came the day when, at Jewdwine's invitation, Helen in Leuce travelled down from London to Oxford, and from Oxford to Harmouth.
And yet she was his own and nobody else's. She was a good sort, Poppy, taking her all round. He tried to think about Poppy and found it difficult. His mind wandered; not into the realms of fancy, but into paths strange and humiliating for a scholar and a poet. He caught himself murmuring, "Harmouth Harcombe Homer Harden." He had got them all right.
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