Part 117 (1/2)

”He won't think that.” (”I wish he could,” said Kitty to herself.)

They were waiting for the visit of Sir Wilfrid Spence. The Harmouth doctor had desired a higher light on the mysterious illness that kept Lucia lying for ever on her back. It might have been explained, he said, if she had suffered lately some deep mental or moral shock; but Lucia had not confessed to either, and in the absence of any mental cause it would be as well, said the Harmouth doctor, to look for a physical one. The fear at the back of the Harmouth doctor's mind was sufficiently revealed by his choice of the specialist, Sir Wilfrid Spence.

”_Do_ you think I'm shamming, Kitty? Sometimes I think I am, and sometimes I'm not quite sure. You know, if you think about your spine long enough you can imagine that it's very queer. But I haven't been thinking about my spine. It doesn't interest me. Dr. Robson would have told me if he thought I was shamming, because I asked him to. There's one thing makes me think it isn't fancy. I keep on wanting to do things. I want--you don't know how I want to go to the top of Harcombe Hill. And my ridiculous legs won't let me. And all the while, Kitty, I want to play. It's such a long time since I made my pretty music.”

A long time indeed, as Kitty was thinking sadly. Lucia had not made her pretty music since that night six months ago when she had played to please Keith Rickman.

”Things keep on singing in my head, and I want to play them. It stands to reason that I would if I could. But I _can't_. Oh, how I do talk about myself! Kitty, there must be a fine, a heavy fine, of sixpence, every time I talk about myself.”

”I shouldn't make much by it,” said Kitty.

Lucia closed her eyes, and Kitty went on with the ma.n.u.script she was copying. After a silence of twenty minutes Lucia opened her eyes again. They rested longingly on Kitty at her work.

”Kitty,” she said, ”Do you know, I sometimes think it would be better to sell those books. I can't bear to do it when he gave them to me.

But I do believe I ought to. The worst of it is I should have to ask him to do it for me.”

”Don't do anything in a hurry, dear. Wait and see,” said Kitty cheerfully.

It seemed to Lucia that there was nothing to wait for now. She wondered why Kitty said that, and whether it meant that they thought her worse than they liked to say and whether that was why Sir Wilfrid Spence was coming?

”Kitty,” she said again, ”I want you to promise me something.

Supposing--it's very unlikely--but supposing after all I were to go and die--”

”I won't suppose anything of the sort. People don't go and die of nervous exhaustion. You'll probably do it fifty years hence, but that is just the reason why I won't have you harrowing my feelings this way now.”

”I know I've had such piles of sympathy for my nervous exhaustion that it's horrid of me to try and get more for dying, too. I only meant if I did do it, quite unexpectedly, of something else--you wouldn't tell him, would you?”

”Well, dear, of course I won't mention it if you wish me not to--but he'd be sure to see it in the papers.”

”Kitty--you know what I mean. He couldn't see _that_ in the papers. He couldn't see it anywhere unless you told him. And if you did, it might make him very uncomfortable, you know.”

Poor Kitty, trying to be cheerful under the shadow of Sir Wilfrid Spence, was tortured by this conversation. She had half a mind to say, ”You don't seem to think how uncomfortable you're making _me_.” But she forbore. Any remark of that sort would rouse Lucia to efforts penitential in their motive, and more painful to bear than this pitiful outburst, the first in many months of patience and reserve.

She remembered how Lucia had once nursed her through a long illness in Dresden. It had not been, as Kitty expressed it, ”a pretty illness,”

and she had been distinctly irritable in her convalescence; but Lucy had been all tenderness, had never betrayed impatience by any look or word.

”I shouldn't mind anything, if only I'd been with him when _he_ was ill. But perhaps he'd rather I hadn't been there. I think it's that, you know, that I really cannot bear.”

Kitty would have turned to comfort her, but for the timely entrance of Robert. He brought a letter for Lucia which Kitty welcomed as an agreeable distraction. It was from Horace Jewdwine. ”Any news?” she asked presently.

”Yes. What _do_ you think? He's going to Paris to-morrow. Then he's going on to Italy--to Ala.s.sio, with Mr. Maddox.”

”Horace Jewdwine and Mr. Maddox? What next?”

”It isn't Horace that's going.” She gave the letter to Kitty because she had shrunk lately from speaking of Keith Rickman by his name.

”That's a very different tale,” said Kitty

”I'm so glad he's going. That was what he always wanted to do. Do you remember how I asked him to be my private secretary? Now I'm his private secretary; which is as it should be.”