The Divine Fire | Page 2

with him. Unless some day
I use him for an article."
"Oh, Horace, is that the way you treat your friends?"
He smiled. "Yes Lucy, sometimes, when they deserve it."
"You haven't told me your friend's name?"
"No. I betrayed his innocent confidence sufficiently in showing you his
play. I can't tell you his name."
"After all, his name doesn't matter."
"No, it doesn't matter. Very likely you'll hear enough of it some day.
You haven't told me what you think of him."
"I don't know what I think--But then, I don't know him."

"No," he said, roused to interest by her hesitation, "you don't know him.
That's the beauty of it."
She gave the manuscript back into his hands. "Take him away. He
makes me feel uncomfortable."
"To tell the truth, Lucy, he makes me feel uncomfortable, too."
"Why?"
"Well, when you think you've got hold of a genius, and you take him
up and stake your reputation on him--and all the time you can't be sure
whether it's a spark of the divine fire or a mere flash in the pan. It
happens over and over again. The burnt critic dreads the divine fire."
His eyes were fixed on the title page as if fascinated by the words,
Helen in Leuce.
"But this is not bad--it's not bad for two and twenty."
"Only two and twenty?"
"That's all. It looks as if he were made for immortality."
She turned to him that ardent gaze which made the hot day hotter.
"Dear Horace, you're going to do great things for him."
The worst of having a cousin who adores you is that magnificence is
expected of you, regularly and as a matter of course. He was not even
sure that Lucia did not credit him with power to work miracles. The
idea was flattering but also somewhat inconvenient.
"I don't know about great things. I should like to do something. The
question is what. He's a little unfortunate in--in his surroundings, and
he's been ill, poor fellow. If one could give him a change. If one were
only rich and could afford to send him abroad for a year. I had thought
of asking him down to Oxford."

"And why didn't you?"
"Well, you know, one gets rather crowded up with things in term time."
Lucia looked thoughtfully at the refined, luxurious figure in the
hammock. Horace was entitled to the hammock, for he had been ill. He
was entitled also to the ministrations of his cousin Lucia. Lucia spent
her time in planning and doing kind things, and, from the sudden
luminous sweetness of her face, he gathered that something of the sort
was in preparation now.
It was. "Horace," she said, "would you like to ask him here?"
"No, Lucy, I wouldn't. I don't think it would do."
"But why not--if he's your friend?"
"If he's my friend."
"You said he was your friend. You did, you know." (Another awkward
consequence of a cousin's adoration; she is apt to remember and attach
importance to your most trivial utterances.)
"Pardon me, I said he was my find."
"Where did you find him?"
"I found him in the City--in a shop."
She smiled at the rhythmic utterance. The tragedy of the revelation was
such that it could be expressed only in blank verse.
"The shop doesn't matter."
"No, but he does. You couldn't stand him, Lucia. You see, for one thing,
he sometimes drops his aitches."
"Well, if he does,--he'll be out all day, and there's the open country to
drop them in. I really don't mind, if you'd like to ask him. Do you think

he'd like to be asked?"
"There's no possible doubt about that."
"Then ask him. Ask him now. You can't do it when father's not at
home."
Jewdwine repressed a smile. Even now, from the windows of the east
wing, there burst, suddenly, the sound of fiddling, a masterly fiddling
inspired by infernal passion, controlled by divine technique. It was his
uncle, Sir Frederick, and he wished him at the devil. If all accounts
were true, Sir Frederick, when not actually fiddling, was going there
with a celerity that left nothing to be desired; he was, if you came to
think of it, a rather amazing sort of chaperone.
And yet, but for that fleeting and tumultuous presence, Horace himself
would not be staying at Court House. Really, he reflected. Lucia ought
to get some lady to live with her. It was the correct thing, and therefore
it was not a little surprising that Lucia did not do it. An expression of
disapproval passed over his pale, fastidious face.
"Father won't mind," she said.
"No, but I should." He said it in a tone which was meant to settle the
question.
She sat still, turning over the