range, double-burdened contradictory
song. There was sorrow in it, such sorrow as her children drink from
the breast of the tragic earth; and through it all and over it the
laughter as of some yet virgin and imperishable joy.

For Nature sings to every poet the song of his own soul.

He spent the last of that Easter Sunday in his shabby little bedroom
in the Marine Hotel, where with windows open to the wind and sea he
sat writing long past midnight. And hope rose again in him as he
surveyed the first rough draft--that wild battlefield and
slaughter-ground of lines, lines shooting and flying in all
directions, lines broken and scattered and routed by other lines,
over-ridden and trampled down by word upon triumphing word. Above the
hideous confusion at least two verses shone luminous and clear; they
had come swinging into the pure ether, full-formed and golden from
their birth. And over the whole he wrote in legible characters, "_On
Harcombe Hill_."

His doubt had died there; and on Easter Monday he awoke exulting in
another blessed day.

CHAPTER XXII

Lucia had yielded recklessly to her pleasure-giving instinct, and was
only half contented. She had given pleasure to her father by writing
him a long letter; she was in a fair way of giving pleasure to Horace
Jewdwine by undertaking this monstrous labour of the catalogue; and
she had given pleasure to herself in giving pleasure to them. But
there was one person to whom she had not given pleasure; and that
person was Horace Jewdwine's friend. On the contrary, she had robbed
the poor man of the one solitary pleasure he had anticipated in his
three days' holiday; with what disastrous results she had just
witnessed.

It was impossible for Lucia to do anybody a wrong, however innocently,
without making up for it. On that Sunday evening she conceived a great
idea. She had deprived Mr. Rickman of a small opportunity; she would
give him a large one. Restitution was to be on a noble scale. Lucia
had a small sum left to her by her grandfather, and even when Mr.
Rickman was paid for his four weeks' work on the catalogue that sum
would only be reduced to L285. On the strength of it she now proposed
to offer Mr. Rickman the post of secretary to herself, for one year,
at a salary of a hundred, the remainder to be devoted to his
travelling and household expenses. As secretary he would assist her in
editing Sir Joseph's unpublished works, while she secured him abundant
le