Often, after half a night spent in a vain striving to shape some immense idea into the form of beauty, be had turned the thing neck and crop out of his mind and gone to sleep on it. Whenever he did this he was sure to wake up and find it there waiting for him, full-formed and perfect as he had dreamed it and desired. It had happened so often that he had grown to trust this profounder inspiration of his sleep.
Hitherto it was only the problems of his heart that had been thus divinely dealt with; he had been left to struggle hopelessly with the problems of his life; and of these Flossie was the most insoluble. And now that he had given up thinking of her, had abandoned her to her own mysterious workings, it too had been solved and in the same simple, inevitable way. His contempt for Flossie's methods could not blind him to the beneficence of the result.
He wrote to her that night to the effect that he gladly and entirely acquiesced in her decision; but that he should have thought that he and not Mr. Spinks had been entitled to the first intimation of it. He had no doubt, however, that she had done the best and wisest thing. He forbore to add "for both of us." His chivalry still persisted in regarding Flossie as a deeply injured person. He had wronged her from the beginning. Had he not laid on her, first the burden of his passion, and yet again the double burden of his genius and his honour? A heavier load, that, and wholly unfitted for the poor little back that would have had to bear it. It never occurred to him that he had been in any way the victim of Flossie's powerful instincts. It was Maddox who said that Mr. Spinks had made himself immortal by his marriage; that he should be put on the Civil List for his services to literature.
Of Rickman's place in literature there could be no question for the next two or three years. He foresaw that the all-important thing was his place onThe Planet, his place onMetropolis, his place (if he could find one) on any other paper. He had looked to journalism for the means to support a wife, and journalism alone could maintain him in his struggle with Pilkington. Whether Maddox was right or wrong in his opinion of the disastrous influence of Flossie, there could be no doubt that for the present Rickman's genius had no more formidable rival than his honour. If it is perdition to a great tragic dramatist when passion impels him to marry on three hundred a year, it can hardly be desirable that conscience should constrain him to raise seven hundred and fifty pounds in three years. Fate seemed bent in forcing him to live his tragedies rather than write them; but Rickman, free of Flossie, faced the desperate prospect with the old reckless spirit of his youth.
For the first year the prospect did not look so very desperate. He had found cheap rooms unfurnished in Torrington Square where the houses are smaller and less sumptuous than Mrs. Downey's. He had succeeded in letting the little house in Ealing, where the abominable furniture that had nearly cost so dear justified its existence by adding a small sum to his income. He had benefited indirectly by Rankin's greatness; for Rankin seldom contributed anything toThe Planetnow beyond his lively column once a week; and Rickman was frequently called on to fill his place.The Planetwas good for at least a solid hundred a year;Metropolis(once it began to pay) for a solid two hundred and fifty or more; other papers for small and varying sums. When he totted it all up together he found that he was affluent. He could reckon on a round four hundred all told. In Torrington Square, by the practice of a little ingenious economy, he could easily live on a hundred and twenty-five; so that by the end of the first year he should have saved the considerable sum of two hundred and seventy-five pounds. At that rate, in three years—no, in two years and a—well, in rather more than two and a half years the thing would be done. By a little extra exertion he might be able to reduce it to two years; to one, perhaps, by a magnificent stroke of luck. Such luck, for instance, as a stage success, a run of a hundred nights for the tragedy whose First Act he was writing now.
That, of course, it would be madness to count on; but he had some hopes from the sudden and extraordinary transformation ofThe Museion.
Sudden enough, to the uninitiated, seeing that in September, ninety-seven, the organ of philosophic criticism to all appearances died, and that in October it burst into life again under a new cover and a new title, Jewdwine himself sounding the trump of resurrection.The Museion'sold contributors knew it no more; or failed to recognise it inMetropolis. On the tinted cover there was no trace of the familiar symbolic head-piece, so suggestive of an Ionic frieze, but the new title in the broadest, boldest, blackest of type proclaimed its almost wanton repudiation of the old tradition.
Jewdwine's first "concession to modernity," was a long leading review of the "Art of Herbert Rankin." Herbert Rankin was so much amused with it that it kept him quiet for at least three weeks in his playground ofThe Planet. After such a handsome appreciation as that, he had to wait a decent interval before "going for Jewdwine." When he remarked to Rickman that it would have been more to the purpose if Jewdwine had devoted his six columns to the Art of S.K.R., Rickman blushed and turned his head away, as if Rankin had been guilty of some gross indelicacy. He was still virginally sensitive where Jewdwine was concerned.
But, in a sense not intended by Rankin, Jewdwine was very much occupied, not to say perturbed by the art of S.K.R. Not exactly to the exclusion of every other interest; for Rickman, looking in on the great editor one afternoon, found him almost enthusiastic over his "last discovery." A new poet, according to Jewdwine, had arisen in the person of an eminent Cabinet Minister, who in ninety-seven was beguiling the tedium of office with a very pretty playing on the pastoral pipe. Mr. Fulcher'sIn Arcadialay on the editorial table, bound in white vellum, with the figure of the great God Pan symbolizing Mr. Fulcher, on the cover. Jewdwine's attitude to Mr. Fulcher was for Jewdwine humble, not to say reverent. He intimated to Rickman that in Fulcher he had found what he had wanted.
Jewdwine in the early days ofMetropoliswore the hungry look of a man who, having swallowed all his formulas, finds himself unnourished. "The soul," Jewdwine used to say (perverting Emerson) "is appeased by a formula"; and it was clear that his soul would never be appeased until it had found a new one. Those who now conversed intimately with Jewdwine were entertained no longer with the Absolute, but they heard a great deal about the "Return to Nature." Mr. Fulcher's pipings, therefore, were entirely in harmony with Jewdwine's change of mood.
But Rickman, who had once protested so vigorously against the Absolute, would not hear of the Return to Nature, either. That cry was only a symptom of the inevitable sickness of the academic spirit, surfeited with its own philosophy. He shook his head mournfully over Mr. Fulcher. What looked to Jewdwine like simplicity seemed to him only a more intolerably sophisticated pose than any other.
"I prefer Mr. Fulcher in Downing Street to Mr. Fulcher in Arcadia. Mr. Fulcher," he said, "can no more return to Nature than he can enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born."
He walked up and down the little office excitedly, while he drew for Jewdwine's benefit an unattractive picture of the poet as babe, drinking from the breasts of the bounteous mother. "You can't go for ever hanging on your mother's breasts; it isn't decent and it isn't manly. Return to Nature! It's only too easy to return, and stay. You'll do no good at all if you've never been there; but if you mean to grow up you must break loose and get away. The great mother is inclined to bug some of her children rather too tight, I fancy; and by Heaven! it's pretty tough work for some of them wriggling out of her arms."
He came to a sudden standstill, and turned on Jewdwine the sudden leaping light of the blue eyes that seemed to see through Jewdwine and beyond him. No formula could ever frame and hold for him that vision of his calling which had come to him four years ago on Harcombe Hill. He had conceived and sung of Nature, not as the indomitable parent by turns tyrannous and kind, but as the virgin mystery, the shy and tender bride that waits in golden abysmal secrecy for the embrace of spirit, herself athirst for the passionate immortal hour. He foresaw the supreme and indestructible union. He saw one eternal nature and a thousand forms of art, differing according to the virile soul. And what he saw he endeavoured to describe to Jewdwine. "That means, mind you, that your poet is a grown-up man and not a slobbering infant."
"Exactly. And Nature will be the mother of his art, asIsaid."
"As you didn't say—The motheronly. There isn't any immaculate conception of truth. Don't you believe it for a moment."
Jewdwine retired into himself a moment to meditate on that telling word. He wondered what lay beyond it.
"And Art," continued Rickman, "is truth, just because it isn't Nature."
"If you mean," said Jewdwine, seeking a formula, "that modern art is essentially subjective, I agree with you."
"I mean that really virile and original art—the art, I believe of the future—must spring from the supreme surrender of Nature to the human soul."
"And do you honestly believe that the art of the future will be one bit more 'virile' than the art of the present day?"
"On the whole I do."
"Well, I don't. I see nothing that makes for it. No art can hold out for ever against commercialism. The nineteenth century has been commercial enough in all conscience, bestially, brutally commercial; but its commercialism and brutality will be nothing to the commercialism and brutality of the twentieth. If these things are deadly to art now, they'll be ten times more deadly then. The mortality, among poets, my dear Rickman, will be something terrific."
"Not a bit of it. The next century, if I'm not mistaken, will see a pretty big flare up of a revolution; and the soul will come out on top. Robespierre and Martin Luther won't be in it, Jewdwine, with the poets of that school."
"I'm glad you feel able to take that view of it. I don't seem to see the poets of the twentieth century myself."
"I see them all right," said Rickman, simply. "They won't be the poets of Nature, like the nineteenth century chaps; they'll be the poets of human nature—dramatic poets, to a man. Of course, it'll take a revolution to produce that sort."
"A revolution? A cataclysm, you mean."
"No. If you come to think of it, it's only the natural way a healthy poet grows. Look at Shakespeare. I believe, you know, that most poets would grow into dramatic poets if they lived long enough. Only sometimes they don't live; and sometimes they don't grow. Lyric poets are cases of arrested development, that's all."
Jewdwine listened with considerable amusement as his subordinate propounded to him this novel view. He wondered what literary enormity Rickman might be contemplating now. That he had something at the back of his mind was pretty evident. Jewdwine meant to lie low till, from that obscure region, Rickman, as was his wont, should have brought out his monster for inspection.
He produced it the next instant, blushingly, tenderly, yet with no diminution of his sublime belief.
"You see—you'll think it sheer lunacy, but—I've a sort of idea that if I'm to go on at all, myself, it must be on those lines. Modern poetic drama—It's that or nothing, you know."
Jewdwine's face said very plainly that he had no doubt whatever of the alternative. It also expressed a curious and indefinable relief.
"Modern poetic drama? So that's your modest ambition, is it?"
Rickman owned that indeed it was.
"My dear fellow, modern poetic drama is a contradiction in all its terms. There are only three schools of poetry possible—the classic, the romantic and the natural. Art only exists by one of three principles, normal beauty, spiritual spontaneity, and vital mystery or charm. And none of these three is to be found in modern life." These were the laws he had laid down in theProlegomena to Æsthetics, which Rickman, in the insolence of his genius, had defied. Somehow the life seemed to have departed from those stately propositions, but Jewdwine clung to them in a desperate effort to preserve his critical integrity. He was soothed by the sound of his own voice repeating them. He caught as it were an echo of the majestic harmonies that once floated through his lecture-room at Lazarus. "Besides," he went on, "where will you find your drama to begin with?"
"In modern men and women."
"But modern men and women are essentially undramatic,andunpoetic."
"Still, I must take them, because, you see, there's nothing else to take. There never was or will be. The men and women of Shakespeare's time were modern to him, you know. If they seem poetic to us, that's because a poet made them so; and he made them so because he saw that—essentially—theywereso."
Jewdwine pushed out his lips in the manner of one unwillingly dubious.
"My dear Rickman, you have got to learn your limitations; or if not your limitations, the limitations made for you by the ridiculous and unlovely conditions of modern life."
"I have learnt them. After all, what am I to do? Iammodern—modern as my hat," said Rickman, turning it in his hands. "I admit that my hat isn't even a fugitive form of the eternal and absolute beauty. It is, I'm afraid, horribly like everybody else's hat. In moments of profound insight I feel thatIam horribly like everybody else. If it wasn't for that I should have no hope of achieving my modest ambition."
"I'm not saying anything against your modesty or your ambition. I'm not defying you to write a modern blank verse play; but I defy anybody to act one."
"I know," said Rickman, "it's sad of course, but to the frivolous mind of a critic there always will be something ridiculous in the notion of blank verse spouted on the stage by a person in a frock-coat and a top-hat. But do you think you'd see that frock-coat and top-hat if once the great tragic passions got inside them?"
"Wherearethe great tragic passions?"
"They exist and are poetic."
"As survivals only. They are poetic but not modern. We have the passions of the divorce-court and the Stock Exchange. They are modern, if you like, but not strikingly poetic."
"Well—even a stock-broker—if you insist on stockbrokers—"
"I don't. Take the people—take the women I know, the women you know. Is there—honestly, is there any poetry in them?"
"There is—heaps. Oceans of poetry—There always has been and will be. It's the poets, the great poets that don't turn up to time."
"Well; I don't care how great a poet you may be. Modern poetic drama is the path of perdition for you. I wish," he added with an unmistakable air of turning to a subject of real interest. "I wish I knew what to do with Fulcher."
"I don't know. I only know Mr. Fulcher's art hasn't much to do with nature. I'm afraid it's the illegitimate offspring of Mr. Fulcher and some young shepherdess of Covent Garden."
"He seems to have proved himself pretty much at home in Arcadia."
"Don't you believe him. He's only at home in Downing Street. You'd better leave him there."
But Jewdwine did not leave him there. He exalted Mr. Fulcher to the seventh heaven in four and a half columns ofMetropolis. With his journalistic scent for the alluring and the vivid phrase, he took everything notable that Rickman had said and adapted it to Mr. Fulcher.In Arcadiasupplying a really golden opportunity for a critical essay on "Truth to Nature," wherein Mr. Fulcher learnt, to his immense bewilderment, that there is no immaculate conception of that truth; but that to Mr. Fulcher, as poet, belonged the exultation of paternity. Jewdwine quoted Coleridge to the effect that Mr. Fulcher only received what he was pleased to give, and that in Mr. Fulcher's life alone did Nature live. And when Rankin, falling on that article, asked Maddox what it meant, Maddox replied that it meant nothing except that Mr. Fulcher was a Cabinet Minister.
But within three months of the day on which Jewdwine had pronounced the modern poetic drama to be dead, Rickman had written the First Act of his tragedy which proved it (as far as a First Act can prove anything) to be very much alive.
Jewdwine received the announcement of this achievement with every appearance of pleasure. He was indeed genuinely relieved to think that Rickman was thus harmlessly employed. The incessant successful production ofSaturnaliawould have been prejudicial to the interests ofThe Museion; a series of triumphantHelens in Leucewould have turned Rickman aside for ever from the columns ofMetropolis; but Jewdwine told himself that he had nothing to fear from the rivalries of the modern Tragic Muse. Rickman the journalist would live; for Rickman the poet had set out on the path of perdition.
Nobody could say that it was Jewdwine who had encouraged him to take it.
In January, ninety-eight,Metropolisbegan to pay, and Rickman's hopes were justified. He was now a solid man, a man of income. For eighteen months he kept strictly within the limits he had allowed himself. His nature inclined him to a riotous and absurd expenditure, and for eighteen months he wrestled with and did violence to his nature. Each sum he saved stood for some triumph of ingenious abnegation, some miracle of self-restraint. And for eighteen months Dicky Pilkington, beholding the spectacle of his heroism, laid ten to one against his ultimate success. The thing, Dicky said, was impossible; he could never keep it up. But Rickman once abandoned to a persistent and passionate economy, there was no more holding him in on that path than on any other. By the middle of the following year, out of an income of four hundred he had saved that sum.
He said to himself that the worst was over now. He had paid off more than half of his debt, and the remainder had still another fourteen months to run. Only fourteen months' passionate economy and the Harden library would be redeemed. As he saw himself within measurable distance of his end, he was seized by an anxiety, an excitement that he had not been aware of at the start. The sight of the goal perturbed him; it suggested the failure that up to that moment he had not allowed himself to contemplate. Like an athlete he gathered himself together for the final spurt; and ninety-nine was a brilliant year forThe Planetmade glorious by the poems, articles and paragraphs showered on it by S.K.R. Maddox shook his head over some of them; but he took them all and boasted, as he well might, thatThe Planetpublished more Rickman—the real Rickman—in six months thanMetropoliswould do in as many years. He distinguished between Rickman's genius and his talent; provided he got his best work, anybody else was welcome to his second-best. By anybody else he meant Jewdwine.
Yet it was a nobler feeling than professional rivalry that made him abhor the poet's connection withMetropolis; for Maddox was if anything more jealous for Rickman's reputation than for his own. From the very beginning he had never ceased to wonder at his unaccountable affection for Horace Jewdwine; the infatuation, for it amounted to infatuation, would have been comprehensible enough in any other man, but it was unaccountable in Rickman, who was wholly destitute of reverence for the sources of his income. Jewdwine ofThe Museionhad been in Maddox's opinion a harmless philosophic crank; he had done nothing, absolutely nothing for Rickman's genius; but Jewdwine ofMetropoliswas dangerous, for he encouraged Rickman's talent; and Rickman's talent would, he was afraid, be ultimately destructive to the higher power.
So Maddox prayed to heaven for promotion, that he might make Rickman independent of Jewdwine and his journal. There were many things that he had in his mind to do for him in the day of advancement. His eyes raked the horizon, sighting promotion from afar. And in the last two years, promotion had come very near to Maddox. There were quarters, influential quarters, where he Was spoken of as a singularly original young man; and he had the knack of getting hold of singularly original young men; young men of originality too singular perhaps to make the paper pay. Still, though the orbit ofThe Planetwas hardly so vast as Maddox had anticipated, as to its brilliance there could be no two opinions. In the year ninety-eight, the year that saw Rickman first struggling in the financier's toils, Maddox had delivered his paper from the power of Pilkington. Promotion played with Maddox; it hovered round him, touching him tentatively with the tips of its wings; he lured it by every innocent art within his power, but hitherto it had always settled on some less wild and wanton head.
At last it came, it kept on coming, from a quarter where, as he had every right to look for it, he had of course never dreamed of looking. Rankin's publishers, grown rich on the proceeds of Rankin's pen, were dissatisfied with their reader (the poor man had not discovered Rankin); on Rankin's advice they offered his post to Maddox (who had), and that at double his salary. They grew richer, and at a further hint from Rankin they made Maddox a director. In the same mad year they started a new monthly, and (Rankin again) appointed Maddox as their editor.
His opportunity had come. On the very night of this third appointment Maddox called on Rickman and proposed on behalf of Rankin and Stables to hand over to him the editorship ofThe Planet. For Stables, he said, was too dog lazy, and Rankin too grossly prosperous to have anything to do with it. He didn't think any of them would ever make a fortune out of it; but its editor's income would be at any rate secure. He omitted to mention that it would be practically secured out of his, Maddox's, own pocket.
"You may reckon," said he, "on three hundred and fifty." He named the sum modestly, humbly almost; not that he thought Rickman would be sorry to have that little addition to his income, but because he was always diffident in offering anything to Rickman, "when you thought of what he was"; and he found something startling, not to say upsetting, in the joy that leapt up in his young eyes. You never could tell how Ricky-ticky would take a thing; but if he had known he was going to take it that way he would have written him a note. He wondered whether Ricky-ticky was in a tight corner, head over ears in debt or love. Did the young lunatic want to marry after that near shave he had two years ago? You wouldn't exactly refuse three hundred and fifty; but a beggar must be brought pretty low to be crumpled up in that way by the mere mention of the sum.
Maddox was not aware that no other combination of figures could have excited precisely those emotions; three hundred and fifty being the exact sum that Rickman needed for the accomplishment of his purpose. It brought his dream nearer to him by a year. A year? Why, it did more. He had only to ask and Maddox would advance the money. His dream was now, this moment, within his grasp.
And all he could say was, "I say, you know, this is awfully good of you."
"Good of you, Rickets, to take the thing off my hands. I can't very well run a monthly and a weekly with all my other jobs thrown in."
"The question is whether I can manage two weeklies and the other things."
"No, you can't. You're not built that way. But if you takeThe Planet, you can afford to chuckMetropolis. Tell you the truth, that's one reason why I want you to take it."
Some of the joy died out of Rickman's face.
"The other reason is, of course, that I can't think of a better man."
"It's awfully good of you to think of me at all. But why do you want me to chuckMetropolis?"
"Never mind why. I don't sayThe Planetis the best imaginable place for you, nor are you the best imaginable man forThe Planet; but I really can't think of a better."
"No, but why—"
"(Confound him, why can't he leave it alone? I shall lose my temper in another minute," said Maddox to himself.) "The question is, would you like it? Because, if you wouldn't, don't imagine you've got to take it to oblige me."
"Of course I'd like it. There isn't anything I'd like so well."
"It's settled then."
It might have been, but Rickman turned on him again with his ungovernable "Why?"
"If you'd like it, Ricky, there's nothing more to be said. I know it isn't exactly a sumptuous berth for you, but it's a bit better salary."
"I'm not thinking of the salary. Oh, yes, I am, though; God forgive me, I'm thinking of nothing else."
"Salary apart," said Maddox, with the least touch of resentment, "it's a better thing for you to editThe Planetthan to sub-editMetropolis."
"Of course it is. Still, I should like to know why you want me to throw Jewdwine over."
"Hang Jewdwine. I saidMetropolis."
"I'm glad you admit the distinction."
"Idon'tadmit it."
"Why do you want me to throw the thing over, then? Do you mean that I can't work for you and Jewdwine at the same time?"
"I never said anything about Jewdwine at all. But—if you will have it—I can't say I consider the connection desirable for the editor ofThe Planet."
"I think I'm the best judge of that."
"I said—for the editor ofThe Planet."
"For the editor ofThe Planetthen, why not?"
"Ours is a poor but honest paper," said Maddox with his devilish twinkle.
"I don't see how I can very well be the editor ofThe Planetso long as it insists on shying a dead cat every week at the editor ofMetropolis."
"We have never mentioned the editor ofMetropolis. Still—if you can induce Rankin to give up his little jest—the cat is certainly very dead by this time."
"He'll have to give it up if you make me editor."
"You'd better tell him so."
"I shall."
"All right, Rickets; only wait till youareeditor. Then you can put as much side on as you like."
"Good heavens, did you ever see me put on side?"
"Well, I've seen you strike an attitude occasionally."
"All my attitudes put together hardly amount to side."
"They do, if they assume that they're going to affect the attitude of our paper."
"I didn't know it had one."
"It has a very decided attitude with regard to the ethics of reviewing; and whatever else you make it give up, it's not going to give up that.The Planet, Ricky, doesn't put on side. Side would be fatal to any freedom in the handling of dead cats. I wouldn't go so far as to say that it makes its moral being its prime care; but there are some abuses which it lives to expose, though the exposure doesn't help it much to live."
"Oh, I say, Maddy! That's what keeps you going. My poems would have sunk you long ago, if it hadn't been for your thrilling personalities."
"Personalities or no personalities, what I mean to rub into you is thatThe Planetis impartial; it'stheonly impartial review in this country. It has always reserved to itself an absolutely untrammelled hand in the shying of dead cats; and because a man happens to be a friend of the editor, it's no guarantee whatever that he won't have one slung at him the minute he deserves it. His only security is to perpetrate some crime so atrocious that we can't publish his name for fear of letting ourselves in for an action for libel. Your attitude to Mr. Jewdwine is naturally personal. Ours is not. I should have thought you'd have been the first to see that."
"I don't see what you've got against him, to begin with. I wish you'd tell me plainly what it is."
"If you will have it, it's simply this—he isn't honest."
"What the devildoyou mean?"
"I mean what you mean when you say a woman isn't honest. As you've so often remarked, there's such a thing as intellectual chastity. Some people have it, and some have not. You have it, my dear Rickets, in perfection, not to say excess; but most of us manage to lose it more or less as we go on. It's a deuced hard thing, I can tell you, for any editor to keep; and Jewdwine, I'm afraid, has latterly been induced to part with it to a considerable, a very considerable extent. It's a thousand pities; for Jewdwine had the makings in him of a really fine critic. He might have been a classic if he'd died soon enough."
"Heisa classic—he's the only man whose opinion's really worth having at this moment."
"Whom are we talking about? Jewdwine? Or the editor ofMetropolis?"
"I'm talking about Jewdwine. I happen to know him, if you don't."
"And I'm talking about the other fellow whom you don't happen to know a little bit. Nobody cares a tuppenny damn abouthisopinion, except the fools who read it and the knaves who buy it."
"And who do you imagine those people are?"
"Most of them are publishers, I believe. But a good few are authors, I regret to say."
"Authors have cheek enough for most things; but I should like to see one suggesting to Jewdwine that he should sell him his opinion."
"My dear fellow, anybody may suggest it. That's what he's there for, since he turned his opinion on to the streets. Whether you get a pretty opinion or not depends on the length of your purse."
"Why don't you call it bribery at once?"
"Because bribery's too harsh a term to apply to an editor,mon semblable, mon frère; but in a woman, or a parliamentary candidate, it might possibly be called corruption."
"Thanks. Well, you've made me a very generous offer, Maddox, so generous that I'm glad you've explained yourself before I took it. For after that, you know, it would have been rather awkward for me to have to tell you you're a liar!"
"You consider me a liar, do you?" said Maddox in a mild dispassionate voice.
"Certainly I do, when you say these thing about Jewdwine."
"How about Rankin? He says them."
"Then Rankin's a liar, too!"
"And Stables?"
"AndStables—if he says them."
"My dear Rickman, everybody says them; only they don't say them to you. We can't all be liars."
"There's a difference, I admit. Anybody who says them is a liar; and anybody who says them tomeis a d——d liar! That's the difference."
Whereupon Maddox intimated (as honour indeed compelled him) that Rickman was the sort of young fool for which there is no salvation. And by the time Rickman had replied with suitable hyperbole; and Maddox, because of the great love he bore to Rickman, had observed that if Rickman chose to cut his confused throat he might do so without its being a matter of permanent regret to Maddox; and Rickman, because of the great love he bore to Maddox, had suggested his immediate departure for perdition, it was pretty clearly understood that Rickman himself preferred to perish, everlastingly perish, rather than be connected even remotely with Maddox and his paper. And on that understanding they separated.
And when the door was closed between them, Rickman realised that his folly was even as Maddox had described it. In one night, and at a crisis of his finances, he had severed himself from a fairly permanent source of income; flung up the most desirable chance that had presented itself hitherto in his career; and quarrelled disgracefully and disagreeably with his best friend. He supposed the split was bound to come; but if he could only have staved it off for another year, till he had collected that seven hundred and fifty! There could be no doubt that that was what he ought to have done. He ought to have been prudent for Lucia's sake. And on the top of it all came the terrible reflection—Was it really worth it? Did he really believe in Jewdwine? Or had he sacrificed himself for an idea?
Rickman could never be made to speak of the quarrel with Maddox. He merely mentioned to Jewdwine in the most casual manner that he had leftThe Planet. As for his grounds for that abrupt departure Jewdwine was entirely in the dark. It was Lucia that enlightened him.
For all things, even the deep things of journalism, sooner or later come to light. Rickman, before the quarrel, had given Miss Roots an introduction to the young men ofThe Planet, and its editor had taken kindly to Miss Roots. Maddox, it is true, did his best to keep the matter quiet, until in a moment of expansion he allowed that shrewd lady to lure him into confidences. Maddox tried to take it and present it philosophically. "It was bound to happen," he said. "Our Ricky-ticky is a bad hand at serving two masters," but as to which was God and which Mammon in this connection he modestly reserved his opinion. Jewdwine's name was carefully avoided, but Miss Roots was left in no doubt as to the subject of dispute.
She and Maddox were one in their inextinguishable enthusiasm for their Rickman, for Rickman had the gift, the rarest of all gifts, of uniting the hearts that loved him. If Jewdwine had showed anything like a proper appreciation of the poet, Maddox would have spared him now. So the two looked at each other, with eyes that plumbed all the depths of the unspoken and unspeakable, eyes that sent out a twinkling flash of admiration as they agreed that it was "just like Rickman." That phrase was for ever on the lips of his admirers, a testimony to the fact that Rickman was invariably true to himself.
He was being true to himself now in being true to Jewdwine, and it was in that form that the tale went round. "I can't tell you all the ins and outs of it," wrote Miss Roots to Lucia, "but he is paying for his loyalty to Mr. Jewdwine;" and Lucia, with equal pride in her cousin and her friend, repeated it to Kitty Palliser, who repeated it to somebody else with the comment, "I'm not surprised to hear it"; and somebody else repeated it in a good many quarters without any comment at all. For everybody but Lucia understood that it spoke for itself.
And nobody understood it better than Jewdwine when his cousin said, "Youwillbe nice to him, Horace, won't you? He is suffering for his loyalty to you." Lucia herself had adopted a theory which she now set forth (reluctantly, by reason of the horrible light it threw on human nature). Mr. Maddox (whoever he might be) was of course jealous of Horace. It was a shocking theory, but it was the only one which made these complications clear to her.
But Jewdwine had no need of theories or explanations. He understood. He knew that a certain prejudice, not to say suspicion, attached to him. Ideas, not very favourable to his character as a journalist, were in the air. And as his mind (in this respect constitutionally susceptible) had seldom been able to resist ideas in the air there were moments when his own judgment wavered. He was beginning to suspect himself.
He was not sure, and if he had been he would not have acted on that certainty; for he had never possessed the courage of his opinions. But it had come to this, that Jewdwine, the pure, the incorruptible, was actually uncertain whether he had or had not taken a bribe. As he lay awake in bed at four o'clock in the morning his conscience would suggest to him that he had done this thing; but at noon, in the office ofMetropolis, his robust common sense, then like the sun, in the ascendant, boldly protested that he had done nothing of the sort. He had merely made certain not very unusual concessions to the interests of his journal. In doing so he had of course set aside his artistic conscience, an artistic conscience being a private luxury incompatible with the workings of a large corporate concern. He was bound to disregard it in loyalty to his employers and his public. They expected certain things of him and not others. It was different in the unexciting days of the oldMuseion; it would be different now if he could afford to run a paper of his own dedicated to the service of the Absolute. But Jewdwine was no longer the servant of the Absolute. He was the servant and the mouthpiece of a policy that in his heart he abhorred; irretrievably committed to a programme that was concerned with no absolute beyond the absolute necessity of increasing the circulation ofMetropolis. Such a journal only existed on the assumption that its working expenses were covered by the advertisements of certain publishing houses. But if this necessity committed him to a more courteous attitude than he might otherwise have adopted towards the works issued by those houses, that was not saying that he was in their pay. He was, of course, in the pay of his own publishers, but so was every man who drew a salary under the same conditions; and if those gentlemen, finding their editor an even more competent person than they had at first perceived, were in the habit of increasing his salary in proportion to his competence, that was only the very correct and natural expression of their good opinion.
Whatever he had thought of himself at four o'clock in the morning, by four o'clock in the afternoon Jewdwine took an extremely lenient, not to say favourable view. Unfortunately he had not the courage of that opinion either. Therefore he was profoundly touched by this final instance of Rickman's devotion, and all that it argued of reckless and inspired belief. In the six months that followed he saw more of Rickman than he had seen in as many years. Whenever he had a slack evening he would ask him to dinner, and let him sit talking on far into the night. He was afraid of being left alone with that uncomfortable doubt, that torturing suspicion. Rickman brought with him an atmosphere charged with stimulating conviction, and in his presence Jewdwine breathed freely and unafraid. He felt himself no longer the ambiguous Jewdwine that he was, but the noble incorruptible Jewdwine that he had been. Up there in the privacy of his study Jewdwine let himself go; to that listener he was free to speak as a critic noble and incorruptible. But there were moments, painful for both men, when he would pause, gripped by his doubt, in the full swing of some high deliverance; when he looked at Rickman with a pathetic anxious gaze, as if uncertain whether he were not presuming too far on a character that he held only at the mercy of his friend's belief.
Though as yet he was not fully aware of the extent to which he relied on that belief, there could hardly have been a stronger tie than that which now bound him to his subordinate. He would have shrunk from loosing it lest he should cut himself off from some pure source of immortality, lest he should break the last link between his soul and the sustaining and divine reality. It was as if through Rickman he remained attached to the beauty which he still loved and to the truth which he still darkly discerned.
In any case he could not have suffered him to go unrewarded. He owed that to himself, to the queer personal decency which he still managed to preserve after all his flounderings in the slough of journalism. It was intolerable to his pride that Rickman should be in any pecuniary embarrassment through his uncompromising devotion. He hardly knew whether he was the more pleased because Rickman had stuck to him or because he had thrown his other friends over. He had never quite forgiven him that divided fealty. He cared nothing for an allegiance that he had had to share with Maddox and his gang. But now that Rickman was once more exclusively, indisputably his, he was in honour bound to cherish and protect him. (Jewdwine was frequently visited by these wakenings of the feudal instinct that slept secretly in his blood.) If he could not make up to Rickman for the loss of the proposed editorship, he saw to it that he was kept well supplied with lucrative work on his own paper. As an even stronger proof of his esteem he allowed him for the first time a certain authority, and an unfettered hand.
For six months Rickman luxuriated in power and increase of leisure and of pay. If the pay was insufficient to cover all his losses the leisure was invaluable; it enabled him to get on with his tragedy.
Now if Rickman had been prudent he would have finished his tragedy then and there and got it published in all haste. For there is no doubt that if any work of his had been given to the world any time within those six months, Jewdwine would have declared the faith that was in him. Whatever the merits of the work he would have celebrated its appearance by a sounding Feast of Trumpets inMetropolis. He would have done anything to strengthen the tie that attached him to the sources of his spiritual content. But Rickman was not prudent. He let the golden hours slip by while he sat polishing up his blank verse as if he had all eternity before him.
Meanwhile he did all he could for Jewdwine. Jewdwine indeed could not have done a better thing for himself than in giving Rickman that free hand. In six months there was a marked improvement in the tone ofMetropolisand the reputation of its editor, and, but for the unexpected which is always happening, Jewdwine might in the long run have emerged without a stain.
Nothing in fact could have been more utterly unforeseen, and yet, in reviewing all the steps which led to the ultimate catastrophe, Rickman said to himself that nothing would have been more consistent and inevitable. It came about first of all through a freak, a wanton freak of Fate in the form of a beardless poet, a discovery, not of Jewdwine's nor of Rickman's but of Miss Roots'. That Miss Roots could make a discovery clearly indicated the finger of fate. Miss Roots promptly asked Rickman to dinner and presented to him the discovery, beardless, breathless also and hectic, wearing an unclean shirt and a suit of frayed shoddy.
He came away from that dinner, that embarrassing, palpitating encounter, with a slender sheaf of verses in his pocket. It did not take him long to read them, nor to see (the unforeseen again!) that the verses would live longer than their maker. They were beardless, breathless, and hectic like the boy, but nobody could have been keener than Rickman to recognize the immortal adolescence, the swift panting of the pursuing god, the burning of the inextinguishable flame. He wrote a letter to him, several letters, out of the fulness of his heart. Then Maddox, to whom he had not spoken since the day of their falling out, came up to him at the Junior Journalists, shook his hand as if nothing had happened, and thanked him for his appreciation of young Paterson. He said that it had put new life into the boy. They made it up over young Paterson. And that was another step towards the inevitable conclusion.
The next step was that somebody who was paying for the boy's doctor's bills paid also for the publication of his poems. They arrived (this of course was only to be expected) at the office ofMetropolis(the slender sheaf grown slenderer by some omissions which Rickman had advised). But it was Fate that contrived that they should arrive in the same week with a volume (by no means slender), a volume of Poems issued by the publishers ofMetropolisand written by a friend (and an influential friend) of the editor. Therein were the last sweet pipings of the pastoral Fulcher. No other hand but Jewdwine's, as Jewdwine sorrowfully owned, could have done anything for this work, and he meant to have devoted a flattering article to it in the next number. But in the arrangements of the unforeseen it was further provided that Jewdwine should be disabled, at what he playfully called the "critical moment," by an attack of influenza. The two volumes, the slender and the stout, were forwarded to Rickman in the same parcel, and Jewdwine in a note discreetly worded threw himself and the poems of his influential friend on Rickman's mercy. Would Rickman deal with the big book? He would see for himself that itwasa big book. He gave him as usual a perfectly free hand as to space, but he thought it might be well to mention that the bookwasto have had a two-page article all to itself. He drew Rickman's attention to the fact that it was published by So and So, and hoped that he might for once at least rely on his discretion. Perhaps as he was reviewing the work of a "brother bard" it would be better to keep the article anonymous.
There was nothing coarse about Jewdwine's methods. Through all his career he remained refined and fastidious, and his natural instincts forbade him to give a stronger hint. Unfortunately, in this instance, refinement had led him into a certain ambiguity of phrase!
On this ambiguity Rickman leapt, with a grin of diabolical delight. He may have had some dim idea that it would be his shelter in the day of rebuke; but all he could clearly think of as he held the boy's frail palpitating volume in his hand, was that he had but that moment in which to praise him. This was his unique and perfect opportunity, the only sort of opportunity that he was not likely to let slip.
Quem Deus vult perdere prius dementat; and it really looked as if madness had come upon Rickman in the loneliness and intoxication of his power. With those two volumes of poetry before him, a small one by a rank outsider, unknown, unkempt and unprotected; a boy from whom no more was to be expected, seeing that he was about to depart out of the world where editors are powerful; and one, a large, considerable volume by a person eminent already in that world and with many years of poetry and influence before him, he gave (reckless of all proportion) the two-page article to the slender volume and the paragraph to the stout. That was what he did—he, the sub-editor.
Of the paragraph the less said the better. As for the article it was such a song of jubilation as one poet sings over the genius of another; and nothing that he had ever done forMetropolisdelighted him so much as the making of it. He sent the proofs to Jewdwine as usual with a note. "Here they are. IthinkI've been discreet. I've done what I could for Mr. Fulcher, but, as you'll see, I've dealt nobly with young Paterson, as he deserves." As he heard nothing from Jewdwine, he could only suppose that the chief was satisfied, and he could not help reflecting with some complacency that no doubt old Maddox would be satisfied too.
The next thing that happened was that he was cut by Maddox at the Junior Journalists. (It was on a Saturday, andMetropolis,thenumber, had appeared the night before). Cut unmistakably, with a thrust from the blue eyes and an expressive turning of the enormous shoulders. A number once issued from his hands Rickman never looked at it again if he could help it, and he never troubled to look at it now. He simply regarded Maddox's behaviour as unaccountable. In the hope of lighting on some explanation he called at Tavistock Place one Sunday afternoon, at a time when he was pretty sure of finding Miss Roots alone. He wanted to know, he said, what was the matter with Maddy. Apparently Miss Roots had something the matter with her too, for her only answer was to hand him stiffly a copy ofMetropoliswith the pages scored in blue pencil at his own article. He took it with a radiant and confiding smile, a smile that assumed such a thoroughly delightful understanding between him and Miss Roots that the little lady, who had evidently counted on a very different effect, was put to some intellectual confusion. She noticed that as he read the smile vanished and gave place, first to an expression of absolute bewilderment, and then to a furious flush, whether of shame or indignation she could not tell, but it looked (again to her confusion) uncommonly like both.
"I see," he said quietly, and laid the paper aside.
What he had seen was that, save for a few ingenious transpositions, the two reviews stood very much as he had written them. The only striking alteration was that Mr. Fulcher had got the article and young Paterson the paragraph.
"Oh, you see, do you?" said Miss Roots bitterly. "That's more than I do."
"I see there's been some astonishing mistake." For one moment he exonerated Jewdwine and embraced the wild hypothesis of a printer's error. He took back the accursed journal; as he held it his hand trembled uncontrollably. He glanced over the notices again. No. It was not after this fashion that the printers of theMetropoliswere wont to err. He recognized the familiar hand of the censor, though it had never before accomplished such an incredible piece of editing as this.
And yet it was in strict accordance with the old tradition. The staff ofMetropolisknew that before a line of theirs was printed it had to pass under their editor's reforming hand; that was the understood condition on which they wrote for him at all; it was the method by which Jewdwine maintained the unity of his empire. But in the case of Rickman he either forbore to exercise his privilege, or exercised it in such a manner as preserved the individuality of the poet's style. Like some imperial conqueror Jewdwine had absorbed the literary spirit of the man he conquered, andMetropolisbore the stamp of Rickman for all time. So now the style of the articles remained intact; they might have passed equally for the work of Rickman or of Jewdwine.
"I suppose," he said helplessly, "it is a little short."
"Short? You weren't bound to make it long; but there was no occasion to be so contemptuous."
"Contemptuous? Good God!"
"That's what it amounts to when you're so insufferably polite."
Oh yes he recognized it, the diabolical urbanity that had seemed the very choicest method of dealing with Mr. Fulcher.
"Politeness was not exactly all you led us to expect from you."
He passed his hand wearily over his forehead and his eyes. Miss Roots had a moment of compunction. She thought of all that he had done for her. He had delivered her from her labours in the Museum; he had introduced her to the young men ofThe Planet, and had made Maddox send her many books to review; he had lifted her from the obscurity that threatened to engulf her. And he had done more for her than this. He had given her back her youth and intellect; he had made her life a joy instead of a terror to her. But Miss Roots was just. The agony on his face would have melted her heart, but for another agony that she saw.
"If the poor boy knew thatyouhad written that paragraph—"
"He needn't know unless some kind friend goes and tells him. It isn't signed."
"No. I don't wonder that you were ashamed to put your name to it."
He rose to go. She looked up at him with a queer little look, half penetrating and half pleading, and held out her hand.
"Well," she said, "what am I to say if he asks me if you wrote it? Can you deny it?"
"No," he said curtly, "I can't deny it."
"And you can't explain it?"
"No, and I can't explain it. Surely," he said with a horrible attempt at laughter, "it speaks for itself."
"It does indeed, Keith."
And Maddox, to whom Miss Roots related the substance of that interview, echoed her sentiment.
"It does indeed."
Of all that brilliant band of young men lured by journalism to ruin they looked on their Rickman as the most splendid, the most tragic.