The Divine Fire Part 98

CHAPTER LXVI

In January, ninety-eight, _Metropolis_ began 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 d.i.c.ky Pilkington, beholding the spectacle of his heroism, laid ten to one against his ultimate success. The thing, d.i.c.ky said, was impossible; he could never keep it up. But Rickman once abandoned to a persistent and pa.s.sionate 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' pa.s.sionate 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 for _The Planet_ made 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, that _The Planet_ published more Rickman--the real Rickman--in six months than _Metropolis_ would 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 n.o.bler feeling than professional rivalry that made him abhor the poet's connection with _Metropolis_; 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 dest.i.tute of reverence for the sources of his income. Jewdwine of _The Museion_ had been in Maddox's opinion a harmless philosophic crank; he had done nothing, absolutely nothing for Rickman's genius; but Jewdwine of _Metropolis_ was 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 of _The Planet_ was hardly so vast as Maddox had antic.i.p.ated, 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 of _The 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 take _The Planet_, you can afford to chuck _Metropolis_. 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 chuck _Metropolis_?"

"Never mind why. I don't say _The Planet_ is the best imaginable place for you, nor are you the best imaginable man for _The 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; G.o.d 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 edit _The Planet_ than to sub-edit _Metropolis_."

"Of course it is. Still, I should like to know why you want me to throw Jewdwine over."

"Hang Jewdwine. I said _Metropolis_."

"I'm glad you admit the distinction."

"I _don't_ admit 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 of _The Planet_."

"I think I'm the best judge of that."

"I said--for the editor of _The Planet_."

"For the editor of _The Planet_ then, 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 of _The Planet_ so long as it insists on shying a dead cat every week at the editor of _Metropolis_."

"We have never mentioned the editor of _Metropolis_. 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 you _are_ editor. 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 att.i.tude occasionally."

"All my att.i.tudes put together hardly amount to side."

"They do, if they a.s.sume that they're going to affect the att.i.tude of our paper."

"I didn't know it had one."

"It has a very decided att.i.tude 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 that _The Planet_ is impartial; it's _the_ only 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 att.i.tude to Mr. Jewdwine is naturally personal. Ours is not. I should have thought you'd have been the first to see that."