The Divine Fire Part 99

"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 devil _do_ you 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 chast.i.ty. 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 cla.s.sic if he'd died soon enough."

"He _is_ a cla.s.sic--he's the only man whose opinion's really worth having at this moment."

"Whom are we talking about? Jewdwine? Or the editor of _Metropolis_?"

"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. n.o.body cares a tuppenny d.a.m.n about _his_ opinion, 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 frere_; 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 dispa.s.sionate 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?"

"_And_ Stables--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 to _me_ is 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?

CHAPTER LXVII

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 left _The 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 of _The 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 G.o.d 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 n.o.body understood it better than Jewdwine when his cousin said, "You _will_ be 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 const.i.tutionally 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 of _Metropolis_, 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 old _Museion_; 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 of _Metropolis_. Such a journal only existed on the a.s.sumption that its working expenses were covered by the advertis.e.m.e.nts of certain publishing houses. But if this necessity committed him to a more courteous att.i.tude 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 n.o.ble 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 n.o.ble 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 embarra.s.sment 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 in _Metropolis_. 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 of _Metropolis_ and 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 embarra.s.sing, 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 n.o.body could have been keener than Rickman to recognize the immortal adolescence, the swift panting of the pursuing G.o.d, 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 of _Metropolis_ (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 of _Metropolis_ and 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 it _was_ a big book. He gave him as usual a perfectly free hand as to s.p.a.ce, but he thought it might be well to mention that the book _was_ to 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 coa.r.s.e 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 for _Metropolis_ delighted him so much as the making of it. He sent the proofs to Jewdwine as usual with a note. "Here they are. I _think_ I've been discreet. I've done what I could for Mr. Fulcher, but, as you'll see, I've dealt n.o.bly 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.