More than once, after that night when Rickman dined with him, Jewdwine
became the prey of many misgivings. He felt that in taking Rickman up
he was assuming an immense responsibility. It might have been better,
happier for Rickman, poor fellow, if after all he had left him in his
decent obscurity; but having dragged him out of it, he was in a manner
answerable to the world for Rickman and to Rickman for the world.
Supposing Rickman disappointed the world? Supposing the world
disappointed Rickman?
Jewdwine lived in the hope, natural to a distinguished critic, of some
day lighting upon a genius. The glory of that find would go far to
compensate him for his daily traffic with mediocrity. Genius was
rarely to be seen, but Jewdwine felt that he would be the first to
recognize it if he did see it; the first to penetrate its many curious
disguises; the first to give it an introduction (if it wanted one) to
his own superior world. And here was Rickman--manifestly in need of
that introduction--a man who unquestionably had about him some of the
marks by which a genius is identified; and yet he left you terribly
uncertain. He was the very incarnation of uncertainty. Jewdwine was
perfectly willing to help the man if only he were sure of the genius.
But was he sure? Had it really pleased the inscrutable divine thing to
take up its abode in this otherwise rather impossible person?
Meanwhile Rickman seemed to be settling down fairly comfortably to the
work of _The Museion_; and Jewdwine, having other things to think of,
began to forget his existence. He was in fact rapidly realizing his
dream. He had won for himself and his paper a position lonely and
unique. The reputation of _The Museion_ was out of all proportion to
its circulation, but Jewdwine was making himself heard. As an editor
and critic he was respected for his incorruptibility and for the
purity of his passion for literature. His utterances were considered
to carry authority and weight.
Just at first the weight was perhaps the more conspicuous quality of
the two. Jewdwine could not be parted from his "Absolute." He had
lived with it for years in Oxford, and he brought it up to town with
him; it walked beside him on the London pavements and beckoned him
incessantly into the vast inane. It cut a very majestic figure in his
columns, till some irritable compositor docked it of its capital and
compelled it to march with the rank and file of vulgar adjectives.
Even thus degraded it ruled his paragraphs as it ruled his thoughts.
But lately the review seemed to be making efforts to redeem itself
from the charge of heaviness. In certain of its columns there was a
curious radiance and agitation, as of some winged and luminous
creature struggling against obscurity; and it was felt that Jewdwine
was binding in a pious tradition of dulness a spirit that would
otherwise have danced and flown. Whether it was his own spirit or
somebody else's did not definitely appear; but now and again it broke
loose altogether, and then, when people complimented him on the
brilliance of his appearance that week, he smiled inscrutably.
It was impossible to say how far Jewdwine's conscience approved of
these outbursts of individuality. Certainly he did his best to
restrain them, his desire being to give to his columns a distinguished
unity of form. He saw himself the founder of a new and higher school
of journalism, thus satisfying his undying tutorial instincts. He had
chosen his staff from the most promising among the young band of
disciples who thronged his lecture-room at Oxford; men moulded on his
methods, inspired by his ideals, drenched in his metaphysics; crude
young men of uncontrollable enthusiasm, whose style awaited at his
hands the final polishing.
He knew that he had done a risky thing in associating young Rickman
with them in this high enterprise. But under all his doubts there lay
a faith in the genius of his sub-editor, a faith the more fascinating
because it was so far removed from any certainty. In giving Rickman
his present post he conceived himself not only to be paying a debt of
honour, but doing the best possible thing for _The Museion_. It was
also, he considered, the best possible thing for Rickman. His work on
the review would give him the discipline he most needed, the
discipline he had never had. To be brought into line with an august
tradition; to be caught up out of the slough of modern journalism into
a rarer atmosphere; to breathe the eternal spirit of great literature
(a spirit which according to Jewdwine did not blow altogether where it
listed); to have his too exuberant individuality chastened and
controlled, would be for Rickman an unspeakable benefit at this
critical stage of his career.
The chastening and controlling were difficult. Rickman's phrases were
frequently more powerful than polite. Like many young writers of
violent imagination he was apt to be somewhat vividly erotic in his
metaphors. And he had little ways that were very irritating to
Jewdwine. He was wasteful with the office paper and with string; he
would use penny stamps where halfpenny ones would have served his
purpose; he had once permitted himself to differ with Jewdwine on a
point of scholarship in the presence of the junior clerk. There were
times when Jewdwine longed to turn him out and have done with him; and
yet Rickman stayed on. When all was said and done there was a charm
about him. Jewdwine in fact had proved the truth of Lucia's saying; he
could rely absolutely on his devotion. He could not afford to let him
go. Though Rickman tampered shamelessly with the traditions of the
review, it could not be said that as yet he had injured its
circulation. His contributions were noticed with approval in rival
columns; and they had even been quoted by Continental critics with
whom _The Museion_ passed as being the only British review that had
the true interests of literature at heart.
But though Rickman helped to bring fame to _The Museion_, _The
Museion_ brought none to him. The identity of its contributors was
merged in that of its editor, and those brilliant articles were never
signed.
The spring of ninety-three, which found Jewdwine comfortably seated
on the summit of his ambition, saw Rickman almost as obscure as in the
spring of ninety-two. His poems had not yet appeared. Vaughan
evidently regarded them as so many sensitive plants, and, fearing for
them the boisterous seasons of autumn and spring, had kept them back
till the coming May, when, as he expressed it, the market would be
less crowded. This delay gave time to that erratic artist, Mordaunt
Crawley, to complete the remarkable illustrations on which Vaughan
relied chiefly for success. Vaughan had spared no expense, but
naturally it was the artist and the printer, not the poet, whom he
paid.
Rickman, however, had not thought of his _Saturnalia_ as a source of
revenue. It had been such a pleasure to write them that the wonder was
he had not been called upon to pay for that. Happily for him he was by
this time independent. As sub-editor and contributor to _The Museion_,
he was drawing two small but regular incomes. He could also count on a
third (smaller and more uncertain) from _The Planet_, where from the
moment of his capture by Jewdwine he had been reinstated.
He found it easy enough to work for both. _The Planet_ was poor, and
it was out of sheer perversity that it indulged a disinterested
passion for literature. In fact, Maddox and his men were trying to do
with gaiety of heart what Jewdwine was doing with superb solemnity.
But whenever Rickman mentioned Maddox to Jewdwine, Jewdwine would
shrug his shoulders and say, "Maddox is not important"; and when he
mentioned _The Museion_ to Maddox, Maddox would correct him with a
laugh, "The Museum, you mean," and refer to his fellow-contributors as
"a respectable collection of meiocene fossils." Maddox had conceived a
jealous and violent admiration for Savage Keith Rickman. "Rickman," he
said, "you shall not go over body and soul to _The Museion_." He
regarded himself as the keeper and lover of Rickman's soul, and would
not have been sorry to bring about a divorce between it and Jewdwine.
His irregular attentions were to save it from a suicidal devotion to a
joyless consort. So that Rickman was torn between Maddox's enthusiasm
for him and his own enthusiasm for Jewdwine.
That affection endured, being one with his impetuous and generous
youth; while his genius, that thing alone and apart, escaped from
Jewdwine. He knew that Jewdwine's incorruptibility left him nothing to
expect in the way of approval and protection, and the knowledge did
not greatly affect him. He preferred that his friend should remain
incorruptible. That Jewdwine should greatly delight in his
_Saturnalia_ was more than he at any time expected. For there his
muse, Modernity, had begun to turn her back resolutely on the masters
and the models, to fling off the golden fetters of rhyme, gird up her
draperies to her naked thighs, and step out with her great swinging
stride on perilous paths of her own. To be sure there were other
things which Jewdwine had not seen, on which he himself felt that he
might rest a pretty secure claim to immortality.
Of his progress thither his friends had to accept Vaughan's
announcements as the only intimation. Rickman had not called upon any
of the Junior Journalists to smooth the way for him. He had not, in
fact, called on any of them at all, but as April advanced he retreated
more and more into a foolish privacy; and with the approaches of May
he vanished. One night, however, some Junior Journalists caught him at
the club, belated, eating supper. They afterwards recalled that he had
then seemed to them possessed by a perfect demon of indiscretion; and
when his book finally appeared on the first of May, it was felt that
it could hardly have been produced under more unfavourable auspices.
This reckless attitude was evidently unaffected (nobody had ever
accused Rickman of affectation); and even Maddox pronounced it
imprudent in the extreme. As for Jewdwine, it could not be accounted
for by any motives known to him. His experience compelled him to take
a somewhat cynical view of the literary character. Jewdwine among his
authors was like a man insusceptible of passion, but aware of the
fascinations that caused him to be pursued by the solicitations of the
fair. He was flattered by the pursuit, but the pursuer inspired him
with the liveliest contempt. It had not yet occurred to him that
Rickman could have any delicacy in approaching him. Still less could
he believe that Rickman could be indifferent to the fate of his book.
His carelessness therefore did not strike him as entirely genuine.
There could be no doubt however as to the genuineness of Rickman's
surprise when he came upon Jewdwine in the office reading
_Saturnalia_.
He smiled upon him, innocent and unconscious. "Ah!" he said, "so
you're reading it? You won't like it."
Jewdwine crossed one leg over the other, and it was wonderful the
amount of annoyance he managed to convey by the gesture. His face,
too, wore a worried and uncertain look; so worried and so uncertain
that Rickman was sorry for him. He felt he must make it easy for him.
"At any rate, you won't admire its personal appearance."
"I don't. What possessed you to give it to Vaughan?"
"Some devil, I think."
"You certainly might have done better."
"Perhaps. If I'd taken the trouble. But I didn't."
Jewdwine raised his eyebrows (whenever he did that Rickman thought of
someone who used to raise her eyebrows too, but with a difference).
"You see, it was last year. I let things slide."
Jewdwine looked as if he didn't see. "If you had come to me, I think I
could have helped you."
"I didn't want to bother you. I knew you wouldn't care for the
things."
"Well, frankly, I don't care very much for some of them. But I should
have stretched a point to keep you clear of Crawley. I'm sorry he put
temptation in your way."
"He didn't. They say I put temptation in his way. Horrid, isn't it, to
think there's something in me that appeals to his diseased
imagination?"
"It's a pity. And I don't know what I can do for you. You see you've
identified yourself with a school I particularly abominate. It isn't a
school. A school implies a master and some attempt at discipline. It
should have a formula. Crawley has none."
"Oh, I don't know about that." He stood beside Jewdwine, who was
gazing at the frontispiece. "Talk about absolute beauty, any fool can
show you the beauty of a beautiful thing, or the ugliness of an ugly
one; but it takes a clever beast like Crawley to show you beauty in
anything so absolutely repulsive as that woman's face. Look at it!
He's got hold of something. He's caught the lurking fascination,
the--the leer of life."
Jewdwine made a gesture of disgust.
"Of course, it's no good as an illustration. I don't see life with a
leer on its face. But he can draw. Look at the fellow's line. Did you
ever see anything like the purity of it? It's a high and holy
abstraction. By Jove! He's got _his_ formula. Pure line remains pure,
however bestial the object it describes. I wish he'd drawn it at
illustrating _me_. But I suppose if he saw it that way he had to draw
it that way."
Jewdwine turned over the pages gingerly, as if he feared to be
polluted. He was at the moment profoundly sorry for Rickman in this
marriage of his art with Mordaunt Crawley's. Whatever might be said of
Rickman's radiant and impetuous genius it neither lurked nor leered;
it was in no way represented by that strange and shameless figure,
half Mænad, half modern courtesan, the face foreshortened, tilted back
in the act of emptying a wine-cup.
"At any rate," said Rickman, "he hasn't lied. He's had the courage to
be his filthy self."
"Still, the result isn't exactly a flattering portrait of your Muse."
"She _is_ a caution. It's quite enough to make you and Hanson lump me
with Letheby and that lot."
This touched Jewdwine in two sensitive places at once. He objected to
being "lumped" with Hanson. He also felt that his generosity had been
called in question. For a moment the truth that was in him looked out
of his grave and earnest eyes.
"I do _not_ lump you with Letheby or anybody. On the contrary, I think
you stand by yourself. Quite one half of this book is great poetry."
"You really think that?"
"Yes," said Jewdwine solemnly; "I do think it. That's why I deplore
the appearance of the other half. But if you _had_ to publish, why
couldn't you bring out your _Helen in Leuce_? It was far finer than
anything you have here."
"Yes. Helen's all right _now_." His tone implied only too plainly that
she was not all right when Jewdwine had approved of her.
"_Now?_ What on earth have you been doing to her?"
"Only putting a little life into her limbs. But Vaughan wouldn't have
her at any price."
"My dear Rickman, you should have come to _me_. I hope to goodness
Vaughan won't tempt you into any more _Saturnalia_."
"After all--what's wrong with them?"
Jewdwine leaned back, keenly alive to these stirrings of dissent; he
withdrew, as it were, his protecting presence a foot or two farther.
He spoke slowly and with emphasis.
"Excess," said he; "too much of everything. Too much force, too much
fire, and too much smoke with your fire. In other words, too much
temperament, too much Rickman."
"Too much Rickman?"
"Yes; far too much. It's nothing but a flaming orgy of individuality."
"And that's why it's all wrong?" He really wondered whether there
might not be something in that view after all.
"It seems so to me. Look here, my dear fellow. Because a poet happens
to have been drunk once or twice in his life it's no reason why he
should write a poem called _Intoxication_. That sort of exhibition,
you know, is scandalous."
Rickman hung his head. That one poem he would have given anything at
the moment to recall. It _was_ scandalous if you came to think of it.
Only in the joy of writing it he had not thought of it; that was all.
"It's simply astounding in a splendid scholar like you, Rickman. It's
such an awful waste." He looked at him as he spoke, and his soul was
in his eyes. It gave him a curious likeness to his cousin, and in that
moment Rickman worshipped him. "Go back. Go back to your Virgil and
your Homer and your Sophocles, and learn a little more restraint.
There's nothing like them. They'll take you out of this ugly, weary,
modern world where you and I, Rickman, had no business to be born."
"And yet," said Rickman, "there _are_ modern poets."
"There are very few, and those not the greatest. By modern, I mean
inspired by the modern spirit; and the modern spirit does not inspire
great poetry. The greatest have been obliged to go back--back to
primeval nature, back to the Middle Ages, back to Greece and Rome--but
always back."
"I can't go back," said Rickman. "I mayn't know what I'm working for
yet, but I believe I'm on the right road. How can I go back?"
"Why not? Milton went back to the Creation, and _he_ was only born in
the seventeenth century. You have had the unspeakable misfortune to be
born in the nineteenth. You must live on your imagination--the world
has nothing for you."
"I believe it _has_ something for me, if I could only find it."
"Well, don't lose too much time in looking for it. Art's long and
life's short, especially modern life; and that's the trouble."
Rickman shook his head. "No; that's not the trouble. It's the other
way about. Life's infinite and art's one. And at first, you know, it's
the infinity that staggers you." He flung himself into a chair
opposite Jewdwine, planted his elbows on the table, and propped his
chin on his hands. He looked as if he saw the infinity he spoke of. "I
can't describe to you," he said, "what it is merely to be alive out
there in the streets, on a sunny day, when the air's all fine watery
gold, and goes dancing and singing into your head like dry champagne.
I've given up alcohol. It isn't really necessary. I got as drunk as a
lord the other day going over Hampstead Heath in a west wind" (he
_looked_ drunk at the mere thought of it). "Does it ever affect _you_
in that way?"
Jewdwine smiled. The wind on Hampstead Heath had never affected him in
that way.
"No. It isn't what you think. I used to go mad about women, just as I
used to drink. I don't seem to care a rap about them now." But his
eyes had a peculiar large and brilliant look, as if he saw the woman
of his desire approaching him. His voice softened. "Don't you know
when the world--all the divine maddening beauty of it--lies naked
before your eyes, and you want to get hold of it--now--this minute,
and instead it gets hold of you, and pulls you every way at
once--don't you know? The thing's got a thousand faces, and two
thousand arms, and ten thousand devils in it."
Jewdwine didn't know. How should he? He had a horror of this forcing
of the sensuous and passionate note. The author of the _Prolegomena to
Æsthetics_ recoiled from "too much temperament." He felt, moreover,
the jealous pang of the master who realizes that he has lost his hold.
This was not that Rickman who used to hang all flushed and fervid on
Jewdwine's words. He remembered how once on an April day, a year ago,
the disciple had turned at the call of woman and of the world, the
call of the Spring in his heart and in his urgent blood.
And yet this was not that Rickman either.
"My dear Rickman, I don't understand. Are you talking about the world?
Or the flesh? Or the devils?"
"All of them, if you like. And you can throw in the sun and the moon
and the stars, too. There are moments, Jewdwine, when I understand
God. At any rate I know how he felt the very day before creation. His
world's all raw chaos to me, and I've got to make my world out of it."
"I'm afraid I cannot help you _there_."
As they parted he felt that perhaps he had failed to be sufficiently
sympathetic. "I'll do my best," said he, "to set you right with the
public."
Left alone, he stood staring earnestly at the chair where Rickman had
sat propping his chin in his hands. He seemed to be contemplating his
phantom; the phantom that had begun to haunt him.
What had he let himself in for?