There was one man who was sure, perfectly sure; and that man was
Maddox. He had read Rickman's book before Jewdwine had seen it, and
while Jewdwine was still shaking his head over it in the office of the
_The Museion_, its chances were being eagerly discussed in the office
of _The Planet_. Maddox was disgusted with the publishers, Stables
with the price, Rankin with the illustrations.
"It's all very well," said Rankin; "but those borrowed plumes will
have to be paid for."
"Borrowed plumes with a vengeance," said Maddox. "Vaughan might just
as well have turned him out tarred and feathered as illustrated by
Mordaunt Crawley. Mind you, some of that tar will stick. It'll take
him all his time to get it off."
"Did you see," said Stables, "that Hanson bracketed him with Letheby
in this morning's _Courier_?"
"No, did he?" said Maddox; "I'm sorry for that. It's rough on little
Rickman."
"It's what you must expect," said Rankin, "if you're illustrated by
Crawley."
"It's what you must expect," said Stables, "if you go out of your way
to offend people who can help you. You know he refused an introduction
to Hanson the other day?"
"No!"
"Fact. And it was in his sublimest manner. He said he hadn't any use
for Hanson. Hanson couldn't help him till he'd helped himself. I don't
know whether any one was kind enough to tell that tale to Hanson."
"Hanson," said Maddox, "is too big a man to mind it if they did."
"Anyhow, he _hasn't_ helped him."
"No," said Rankin; "but that's another story. Hanson was dining with
Jewdwine, and Jewdwine was cracking up Rickman most extravagantly (for
him). That was quite enough to make Hanson jump on him. He was bound
to do it by way of asserting his independence."
"I wonder if Jewdwine calculated that that would be the natural
effect."
"Oh, come, he's a subtle beast; but I don't suppose he's as subtle as
all that."
"You'll find that all the reviews will follow Hanson like a flock of
sheep."
"How about the _Literary Observer_? Mackinnon was friendly."
Maddox smiled. "He was. But our Ricky-ticky alienated Mackinnon on the
very eve of publication."
"How?"
"By some awful jest. Something about Mackinnon's head and the dome of
the British Museum."
"Well, if it was a joke, Mackinnon wouldn't see it."
"No, but he'd feel it, which would be a great deal worse. Our
Ricky-ticky is devoid of common prudence."
"Our Ricky-ticky is a d----d fool," said Stables.
"Well," said Rankin, "I suppose he knows what he's about. He's got
Jewdwine at his back."
Maddox shrugged his enormous shoulders. "Jewdwine? Jewdwine won't
slate his own man, but he can't very well turn round and boom the set
he always goes for. This," said Maddox, "is my deal. I shall sail in
and discover Ricky-ticky."
"He's taking precious good care to hide himself. It's a thousand
pities he ever got in with those wretched decadents."
"He isn't in with them."
"Well, he mayn't be exactly immersed, but the tide's caught him."
"The tide? You might be talking of the Atlantic."
"The stream then--' the stream of tendency that makes for '--muck."
"It isn't a stream, it's a filthy duck-pond in somebody's back yard.
There's just enough water for the rest to drown in, but it isn't deep
enough to float a man of Rickman's size. He's only got his feet wet,
and that won't hurt him."
"There are things," said Rankin, "in Saturnalia that lend themselves
to Crawley's treatment."
"And there are things in it that Crawley can't touch. And look at the
later poems--The Four Winds, On Harcombe Hill, and The Song of
Confession. Good God! It makes my blood boil to compare the man who
wrote that with Letheby. Letheby! I could wring Vaughan's neck and
Hanson's too. I should like to take their heads and knock them
together. As for Letheby I'll do for him. I'll smash him in one
column, and I'll give Rickman his send-off in four."
(The Planet in those early days was liberal with its space.)
"After all," he added in a calmer tone, "he was right. We can't help
him, except by taking a back seat and letting him speak for himself. I
shall quote freely. The Song of Confession is the best answer to
Hanson."
"It seems to me," said Stables, "you'll want a whole number at this
rate."
"I shall want six columns, if I'm to do him any justice," said Maddox,
rising. "Poor beggar, I expect he's a bit off colour. I shall go and
look him up."
At eight that evening he went and looked him up. He found him in his
room tranquilly reading. Thinking of him as a man of genius who had
courted failure and madly fooled away his chances, and seeing him
sitting there, so detached, and so unconscious, Maddox was profoundly
moved. He had come with cursing and with consolation, with sympathy,
with prophecy, with voluble belief. But all he could say was, "It's
all right, Rickman. It's great, my son, it's great."
All the same he did not conceal his doubts as to the sort of reception
Rickman had to expect. That part of the business, he said, had been
grossly mismanaged, and it was Rickman's own fault.
"Look here," he said, "what on earth possessed you to go and refuse
that introduction to Hanson? Was it just your cheek, or the devil's
own pride, or what?"
"Neither," said Rickman, in a tone that pathetically intimated that
he was worn out. "I think it was chiefly my desire for peace and
quiet. I'm writing some more poems, you see. I wouldn't have refused
it at any other time."
"At any other time it wouldn't have mattered so much. You should be
civil to the people who can help you."
"I rather distrust that sort of civility myself. I've seen too much of
the dirty back stairs of Fleet Street. I've tumbled over the miserable
people who sit on them all day long, and I don't mean anybody to
tumble over me. When I've got my best trousers on I want to keep them
clean."
"It's a mistake," said Maddox, "to wear your best trousers every day."
"Perhaps. But I mean to wear them."
"Wear them by all means. But you must make up your mind for a certain
amount of wear and tear. In your case it will probably be tear."
"That's my look-out."
"Quite so. I wouldn't say anything if it was only Hanson you'd
offended, but you shouldn't alienate your friends."
"My friends?"
"Yes. Why, oh why, did you make that joke about Mackinnon's head?"
"We were all making jokes about Mackinnon's head."
"Yes; but we weren't all of us bringing out poems the next day. Your
position, Ricky-ticky, was one of peculiar delicacy--and danger."
"What does it matter?" said Rickman wearily. "I can trust my friends
to speak the truth about me."
"Heaven bless you, Rickman, and may your spring suitings last for
ever." He added, as Jewdwine had added, "Anyhow, this friend will do
his level best for you."
At which Rickman's demon returned again. "Don't crack me up too much,
Maddy. You might do me harm."
But before midnight Maddox burst into the office and flung himself on
to his desk.
"Give me room!" he cried; "I mean to spread myself, to roll, to
wallow, to wanton, to volupt!"
Before morning he had poured out his soul, in four columns of _The
Planet_, the exuberant, irrepressible soul of the Celt. He did it in
an hour and twenty minutes. As he said himself afterwards (relating
his marvellous achievement) he was sustained by one continuous
inspiration; his passionate pen paused neither for punctuation nor for
thought. The thoughts, he said, were there. As the critical notices
only appeared weekly, to pause would have entailed a delay of seven
days, and he meant that his panegyric should appear the very next day
after the article in the _Literary Observer_, as an answer to Hanson's
damnable paragraph.
If Maddox was urged to these excesses by his contempt for Jewdwine's
critical cowardice, Jewdwine was cooled by the spectacle of Maddox's
intemperance. He had begun by feeling a little bitter towards Rickman
on his own account. He was disappointed in him. Rickman had shown that
he was indifferent to his opinion. That being so, Jewdwine might have
been forgiven if he had had no very keen desire to help him. Still, he
_had_ desired to help him; but his desire had ceased after reading
Maddox's review. There was no pleasure in helping him now, since he
had allowed himself to be taken up and caressed so violently by other
people. The clumsy hand of Maddox had brushed the first bloom from his
Rickman, that once delightful youth. He was no longer Jewdwine's
Rickman, his disciple, his discovery.
But though Jewdwine felt bitter, he was careful that no tinge of this
personal feeling should appear in his review of Rickman's poems. It
was exceedingly difficult for him to review them at all. He had to
take an independent attitude, and most possible attitudes had been
taken already. He could not ignore Rickman's deplorable connection
with the Decadents; and yet he could not insist on it, for that was
what Hanson and the rest had done. Rickman had got to stay there; he
could not step in and pluck him out like a brand from the burning; for
Maddox had just accomplished that heroic feat. He would say nothing
that would lend countenance to the extravagance of Maddox. There was
really no room for fresh appreciation anywhere. He could not give
blame where Hanson had given it; and Maddox had plastered every line
with praise. He would have been the first to praise Rickman, provided
that he _was_ the first. Not that Jewdwine ever committed himself. As
a critic his surest resource had always lain in understatement. If the
swan was a goose, Jewdwine had as good as said so. If the goose proved
a swan, Jewdwine had implied as much by his magnificent reserve. But
this time the middle course was imposed on him less by conviction than
necessity. He had to hold the balance true between Hanson and Maddox.
In his efforts to hold it true, he became more than ever academic and
judicial. So judicial, so impartial was he in his opinion, that he
really seemed to have no opinion at all; to be merely summing up the
evidence and leaving the verdict to the incorruptible jury. Every
sentence sounded as though it had been passed through a refrigerator.
Not a hint or a sign that he had ever recognized in Rickman the
possibility of greatness.
Now, if Rickman had not been connected with _The Museion_, the review
would have done him neither harm nor good. As it was, it did him harm.
It was naturally supposed that Jewdwine, so far from understating his
admiration, had suppressed his bad opinion in the interests of
friendship. Rickman's _Saturnalia_ remained where Hanson had placed
it, rather low in the ranks of young Decadence.
And then, just because he had suppressed the truth about him, because
he felt that he had given Rickman some grounds for bitterness,
Jewdwine began to feel more and more bitter himself.
If Rickman felt any bitterness he never showed it. He had only two
thoughts on reading Jewdwine's articles. "It wouldn't have mattered
except that _she_ will see it"; and "I wouldn't have minded if it was
what he really thought."
Maddox, rightly judging that Rickman would be suffering more in his
affection than his vanity, called on him that afternoon and dragged
him out for his usual Saturday walk. As if the thought of Jewdwine
dominated their movements, they found themselves on the way to
Hampstead. Maddox attempted consolation.
"It really doesn't matter much what Jewdwine says. These fellows come
up from Oxford with wet towels round their heads to keep the
metaphysics in. Jewdwine's muddled himself with the Absolute Beauty
till he doesn't know a beautiful thing if you stick it under his
nose."
"Possibly not; if you keep it farther off he might have a better
chance. Trust him to know."
"Well, if he knows, he doesn't care."
"Oh, doesn't he. That's where Jewdwine's great. He cares for nothing
else. He cares more than any man alive--in his heart."
"D--n his heart! I don't believe he has one."
"Would you oblige me by not talking about him any more?"
Maddox obliged him.
They tramped far into the country, returning at nightfall by the great
road that crosses the high ground of the Heath. Rickman loved that
road; for by night, or on a misty evening, it was possible to imagine
some remote resemblance between it and the long straight ridge of
Harcombe Hill.
They paused by common consent where the Heath drops suddenly from the
edge of the road; opening out the view towards London. The hollow
beneath them, filled by a thin fog, had become mysterious and immense.
"By the way," said Maddox, following an apparently irrelevant train of
thought, "what has become of your friendship for Miss Poppy Grace?"
"It has gone," said Rickman, "where the old trousers go. Look there--"
Above them heaven seemed to hang low, bringing its stars nearer. A few
clouds drifted across it, drenched in the blue of the night behind
them, a grey-blue, watery and opaque. Below, sunk in a night greyer
and deeper, were the lights of London. The ridge they stood on was
like the rampart of another world hung between the stars which are the
lights of poets, and the lights which are the stars of men. Under the
stars Maddox chanted softly the last verses of the _Song of
Confession_ that Rickman had made.
"Oh, Ricky-ticky," he said, "you know everything. How did you know
it?"
"Because I've been there."
"But--you didn't stay?"
"No--no. I didn't stay. I couldn't."
"I'm still there. And for the life of me I see no way out. It's like
going round in the underground railway--a vicious circle. Since you're
given to confession--own up. Don't you ever want to get back there?"
"Not yet. My way won't take me back if I only stick to it."
Under the stars he endeavoured to account for his extraordinary
choosing of the way.
"I've three reasons for keeping straight. To begin with, I've got a
conviction that I'll write something great if I don't go to the devil
first. Then, there's Horace Jewdwine."
Maddox hardened his face; he had been told not to talk about Jewdwine,
and he wasn't going to.
"If I go to the devil, he won't go with me. Say what you like, he's a
saint compared with you and me. If he doesn't understand Songs of
Confession, it's because he's never had anything to confess. The third
reason--if I go to the devil--no, I can't tell you the third reason.
It's also the reason why I wear my magnificent trousers. All the
reasons amount to that. If I go to the devil I can't wear those
trousers. Never, Maddox, believe me, never again."
Maddox smiled, and, unlike Maddox, he said one thing and thought
another.
What he said was. "Your trousers, Ricky-ticky, are of too heavenly a
pattern for this wicked world. They are such stuff as dreams are made
of, and their little life--" he paused. What he thought was--"Your
way, Ricky-ticky, is deuced hard for the likes of me. But I'll go with
you as far as I can, my son."
Under the stars they looked into each other's faces and they knew
themselves aright.