CHAPTER LXI

He came into Lucia's presence with a sense of doing something

voluntary and yet inevitable, something sanctioned and foreappointed;

a sense of carrying on a thing already begun, of returning, through a

door that had never been shut, to the life wherein alone he knew

himself. And yet this life, measured by days and hours and counting

their times of meeting only, ran hardly to six weeks.

Since times and places were of no account, he might have been coming,

as he came five years ago, to hear her judgement on his neo-classic

drama. Strange and great things had happened to his genius since that

day. Between _Helen in Leuce_ and the Nine and Twenty Sonnets there

lay the newly discovered, heavenly countries of the soul.

"Well," he said, glancing at the poems, as he seated himself. "What do

you think of them? Am I forgiven? Do you consent?"

"So many questions? They're all answered, aren't they, if I say I

consent?"

"And do you?" There was acute anxiety in his voice and eyes. It struck

her as painful that the man, whom she was beginning to look on as

possibly the greatest poet of his age, should think it necessary to

plead to her for such a little thing.

"I do indeed."

"Without reservations?"

"What reservations should there be? Of course I could only be

glad--and proud--that you should do me so much honour. If I can't say

very much about it, don't think I don't feel it. I feel it more than I

can say."

"Do you really mean it? I was afraid that it might offend you; or

that you'd think I oughtn't to have written the things; or at any rate

that I'd no business to show them to you. And as for the dedication, I

couldn't tell how you'd feel about that."

And she, having before her eyes the greatness of his genius, was

troubled by the humility and hesitation of his approach. It recalled

to her the ways of his pathetic youth, his youth that obscurity made

wild and shy and unassured.

"I can't tell either," she replied, "I don't know whether I ought to

feel proud or humble about it; but I think I feel both. Your wanting

to dedicate anything to me would have been enough to make me very

proud. Even if it had been a little thing--but this thing is great. In

some ways it seems to me the greatest thing you've done yet. I did

think just at first that I ought perhaps to refuse because of that.

And then I saw that, really, that was what made it easy for me to

accept. It's so great that the dedication doesn't count."

"But it _does_ count. It's the only thing that counts to me. You can't

take it like that and separate it from the rest. Those sonnets would

still be dedicated to you even if you refused to let me write your

name before them. I want you to see that they _are_ the dedication."

Lucia shook her head. She had seen it. She could see nothing else when

she read them. How was it that the poet's bodily presence made her

inclined to ignore the reference to herself; to take these poems

dedicated to her as an event, not in her life or his, but in the

history of literature?

"No," she said, "you must not look at them that way. If they were, it

might be a reason for refusing. I know most people would think they'd

less right to accept what wasn't really dedicated to them. But, you

see, it's just because it isn't really dedicated to me that I can

accept it."

"But it is--"

"No, not to me. You wouldn't be so great a poet if it were. I don't

see myself here; but I see you, and your idea of me. It's--it's

dedicated to that dream of yours. Didn't I tell you your dream was

divorced from reality?"

"You told me it would be reconciled to it."

"And it is, isn't it? And the reality is worth all the dreams that

ever were?"

He could have told her that so it appeared to those who are bound in

the house of bondage; but that in Leuce, the country of deliverance,

the dream and the reality are indivisible, being both divine. He could

have told her that he had known as much five years ago; even before he

knew her.

"After all," he said, "that's admitting that they _are_ divided. And

that, if you remember, was what I said, not what you said."

Lucia evaded the issue in a fashion truly feminine. "It doesn't matter

a bit what either of us said then, so long as _you_ know now."

"There's one thing I don't know. I don't know how you really take it;

or whether you will really understand. Just now I thought you did, But

after all it seems you don't. You think I'm only trying to pay you a

stupid literary compliment. You think when I wrote those things I

didn't mean them; my imagination was simply taking a rather more

eccentric flight than usual. Isn't that so?"

"I'm certainly allowing for your imagination. I can't forget that you

are a poet. You won't let me forget it. I can't separate your genius

from the rest of you."

"And I can't separate the rest of me from it. That makes the

difference, you see." He was angry as he said that. He had wondered

whether she would deal as tenderly with his passion as she had dealt

with his dream; and she had dealt just as tenderly. But it was because

she identified the passion with the dream. He had not been prepared

for that view of it; and somehow it annoyed him. But for that, he

would never have spoken as he now did. "When I wondered how you would

take it I thought it might possibly strike you as something rather too

real, almost offensively so. Do you know, I'd rather you'd taken it

that way than that you should talk about my dreams. My _dreams_." (It

was shocking, the violent emphasis of disgust the poet, the dreamer,

flung into that one word.) "As if I'd dreamed that I knew you. As if

I'd dreamed that I cared for you. Would you rather think I dreamed it?

You can if you like. Or would you rather think it was the most real

thing that ever happened to me? So real that after it happened--_because_

it happened--I left off being the sort of man and the sort of poet I

was, and became another sort. So real and so strong that it saved me

from one or two other things, uncommonly strong and real, that had got

a pretty tight hold of me, too. Would you rather think that you'd

really done this for me, or that I'd dreamed it all?"

She looked at his face, the unforgotten, unforgetable face, which when

she first knew it had kindled and darkened so swiftly and

inexplicably. She knew it now. She held the key of all its mysteries.

It was the face that had turned to her five years ago with just that

look; in the mouth and lifted chin that imperious impetuous

determination to make her see; in the eyes that pathetic trust in her

seeing. The same face; and yet it would have told her, if he had not,

that he was another man. No, not another man; but of all the ways that

were then open to him to take he had chosen the noblest. And so, of

all the expressions that in its youth had played on that singularly

expressive face, it was the finest only that had become dominant. That

face had never lied to her. Why should he not plead for the sincerity

of his passion, since it was all over now? Was it possible that there

was some secret insincerity in her? How was it that she had made him

think that she desired to ignore, to repudiate her part in him? That

she preferred a meaningless compliment to the confession which was the

highest honour that could be paid to any woman? Was it because the

honour was so great that she was afraid to take it?

"Of course I would rather think it was really so."

"Then you must believe that I really cared for you; and that it is

only because I cared that it is really so."

"I do believe it. But I can't take it all to myself. Another person

might have cared just as much, and it might have done him harm--I

would never have forgiven myself if I had done you harm--I want you to

see that it wasn't anything in _me_; it was something in _you_ that

made the difference."

He smiled sadly. "You know it _does_ sound as if you wanted to keep

out of it."

"Does it? If I had really been in it, do you think that I wouldn't be

glad and thankful? I am, even for the little that I have done. Even

though I know another woman might have done as much, or more, I'm glad

I was the one. But, you see, I didn't know I was in it at all. I

didn't know the sort of help you wanted. Perhaps, if I had known, I

couldn't have helped you. But my knowing or not knowing doesn't matter

one bit. If I _did_ help you--that way--I helped some one else too. At

least I should like to think I did. I should like to think that one

reason why you care for your wife so much is because you cared a

little for me. There is that way of looking at it." Then, lest she

should seem to be seeking some extraneous justification of a fact that

in her heart she abhorred, she added, "Every way I look at it I'm

glad. I'm glad that you cared. I'm glad because it's been, and glad

because it's over. For if it hadn't been over--"

"What were you going to say?"

"I was going to say that if it hadn't been over you couldn't have

given me these. I didn't say it; because it would have sounded as if

that were all I cared about. As if I wouldn't have been almost as glad

if you'd never written a line of them. Only in that case I should

never have known."

"No. You would never have known."

"I think I should have been glad, even if the poems had been--not very

good poems."

"You wouldn't have known in that case either. I wouldn't have shown

them to you if they had not been good. As it is, when I wrote them I

never meant to show them to you."

"Oh, but I think--"

"Of course you do. But I wasn't going to print them before you'd seen

them. Do you know what I'd meant to do with them--what in fact I _did_

do with them? I left them to you in my will with directions that they

weren't to be published without your consent. It seems a rather

unusual bequest, but you know I had a conceited hope that some time

they might be valuable. I don't know whether they would have sold for

three thousand pounds--I admit it was a draft on posterity that

posterity might have dishonoured--but I thought they might possibly go

a little way towards paying my debt."

"Your debt? I don't understand." But the trembling of her mouth belied

its words.

"Don't you? Don't you remember?"

"No, I don't. I never _have_ remembered."

"Probably not. But you can hardly suppose that I've forgotten it."

"What has it to do with you, or me--or this?"

"Not much, perhaps; but still something, you'll admit."

"I admit nothing. I can't bear your ever having thought of it. I wish

you hadn't told me. It spoils everything."

"Does it? Such a little thing? Surely a friend might be allowed to

leave you a small legacy when he was decently dead? And it wasn't

_his_ fault, was it, if it paid a debt as well?"

The tears rose in her eyes to answer him.

"But you see I didn't leave it. I didn't wait for that. I was afraid

that my being dead would put you in a more embarrassing position than

if I'd been alive. You might have hated those poems and yet you might

have shrunk from suppressing them for fear of wounding the immortal

vanity of a blessed spirit. Or you might have taken that horrid

literary view I implored you not to take. You might have hesitated to

inflict so great a loss on the literature of your country." He tried

to speak lightly, as if it were merely a whimsical and extravagant

notion that he should be reckoned among the poets. And yet in his

heart he knew that it must be so. "But now the things can't be

published unless you will accept them as they were originally meant.

There's nothing gross about the transaction; nothing that need offend

either you or me."

"I can't--I can't--"

"Well," he said gently, fearing the appearance of grossness in

pressing the question, "we can settle that afterwards, can't we?

Meanwhile at all events the publication rests with you."

"The publication has nothing whatever to do with me--The dedication,

_perhaps_."

"You've accepted that. Still, you might object to your name appearing

before the public with mine."

Lucia looked bewildered. She thought she had followed him in all his

subtleties; but she had had difficulty in realizing that he was

actually proposing to suppress his poems in deference to her

scruples, if she had any. Some shadowy notion of his meaning was

penetrating her now.

"My name," she said, "will mean nothing to the public."

"Then you consent?"

"Of course. It's absurd to talk about my consent. Besides, why should

I mind now--when it is all over?"

He was silent for a moment. When he spoke again, it was by an effort,

as if he unwillingly obeyed some superior constraint. "If it hadn't

been all over would you have minded then? Would you have refused your

consent?"

"To your publishing your own poems? How could I?"

"To the dedication, I mean. If it hadn't been all over, would you have

given your consent to that?"

His anxiety had deepened to an agony which seemed to have made his

face grow sharp and thin almost as she looked at him. She judged that

this question was vital, and that the truth was required of her.

"No, not to that. You see, it's only because it's all over that I've

consented now."

"I see; that's the condition? You would never have consented but for

that."

"Why should we talk about that now?"

"I wanted to know the truth."

"Why should you? It's a truth that has nothing to do with things as

they are, only with things as they might have been. Isn't it enough to

be glad that they weren't, that it is all over, and that this is the

end of it?"

Even as she said the words it struck her that there was something

ominous in this reiteration.

"But it isn't all over. This isn't the end of it."

His voice was so low that she could hardly have heard it but for the

intense vibration of the tones. There was a pause in which they seemed

still to be throbbing, but with no meaning behind the passionate pulse

of sound.

"I didn't mean to tell you. I know you'd rather think it wasn't so.

And I would have let you think it if it hadn't been for what you told

me--what I made you tell me."

"I don't understand. What did I tell you?"

"You told me the truth." He spoke with a sudden savage energy. "How

could I go on lying after that?"

She looked at him with that almost imperceptible twitching of her

soft mouth which he knew to be a sign of suffering; and in her eyes

there was pain and a vague terror.

"I might have gone on lying to the end, if nothing had depended on it.

But if you tell me that you only give your consent to a thing on one

condition, and I know that I can't possibly fulfil the condition, what

am I to do? Say nothing about it, and do what you would loathe me for

doing if you knew?"

Till now she had left the manuscript lying in her lap, where

unconsciously her hands covered it with a gentle protecting touch. But

as he spoke she took it up and put it away from her with an

irresistible impulse of rejection. He knew that he was answered.

"If I had," he said, "in one sense I should have done you no wrong.

All this would be nothing to the world which would read these poems.

But when I knew that it made all the difference to _you_--"

She turned, as he had seen her turn once and only Once before, in

reproach that was almost anger.

"To me? Do you suppose I'm thinking of myself?"

"Perhaps not. That doesn't prevent my thinking of you. But I was

thinking of myself, too. Supposing I had done this thing that you

would have loathed; even though you had never known it, I should have

felt that I had betrayed your trust, that I had taken something from

you that I had no right to take, something that you would never have

given me if you had known. What was I to do?"

She did not answer him. Once before, he remembered, when his honour

was in difficulties, she had refused to help it out, left it to

struggle to the light; which was what it did now.

"It would have been better to have said nothing and done nothing."

He expected her to close instantly with that view of his behaviour

which honour had presented as the final one, but this she did not do.

"If you had said nothing you might have done what you liked."

"I see. It's my saying it that makes the difference?"

"That is _not_ what I meant. I meant that you were free to publish

what you have written. You are not free to say these things to me."

"For the life of me I don't know why I said them. It means perdition

for my poems and for me. I knew that was all I had to gain by telling

you the truth."

"But it _isn't_ the truth. You know it isn't. You don't even think it

is."

"And if it were, would it be so terrible to you to hear it?"

She did not answer. She only looked at him, as if by looking she could

read the truth. For his face had never lied.

He persisted. "If it were true, what would you think of me?"

"I should think it most dishonourable of you to say so. But it isn't

true."

He smiled. "Therefore it can't be dishonourable of me to say so."

"No, not that. You are not dishonourable; therefore it can't be true.

Let us forget that you ever said it."

"But I can't forget that it's true any more than I can make it untrue.

You think me dishonourable, because you think I've changed. But I

haven't changed. It always was so, ever since I knew you; and that's

more than five years ago now. I am dishonourable; but that's not where

the dishonour comes in. _The_ dishonourable thing would have been to

have left off caring for you. But I never did leave off. There never

was a minute when it wasn't true, nor a minute when I didn't think it.

If I was sure of nothing else I was always sure of that. Where the

dishonour came in was in caring for another woman, in another way."

"The dishonour would come in if you'd left off caring for her. And you

haven't done that. It would come in a little now, I think, if you said

that you didn't care. But you don't say it; you don't even think it.

Shall I tell you the truth? You've let your genius get too strong a

hold over you. You've let it get hold, too, of this feeling that you

had for me. And now, though you know perfectly well--as well as I

do--that it's all over, your genius is trying to persuade you that the

feeling is still there when it isn't."

"That is not so, but you can say it is, if it makes you any happier."

"It does make me happier to think that it's your genius, not you, that

says these things. For I can forgive your genius; but I couldn't have

forgiven you."

At that moment he felt a savage jealousy of his genius, because she

loved it. "And yet, you said a little while ago you couldn't separate

the two."

"You have obliged me to separate them, to find an excuse for you. This

ought not to have happened; but it could not have happened to a man

who was not a poet."

All the time she was miserably aware that she was trying to defend

herself with subtleties against the impact of a terrible reality. And

because that reality must weigh more heavily on him than her, she was

trying to defend him too, against himself, to force on him, against

himself, her own subtilizing, justifying view.

But his subtlety was a match for hers. "Your cousin once did me the

honour to say I was one-seventh part a poet, and upon my honour I

prefer his estimate to yours."

"What is mine?"

"That I'm nothing but a poet. That there wasn't enough of me left over

to make a man."

"That is not my estimate, and you know it. I think you so much a man

that your heart will keep you right, even though your genius has led

you very far astray."

"Is that all you know about it?"

"Well, I'm not sure that it is your genius, this time. I rather think

it's your sense of honour. I believe you think that because you once

cared for me you've got to go on caring, lest I should accuse you of

being faithless to your dream." ("Surely," she said to herself, "I've

made it easy for him now?")

But the word was too much for him. "For Goodness' sake don't talk to

me any more about my dream. You may think any mortal thing you like

about me, so long as you don't do that."

She smiled faintly, as if with an effort at forbearance. "Very well

then, I won't talk about your dream. I'll say you were afraid lest I

should think you had been faithless to _me_. It would never have

occurred to you if you hadn't seen me again. It will not occur to you

after I am gone. It will be all over by to-morrow."

"Why to-morrow?" He spoke stupidly. Fear had made him stupid. "Why

to-morrow?"

"Because I am going to-morrow."

Then he knew that it was indeed all over. The door which had been open

to him was about to close; and once closed it would never be open to

him again.

"What _must_ you think of me--"

"I think you have done very wrong, and that our talking about it only

makes it worse. And so--I'm sorry--but I must ask you to leave me."

But he did not leave her. "And I must ask you to forgive me," he said

gently.

"I? I have nothing to forgive. You haven't done anything to me. But I

should never forgive you if I thought this foolishness could make one

moment's difference to--to Flossie."

"It never has made any difference to her," he replied coldly, "or to

my feeling for her. I never felt towards any woman as I feel towards

you. It isn't the same thing at all. Heaven knows I thought I cared

enough for her to marry her. But it seems I didn't. That's why I say

it makes no difference to her. Nothing is altered by it. As far as

Flossie is concerned, whether I marry her or not I shall have behaved

abominably. I don't know which is the more dishonourable."

"Don't you?"

"No. I only know which I'm going to do."

She turned her head away. And that turning away was intolerable. It

was the closing of the door.

"Is it so very terrible to you?" he said gently.

He could not see the tears in her eyes, but he heard them in her

voice, and he knew that he had wounded her, Hot in her pride, but in

her tenderness and honour--Lucia's honour.

"To me? I'm not thinking of myself--not of myself at all. How could I

think of myself? I'm thinking of _her_." She turned to him and let her

tears gather in her eyes unheeded. "Don't you see what you've done?"

Oh, yes; he saw very well what he had done. He had taken the

friendship she had given to him to last his life and destroyed it in a

moment, with his own hands. All for the sake of a subtlety, a

fantastic scruple, a question asked, a thing said under some obscure

compulsion. He had been moved by he knew not what insane urgency of

honour. And whatever else he saw he did not see how he could have done

otherwise. The only alternative was to say nothing, to do nothing.

Supposing he had suppressed both his passion and the poems that

immortalized it, what would she have thought of him then? Would she

not have thought that he had either dedicated to her a thing that he

was afterwards ashamed of, or that he had meant nothing by the

dedication?

"Don't you see what you have done?" she said. "You've made me wish I

had never come here and that I'd never seen you again. It was only the

other night--the dear little girl--she came up here and sat with me,

and we had a talk. We talked about you. She told me how she came to

know you, and how good you'd been to her and how long it was before

either of you knew. She told me things about herself. She is very

shy--very reserved--but she let me see how much she cares--and how

much you care. Think what you must be to her. She has no father and no

mother, she has nobody but you. She told me that. And then--she took

me up to her room and showed me all her pretty things. She was so

happy--and how can I look at her again? She would hate me if she knew;

and I couldn't blame her, poor child. She could never understand that

it was not my fault."

But as she said it her conscience rose in contradiction and told her

that it was her fault. Her fault in the very beginning for drawing him

into an intimacy that his youth and inexperience made dangerous. Her

fault for sacrificing, yes, sacrificing him to that impulse to give

pleasure which had only meant giving pleasure to herself at his

expense. Her fault for endlessly refining on the facts of life, till

she lost all feeling of its simpler and more obvious issues. Kitty had

been right when she told her that she treated men as if they were

disembodied spirits. She had trusted too much to her own subtlety.

That was how all her blunders, had been made. If she had been cold as

well as subtle--but Lucia was capable of passionate indiscreet things

to be followed by torments of her pride. Her pride had only made

matters worse. It was her pride, in the beginning, that had blinded

her. When she had told Kitty that she was not the sort of woman to let

this sort of thing happen with this sort of man, she had summed up her

abiding attitude to one particular possibility. She had trusted to the

social gulf to keep her safe, apart. Afterwards, she knew that she had

not trusted so much to the social gulf. She had not been quite so

proud; neither, since Kitty had opened her eyes, had she been so

blind; but she had been ten times more foolish. Her mind had refused

to dwell upon Kitty's dreadful suggestions, because they were

dreadful. Unconscious of her sex, she had remained unconscious of her

power; she had trusted (unconsciously) to the power of another woman

for protection. Flossie had, so to speak, detached and absorbed the

passionate part of Keith Rickman; by which process the rest of him was

left subtler and more pure. She had thought she could really deal with

him now as a disembodied spirit. And so under the shelter of his

engagement she had, after her own manner, let herself go.

These thoughts swept through her brain like one thought, as she

contemplated the misery she had made. They came with the surging of

the blood in her cheeks, so swiftly that she had no time to see that

they hardly exhausted the aspects of her case. And it was not her own

case that she was thinking of.

She turned to him pleading. "Don't you see that I could never forgive

myself if I thought that I had hurt her? You are not going to make me

so unhappy?"

"Do you mean, am I going to marry her?"

She said nothing; for she was conscious now, conscious and ashamed of

using a power that she had no right to have; ashamed, too, of being

forced to acknowledge the truth of the thing she had so passionately

denied.

"You needn't be afraid," he said. "Of course I am going to marry her."

He turned away from her as he had turned away five years ago, with the

same hopeless sense of dishonour and defeat. She called him back, as

she had called him back five years ago, and for the same purpose, of

delivering a final stab. Only that this time she knew it was a stab;

and her own heart felt the pain as she delivered it.

But the terrible thing had to be done. She had got to return the

manuscript, the gift that should never have been given. She gathered

the loosened sheets tenderly, like things that she was grieved to part

from. He admitted that she was handling her sword with all gentleness

so as to avoid as far as possible any suggestion of a thrust.

"You must take them back," she said. "I can't keep them--or--or have

anything to do with them after what you told me. I should feel as if

I'd taken what belonged to some one else."

As he took the sheets from her and pocketed them, she felt that again

he was pocketing an insult as well as a stab.

But the victim was no longer an inexperienced youth. So he smiled

valorously, as beseemed his manhood. "And yet," he murmured, "you say

it isn't true."

She did not contradict him this time. And as he turned he heard behind

him the closing of the door.

BOOK IV

THE MAN HIMSELF

CHAPTER LXII

After all, the wedding did not take place on the twenty-fifth; for on

the twentieth Keith was summoned to Ilford by a letter from his

stepmother. Mrs. Rickman said she thought he ought to know (as if

Keith were seeking to avoid the knowledge!) that his father had had a

slight paralytic seizure. He had recovered, but it had left him very

unsettled and depressed. He kept on for ever worrying to see Keith.

Mrs. Rickman hoped (not without a touch of asperity) that Keith would

lose no time in coming, as his father seemed so uneasy in his mind.

Very uneasy in his mind was Isaac, as upstairs in the big front

bedroom, (which from its excess of glass and mahogany bore a curious

resemblance to the front shop,) he lay, a strangely shrunken figure in

the great bed. His face, once so reticent and regular, was drawn on

one side, twisted into an oblique expression of abandonment and agony.

Keith was not prepared for the change; and he broke down completely as

the poor right hand (which Isaac _would_ use) opened and closed in a

vain effort to clasp his. But Isaac was intolerant of sympathy, and at

once rebuked all reference to his illness. Above the wreck of his

austere face, his eyes, blood-shot as they were and hooded under their

slack lids, defied you to notice any change in him.

"I sent for you," he said, "because I wanted to talk over a little

business." His utterance was thick and uncertain; the act of speech

showed the swollen tongue struggling in the distorted mouth.

"Oh, don't bother about business now, father," said Keith, trying hard

to steady his voice.

His father gave an irritable glance, as if he were repelling an

accusation of mortality, conveyed in the word "now."

"And why not now as well as any other time?"

Keith blew his nose hard and turned away.

"What's the matter with you? Do you suppose I'm ill?"

"Oh no, of course not."

"No. I'm just lying here to rest and get up my strength again; God

willing. But _in case_ anything should happen to me, Keith, I want you

to be clear as to how you stand."

"Oh, that's all right," said Keith cheerfully.

"It's not all right. It's not as I meant it to be. Between you and me,

my big house hasn't come to much. I think if you'd stayed in

it--well--we won't say any more about that. But Paternoster

Row--now--that's sound. Mrs. Rickman always 'ad a fancy for the City

'ouse, and she's put money into it. You'll have your share that was

settled on you when I married your poor mother. You stick to the City

'ouse, Keith, and it'll bring you in something some day. And the

Name'll still go on." It was pathetic, his persistent clinging to the

immortality of his name. Pathetic, too, his inability to see it

otherwise than as blazoned for ever and ever over a shop-front. His

son's fame (if he ever achieved it) was a mere subsidiary glory. "But

Pilkington'll get the Strand 'ouse. Whatever I do I can't save it. I

don't mind owning now, the Strand 'ouse was a mistake."

"A very great mistake."

"And Pilkington'll get the 'Arden library."

"You don't know. You may get rid of him--before that time."

Isaac seemed to be torn by his thoughts the more because they found no

expression in his face that was bound, mouth, eye, and eyelid in its

own agony. Before _what_ time? Before the day of his death, or the day

of redemption? "The mortgage," he said, "'as still three years to run.

But I can't raise the money."

Keith was silent. He hardly liked to ask, though he would have given

a great deal to know, the amount of the sum his father could not

raise. A possibility, a splendid, undreamed of possibility, had risen

up before him; but he turned away from it; it was infamous to

entertain it, for it depended on his father's death. And yet for the

life of him he could not help wondering whether the share which would

ultimately come to him would by any chance cover that mortgage. To be

any good it would have to come before the three years were up,

though--He put the splendid horrible thought aside. He could not

contemplate it. The wish was certainly not the father of that thought.

But supposing the thought became the father of a wish?

"That reminds me," said Isaac, "that there was something else I 'ad to

say to you."

He did not say it all at once. At the very thought of it his swollen

tongue moved impotently without words. At last he got it out.

"I've been thinking it over--that affair of the library. And I've been

led to see that what I did was wrong. Wrong, I mean, in the sight of

God."

There was a sense he could not get rid of, in which it might still be

considered superlatively right.

"And wot you did--"

"Oh, never mind what I did. _That's_ all right."

"You did the righteous and the Christian thing."

"Did I? I'm sure I don't know why I did it."

"Ah--if you'd done it for the love of God, there's no doubt it'd 'ave

been more pleasing to 'im."

"Well, you know I didn't do it for the love--of God."

"You did it for the love of woman? I was right then, after all."

Isaac felt inexpressibly consoled by Keith's cheerful disclaimer of

all credit. His manner did away with the solemnity of the occasion;

but it certainly smoothed for him the painful path of confession.

"Well, yes. If it hadn't been for Miss Harden I don't suppose I should

have done it at all."

He said it very simply; but not all the magnificent consolations of

religion could have given Isaac greater peace. It was a little more

even, the balance of righteousness between him and Keith. He had never

sinned, as Keith had done, after the flesh. Of the deeds done in the

body he would have but a very small account to render at the last.

"And you see, you haven't got anything for it out of _her_."

There was a certain satisfaction in his tone. He saw a mark of the

divine displeasure in Keith's failure to marry the woman he desired.

"And if I could only raise that money--"

He meant it--he meant it. The balance, held in God's hands, hung

steady now.

"How much is it?" asked Keith; for he thought, "Perhaps he's only

holding on to that share for my sake; and if he knew that I would give

it up now, he might really--"

"Four thousand nine with th' interest," said Isaac.

"Do you think, Keith, it would have sold for five?"

"Well, yes, I think it very possibly might."

"Ah!" Isaac turned his face from his son. The sigh expressed a

profound, an infinite repentance.

CHAPTER LXIII

On the twenty-fifth Isaac Rickman lay dead in his villa at Ilford. Two

days after Keith's visit he had been seized by a second and more

terrible paralytic stroke; and from it he did not recover. The wedding

was now indefinitely postponed till such time as Keith could have

succeeded in winding up his father's affairs.

They proved rather less involved than he had expected. Isaac had

escaped dying insolvent. Though a heavy mortgage delivered Rickman's

in the Strand into Pilkington's possession, the City house was not

only sound, as Isaac had said, but in a fairly flourishing condition.

Some blind but wholly salutary instinct had made him hold on to that

humbler and obscurer shop where first his fortunes had been made; and

with its immense patronage among the Nonconformist population

Rickman's in the City held a high and honourable position in the

trade. The bulk of the profits had to go to the bookseller's widow as

chief owner of the capital; still, the slender partnership settled on

his son, if preserved intact and carefully manipulated, would yield in

time a very comfortable addition to Keith's income. If Isaac had

lived, his affairs (as far as he was concerned) would have been easily

settled. But for his son and heir they proved most seriously

complicated.

For Keith was heir, not only to his father's estate, but to that very

considerable debt of honour which Isaac had left unpaid. It seemed as

if the Harden library, the symbol of a superb intellectual vanity, was

doomed to be in eternal necessity of redemption. Until yesterday it

had not occurred to Keith that it could be his destiny to redeem it.

Yesterday he had refused to let his mind dally with that possibility;

to-day it had become the most fitting subject of his contemplation.

The thing was more easily conceived than done. His literary income

amounted, all told, to about three hundred and fifty a year, but its

sources were not absolutely secure. _Metropolis_ or _The Planet_ might

conceivably at any moment cease to be. And there was his marriage. It

was put off; but only for a matter of weeks. He had only a hundred and

fifty pounds in ready money; the rest had been swallowed up by the

little house at Ealing. It was impossible to redeem the Harden library

unless he parted with his patrimony; which was, after all, his only

safe and imperishable source of income. Still, he had not the smallest

hesitation on this head. Neither he nor Flossie had taken it into

their calculations when they agreed to marry, and he was not going to

consider it now.

The first step proved simple. Mrs. Rickman had no objection to buying

him out. On the contrary, she was thankful to get rid of a most

reckless and uncomfortable partner. But in the present state of the

trade it was impossible to estimate his share at more than four

thousand. That covered the principal; but Isaac had paid no interest

for more than two years; and that interest Keith would have to pay.

Though the four thousand was secure, and Pilkington had given him

three years to raise the seven hundred and fifty in, it was not so

easily done on an income of three hundred and fifty. Not easy in three

years; and impossible in any number of years if he married. Possible

only, yes, just possible, if his marriage were postponed until such

time as he could have collected the money. Some brilliant stroke of

luck might unexpectedly reduce the term; but three years must be

allowed. _Metropolis_ and _The Planet_ were surely good for another

three years. The other alternative, that of repudiating the

obligation, never entered his head for an instant. He could not have

touched a shilling of his father's money till this debt was cleared.

There could be no doubt as to what honour demanded of him. But how

would Flossie take it? The worst of it was that he was bound (in

honour again) to give her the option of breaking off their engagement,

if she didn't care to wait. And after all that had passed between

them it might not be so easy to persuade her that he was not glad of

the excuse; for he himself was so lacking in conviction. Still she was

very intelligent; and she would see that it wasn't his fault if their

marriage had to be put off. The situation was inevitable and

impersonal, and as such it was bound to be hard on somebody. He

admitted that it was particularly hard on Flossie. It would have been

harder still if Flossie had been out of work; but Flossie, with

characteristic prudence, had held on to her post till the very eve of

her wedding-day, and had contrived to return to it when she foresaw

the necessity for delay. Otherwise he would have had to insist on

providing for her until she was independent again; which would have

complicated matters really most horribly. It was quite horrible enough

to have to explain all this to Flossie. The last time he had explained

things (for he had explained them) to Flossie the result had not been

exactly happy. But then the things themselves had been very different,

and he had had to admit with the utmost contrition that a woman could

hardly have had more reasonable grounds for resentment. That was all

over and done with now. In that explanation they had explained

everything away. They had left no single thread of illusion hanging

round the life they were to live together. They accepted themselves

and each other as they were. And in the absence of any brighter

prospect for either of them there was high wisdom in that acceptance.

If then there was a lack of rapture in his relations with Flossie,

there would henceforth at any rate be calm. Her temperament was, he

judged, essentially placid, not to say apathetic. There was a soft

smoothness about the plump little lady that would be a security

against friction. She was not great at understanding; but, taking it

all together, she was now in an infinitely better position for

understanding him than she had been two weeks ago. Besides, it was

after all a simple question of figures; and Flossie's attitude to

figures was, unlike his own, singularly uninfluenced by passion. She

would take the sensible, practical view.

The sensible practical view was precisely what Flossie did take. But

her capabilities of passion he had again misjudged.

He chose his moment with discretion, when time and place and Flossie's

mood were most propitious. The time was Sunday evening, the place was

the Regent's Park, Flossie's mood was gentle and demure. She had been

very nice to him since his father's death, and had shown him many

careful small attentions which, with his abiding sense of his own

shortcomings towards her, he had found extremely touching. She seemed

to him somehow a different woman, not perhaps so pretty as she had

been, but nicer. He may have been the dupe of an illusory effect of

toilette, for Flossie was in black. She had discussed the propriety of

mourning with Miss Bishop, and wore it to-day for the first time with

a pretty air of solemnity mingled with satisfaction in her own

delicate intimation that she was one with her lover in his grief. She

had not yet discovered that black was unbecoming to her, which would

have been fatal to the mood.

The flowers were gay in the Broad Walk, Flossie tried to be gay too;

and called on him to admire their beauty. They sat down together on a

seat in the embrasure of a bed of chrysanthemums. Flossie was

interested in everything, in the chrysanthemums, in the weather and in

the passers-by--most particularly interested, he noticed, in the

family groups. Her black eyes, that glanced so restlessly at the men

and so jealously at the women, sank softly on the children, happy and

appeased. Poor Flossie. He had long ago divined her heart. He did his

best to please her; he sat down when she told him to sit down, stared

when she told him to stare, and relapsed into his now habitual

attitude of dejection. A little girl toddled past him in play; stopped

at his knees and touched them with her hand and rubbed her small body

against them, chuckling with delight.

"The dear little mite," said Flossie; "she's taken quite a fancy to

you, Keith." Her face was soft and shy under her black veil, and when

she looked at him she blushed. He turned his head away. He could not

meet that look in Flossie's eyes when he thought of what he had to say

to her. He was going to put the joy of life a little farther from her;

to delay her woman's tender ineradicable hope.

This was not the moment or the place to do it in. They rose and

walked on, turning into the open Park. And there, sitting under a

solitary tree by the path that goes towards St. John's Wood, he broke

it to her gently.

"Flossie," he said, "I've something to tell you that you mayn't like

to hear."

She made no sign of agitation beyond scraping a worn place in the

grass with the tips of her little shoes. "Well," she said, with an

admirable attempt at patience, "what is it _now_?"

"You mean you think it's been about enough already?"

"If it's really anything unpleasant, for goodness' sake let's have it

out and get it over."

"Right, Flossie. I'm awfully sorry, but I'm afraid we shan't be able

to marry for another two years, perhaps three."

"And why not?" Her black eyes darted a vindictive look at him under

her soft veil.

"My father's death has made a difference to me."

Her lips tightened, and she drew a sharp but inaudible breath through

her nostrils. He had been wrong in supposing that she had not looked

for any improvement in his finances after his father's death. On the

contrary, knowing of their reconciliation and deceived by the imposing

appearance of Rickman's in the Strand, she had counted on a very

substantial increase of income.

"Do you mean to say, Keith, he hasn't left you anything?"

He laughed softly--an unpleasant way he had in situations where most

people would consider it only decent to keep grave.

"He _has_ left me something. A bad debt."

"What have you got to do with his bad debts? Nobody can come down on

you to pay them." She paused. A horrible thought had struck her.

"_Can_ they? You don't mean to say they can?"

He shook his head and struggled with his monstrous mirth.

"Keith! What 'ave you done? You surely haven't been backing any

bills?"

He laughed outright this time, for the sheer misery of the thing.

"No, oh dear me, no. Not in your sense at least."

"There _isn't_ any other sense. Either you did or you didn't; and I

think you might tell me which."

"It's not quite so simple, dear. I didn't back his bills, d'you see,

but I backed _him_.'

"Can they make you responsible? Have they got it down in black and

white?"

"Nobody can make me responsible, except myself. It's what they call a

debt of honour, Flossie. Those debts are not always down in black and

white."

"Why can't you speak plain? I really can't think what you mean by

that."

"Can't you? I'll endeavour to explain. A debt of honour, Beaver dear,

is a debt that's got to be paid whoever else goes unpaid."

"A fine lot of honour about that," said she.

Was it possible to make the Beaver understand? He, gave her a slight

outline of the situation; and he really could not complain of any

fault in the Beaver's intelligence. For, by dint of a masterly cross

examination, she possessed herself of all the details, even of those

which he most desired to keep from her. After their last great

explanation there had been more than a tacit agreement between them

that the name of Lucia Harden was never to come up again in any future

discussion; and that name he would not give. She, however, readily

inferred it from his silence.

"You needn't tell me the lady's name," said she.

"I certainly needn't. The name has nothing whatever to do with it.'"

"Oh, hasn't it? You'll not make me believe that you'd 'ave taken it up

this way for any one but her."

"Whether I would or wouldn't doesn't affect the point of honour."

"I don't see where it comes in there."

"If you don't I can't make you see it."

"I said I didn't see where it comes in--_there_. I know what's

honourable as well as you, though I daresay my notions wouldn't agree

with yours."

"Upon my soul, I shouldn't wonder if they didn't!"

"Look here, Keith. Did you ever make Miss Harden any promise to pay

her that money when your father died?"

"Of course I didn't--How could I? Do you suppose she'd have let me do

anything of the sort?"

"I don't know what she wouldn't have let you do. Anyhow you didn't

make her any promise. Think of the promises and promises you've made

to me."

"I do think of them. Have I broken one of them?"

"I don't say you have yet; but you want to."

"I don't wa--I won't break them, I'll keep every one of the blessed

lot, if you'll only give me time."

"Give you time? I know what that means. It means that I'm to go back

and earn my living. I can slave till I drop for all you care--while

you go and throw away all that money on another woman. And I'm to give

you time to do it in!"

"I won't ask you to wait for me. I'm perfectly willing to release you

from your engagement if you like. It seems only fair to you."

"You care a lot, don't you, about what's fair to me? I believe you'd

take the bread out of my mouth to give it to her."

"I would, Flossie, if it was her bread. That money doesn't belong to

you or me; it belongs to Miss Harden."

"It seems to me," said Flossie, "that everything belongs to her. I'm

sure you've as good as told me so."

"I've certainly given you some right to think so. But that has nothing

to do with it; and we agreed that we were going to let it alone,

didn't we?"

"It wasn't me that brought it up again, it was you; and it's got

everything to do with it. You wouldn't have behaved like this, and you

wouldn't be sitting there talking about what's honourable, if it

hadn't been for Miss Harden."

"That may very well be. But it doesn't mean what you think it does. It

means that before I knew Miss Harden I didn't know or care very much

about what's honourable. She taught me to care. I wasn't fit to speak

to a decent woman before I knew her. She made me decent."

"Did she sit up half the night with you to do it?".

He made a gesture of miserable impatience.

"You needn't tell me. I can see her."

"You can't. She did it by simply being what she is. If I ever manage

to do anything right it will be because of her, as you say. But it

doesn't follow that it'll be for her. There's a great difference."

"I don't see it."

"You must try to see it. There's one thing I haven't told you about

that confounded money. It was I who let her in for losing it. Isn't

that enough to make me keen?"

"You always were keen where she was concerned."

"Look here, Flossie, I thought you were going to give up this sort of

thing?"

"So I was when I thought you were going to give her up. It doesn't

look like it."

"My dear child, how can I give up what I never had or could have?"

"Well then--are you going to give up your idea?"

"No, I am not. But you can either give me up or wait for me, as I

said. But if you marry me, you must marry me and my idea too. You

don't like my idea; but that's no reason why you shouldn't like me."

"You're not taking much pains to make me like you."

"I'm taking all the pains I know. But your liking or not liking me

won't alter me a little bit. You'll have to take me as I am."

As she looked up at him she realized at last the indomitable nature of

the man she had to deal with. And yet he was not unalterable, even on

his own showing. She knew some one who had altered him out of all

knowledge.

"Come," said she, "don't say you never change."

"I don't say it. You'll have to allow for that possibility, too."

"It seems to me I have to allow for a good many things."

"You have indeed."

"Well, are we going to sit here all night?"

"I'm ready."

They walked back in silence over the straight path that seemed as if

it would never end. Flossie stopped half-way in it, stung by an idea.

"There's something you haven't thought of. What are you going to do

with the house? And with all that furniture?"

"Let them to somebody. That's all right, Beaver. The house and the

furniture can't run away."

"No, but they'll never be the same again."

Nothing would ever be the same again; that was clear. The flowers were

still gay in the Broad Walk, and the children, though a little

sleepier, were still adorable; but Flossie did not turn to look at

them as she passed. Would she ever look at them, at anything, with

pleasure again? He had made life very difficult, very cruel to this

poor child, whom after all he had promised to protect and care for.

"I say, Beaver dear, it _is_ hard luck on you."

The look and the tone would have softened most women, at least for the

time being; but the Beaver remained implacable.

"I'll try to make it easier for you. I'll work like mad. I'll do

anything to shorten the time."

"Shorten the time? You don't know how many years you're asking me to

wait."

"I'm not asking you to wait. I'm asking you to choose."

"Do you want me to do it now?"

"No, certainly not." She was not indeed in a mood favourable to

choice; and he would not influence her decision. It was mean to urge

her to an arduous constancy; meaner still to precipitate her refusal.

"You must think. You can, you know, when you give your mind to it."

She appeared to be giving her mind to it for the rest of the way home;

and her silence left him also free to think it over. After all, what

had he done? He had not asked her to wait, but what if he had? Many

men have to ask as much of the woman who loves them. Some men have

asked even more of the woman whom they love. That was the secret. He

could have asked it with a clear conscience if he had but loved her.

CHAPTER LXIV

Flossie was in no hurry about making up her mind. If Keith had asked

her to give him time, it was only fair that he should give her time

too, and since his mind was made up in any case, time could be no

object to him. So days and weeks had passed on and she had conveyed to

him no hint of her decision.

On that Sunday evening, in the seclusion of her bedroom, Flossie said

to herself that she had made one great mistake. Prudence and foresight

were all very well in their way, but this time she had blundered

through excess of caution. In sticking to the post that made her

independent she had broken her strongest line of defence. If only she

had had the courage to relinquish it at the crucial moment, she would

have stood a very much better chance in her contest with Keith. She

could then have appealed to his pity as she had done with such signal

success two years ago, when the result of the appeal had been to bring

him violently to the point. She was wise enough to know that in

contending with a chivalrous man a woman's strongest defence is her

defencelessness. Though she was unable to believe that pure abstract

honour was or could be the sole and supreme motive of Keith's

behaviour, she felt that if she could have said to him, "I've thrown

up a good situation to marry you," his chivalry would not have held

out against that argument.

But Flossie never made mistakes. She was too consummate a diplomatist.

Therefore, though appearances were against her, it was only reasonable

to suppose that she had not really done so now, and that her original

inspiration had been right. It was foresight so subtle, so advanced,

that it outstripped the ordinary processes of calculation, and

appeared afterwards as the mysterious leading of a profounder power,

of the under-soul that presses the innocent intellect into the

services of its own elemental instincts. The people who yield most

obediently to this compulsion are said to have good luck.

Flossie's good luck, however, was not yet apparent either to herself

or to her fellow-boarders at Tavistock Place. Not that she had

enlarged on her trouble to any of them. The whole thing had been too

profoundly humiliating for that. To say nothing of being engaged to a

man who had shown so very little impatience to marry her, to have

taken and furnished a house and be unable to live in it, to have

received congratulations and wedding presents which had all proved

premature, to know, and feel that everybody else knew, that her

bedroom was at this moment lumbered up with a trousseau which, whether

she wore it or put it by two years, would make her equally ridiculous,

was really a very trying position for any young lady, and to Flossie,

whose nature was most delicately sensitive to such considerations, it

was torture. But, after all, these things were material and external;

and the worst of Flossie's suffering was in her soul. Before the

appearance of Miss Harden, the last two years had passed for Flossie

in gorgeous triumphal procession through the boarding-house. She had

been the invincible heroine of Mrs. Downey's for two years, she had

dragged its young hero at her chariot wheels for two years, she had

filled the heart of Ada Bishop with envy and the hearts of Mr. Soper

and Mr. Spinks with jealousy and anguish for two years; and now she

had all these people pitying her and looking down on her because she

had been so queerly treated; and this was even more intolerable to

poor Flossie. She knew perfectly well what every one of them was

saying. She knew that Ada Bishop had thanked Goodness she wasn't in

her shoes; that Miss Bramble spoke of her persistently as "that poor

young thing"; that Mrs. Downey didn't know which she pitied most, her

or poor Mr. Rickman. He was poor Mr. Rickman, if you please, because

he was considered to have entangled himself so inextricably with her.

She knew that Miss Roots maintained that it was all her (Flossie's)

own fault for holding Keith to his engagement; that Mr. Partridge had

wondered why girls were in such a hurry to get married; and that Mr.

Soper said she'd made a great mistake in ever taking up with a young

fellow you could depend on with so little certainty. And the burden of

it all was that Flossie had made a fool of herself and been made a

fool of. So she was very bitter in her little heart against the man

who was the cause of it all; and if she did not instantly throw Keith

Rickman over, that was because Flossie was not really such a fool as

for the moment she had been made to look.

But there was one person of the boarding-house whose opinion was as

yet unknown to Flossie or to anybody else; it was doubtful indeed if

it was known altogether to himself; for Mr. Spinks conceived that

honour bound him to a superb reticence on the subject. He had followed

with breathless anxiety every turn in the love affairs of Flossie and

his friend. He could not deny that a base and secret exultation had

possessed him on the amazing advent of Miss Harden; for love had made

him preternaturally keen, and he was visited with mysterious

intimations of the truth. He did not encourage these visitings. He had

tried hard to persuade himself that he was glad for Flossie's sake

when Miss Harden went away; when, whatever there had been between

Rickets and the lady, it had come to nothing; when the wedding day

remained fixed, immovably fixed. But he had not been glad at all. On

the contrary he had suffered horribly, and had felt the subsequent

delay as a cruel prolongation of his agony. In the irony of destiny,

shortly before the fatal twenty-fifth, Mr. Spinks had been made

partner in his uncle's business, and was now enjoying an income

superior to Rickman's not only in amount but in security. If anything

could have added to his dejection it was that. His one consolation

hitherto had been that after all, if Rickman did marry Flossie, as

_he_ was not in a position to marry her, it came to the same thing in

the long run. Now he saw himself cut off from that source of comfort

by a solid four hundred a year with prospects of a rise. He could

forego the obviously impossible; but in that rosy dawn of incarnation

his dream appeared more than ever desirable. Whenever Mr. Spinks's

imagination encountered the idea of marriage it had tried to look

another way. Marriage remote and unattainable left Mr. Spinks's

imagination in comparative peace; but brought within the bounds of

possibility its appeal was simply maddening. And now, bringing it

nearer still, so near that it was impossible to look another way,

there came these disturbing suggestions of a misunderstanding between

Rickman and his Beaver. The boarding-house knew nothing but that the

wedding was put off because Rickman was in difficulties and could not

afford to marry at the moment. Spinks would have accepted this

explanation as sufficient if it had not been for the peculiar

behaviour of Rickman, and the very mysterious and agitating change in

Flossie's manner. Old Rickets had returned to his awful solitude. He

absented himself entirely from the dinner-table. When you met him on

the stairs he was incommunicative and gloomy; and whatever you asked

him to do he was too busy to do it. His sole attention to poor Flossie

was to take her for an occasional airing in the Park on Sunday

afternoons. Spinks had come across them there walking sadly side by

side. Flossie for propriety's sake would be making a little

conversation as he went by; but Rickman had always the shut mouth and

steady eyes of invincible determination.

What was it that Razors was so determined about? To marry Flossie? Or

not to marry her? That was the question which agitated poor Spinks

from morning till night, or rather from night till morning. The worst

of it was that the very nature of his woes compelled him as an

honourable person to keep them to himself.

But there was no secret which could be long concealed from the eyes of

that clever lady, Miss Roots; and she had contrived in the most

delicate manner to convey to the unfortunate youth that he had her

sympathy. Spinks, bound by his honour, had used no words in divulging

his agony; but their unspoken confidences had gone so far that Miss

Roots at last permitted herself to say that it might be as well to

find out whether "it was on or off."

"But," said the miserable Spinks, "would that be fair to Rickman?"

"I think so," said the lady, with a smile that would have been sweet

had it been rather less astute. "Mind you, I'm not in their secrets;

but I believe you really needn't be afraid of that."

"Yes. But how in Heaven's name am I to find out? I can't ask him, and

I can't ask her."

"Why can't you ask them?"

Spinks was unable to say why; but his delicacy shrank from either

course as in some subtle way unfair. Besides he distrusted Miss

Roots's counsel, for she had not been nice to Flossie.

"Oh Lord," said Spinks, "what an orful mess I'm in!" He said it to

himself; for he had resolved to talk no longer to Miss Roots.

He could have borne it better had not the terrible preoccupation of

Rickman thrown Flossie on his hands. In common decency he had to talk

to her at the dinner-table. But it was chivalry (surely) that drew him

to her in the drawing-room afterwards. She had to be protected (poor

Flossie) from the shrewdness of Miss Roots, the impertinence of Mr.

Soper, and the painful sympathy of the other boarders. With the very

best and noblest intentions in the world, Mr. Spinks descended nightly

into that atmosphere of gloom, and there let loose his imperishable

hilarity.

He was quite safe, he knew, as long as their relations could be kept

upon a purely hilarious footing; but Flossie's manner intimated (what

it had never intimated before) that she now realized and preferred the

serious side of him; and there was no way by which the humorous Spinks

was more profoundly flattered than in being taken seriously. Some

nights they had the drawing-room to themselves but for the harmless

presence of Mr. Partridge dozing in his chair; and then, to see

Flossie struggling to keep a polite little smile hovering on a mouth

too tiny to support it; to see her give up the effort and suddenly

become grave; to see her turn away to hide her gravity with all the

precautions another woman takes to conceal her merriment; to see her

sitting there, absolutely unmoved by the diverting behaviour of Mr.

Partridge in his slumber, was profoundly agitating to Mr. Spinks.

"I'm sure," said Flossie one night (it was nearly three weeks after

the scene with Rickman in the Park), "I'm sure I don't know why we're

laughing so much. There's nothing to laugh at that I can see."

Spinks could have have replied in Byron's fashion that if he laughed

'twas that he might not weep, but he restrained himself; and all he

said was, "I like to see you larf."

"Well, you can't say you've ever seen me cry."

"No, I haven't. I shouldn't like to see _that_, Flossie. And I

shouldn't like to be the one that made you."

"Wouldn't you?" Flossie put her pocket handkerchief to her little

nose, and under the corner of it there peeped the tail-end of a

lurking smile.

"No," said Spinks simply, "I wouldn't." He was thinking of Miss Roots.

The theory of Rickman's bad behaviour had never entered his head.

"What's more, I don't think any nice person would do it."

"Don't you?"

"No. Not any really nice person."

"It's generally," said Flossie, sweetly meditative, "the nicest person

you know who can make you cry most. Not that _I_'m crying."

"No. But I can see that somebody's been annoying you, and I think I

can guess pretty well who it is, too. Nothing would please me more

than to 'ave five minutes' private conversation with that person." He

was thinking of Miss Harden now.

"You mustn't dream of it. It wouldn't do, you know; it really

wouldn't. Look here, promise me you'll never say a word."

"Well it's safe enough to promise. There aren't many opportunities of

meeting."

"No, that's the worst of it, there aren't now. Still, you might meet

him any minute on the stairs, or anywhere. And if you go saying things

you'll only make him angry."

"Oh it's a him, is it?" (_Now_ he was thinking of Soper.) "_I_ know.

Don't say Soper's been making himself unpleasant."

"He's always unpleasant."

"Is he? By 'Eaven, if I catch him!"

"Do be quiet. It isn't Mr. Soper."

"Isn't it?"

"No. How could it be? You don't call Mr. Soper _nice_, do you?"

Spinks was really quiet for a moment. "I say, Flossie, have you and

Rickets been 'aving a bit of a tiff?"

"What do you want to know that for? It's nothing to you."

"Well, it isn't just my curiosity. It's because I might be able to

help you, Floss, if you didn't mind telling me what it was. I'm not a

clever fellow, but there's no one in this house understands old Razors

as well as I do."

"Then you must be pretty sharp, for I can't understand him at all. Has

he been saying anything to you?"

"Oh no, he wouldn't say anything. You don't talk about these things,

you know."

"I thought he might--to you."

"Me? I'm the very last person he'd dream of talking to."

"I thought you were such friends."

"So we are. But you see he never talks about you to me, Flossie."

"Why ever not?"

"That's why. Because we're friends. Because he wouldn't think it

fair--"

"Fair to who?"

"To me, of course."

"Why shouldn't it be fair to you?" Her eyes, close-lidded, were fixed

upon the floor. As long as she looked at him Spinks held himself well

in hand; but the sudden withdrawing of those dangerous weapons threw

him off his guard.

"Because he knows I--Oh hang it all, that's what I swore I wouldn't

say."

"You haven't said it."

"No, but I've made you see it."

His handsome face stiffened with horror at his stupidity. To let fall

the slightest hint of his feeling was, he felt, the last disloyalty to

Rickman. He had a vague idea that he ought instantly to go. But

instead of going he sat there, silent, fixing on his own enormity a

mental stare so concentrated that it would have drawn Flossie's

attention to it, if she had not seen it all the time.

"If there's anything to see," said she, "there's no reason why I

shouldn't see it."

"P'raps not. There's every reason, though, why I should have held my

silly tongue."

"Why, what difference does it make?"

"It doesn't make any difference to you, of course, and it can't make

any difference--really--to him; but it's a downright dishonourable

thing to do, and that makes a jolly lot of difference to me. You see,

I haven't any business to go and feel like this."

"Oh well, you can't help your feelings, can you?" she said softly.

"Anybody may have feelings--"

"Yes, but a decent chap, you know, wouldn't let on that he had any--at

least, not when the girl he--he--you know what I mean, it's what I

mustn't say--when she and the other fellow weren't hitting it off very

well together."

"Oh, you think it might make a difference then?"

"No, I don't--not reelly. It's only the feeling I have about it, don't

you see. It seems somehow so orf'ly mean. Razors wouldn't have done it

if it had been me, you know."

"But it couldn't have been you."

"Of course it couldn't," said the miserable Spinks with a weak spurt

of anger; "that was only my way of putting it."

"What are you driving at? What ever did you think I said?"

"Never mind what you said. You're making me talk about it, and I said

I wouldn't."

"When did you say that?"

"Ages ago--when Rickets first told me you--and he--"

"Oh that? That was so long ago that it doesn't matter much now."

"Oh, doesn't it though, it matters a jolly sight more. You said"

(there was bitterness in his tone), "you said it couldn't have been

me. As if I didn't know that."

"I didn't mean it couldn't have been you, not in that way. I only

meant that you'd have--well, you'd have behaved very differently, if

it had been you; and so I believe you would."

"You don't know how I'd 'ave behaved."

"I've a pretty good idea, though." She looked straight at him this

time, and he grew strangely brave.

"Look here, Flossie," he said solemnly, "you know--as I've just let it

out--that I'm most orf'ly gone on you. I don't suppose there's

anything I wouldn't do for you except--well, I really don't know what

you're driving at, but if it's anything to do with Razors, I'd rather

not hear about it, if you don't mind. It isn't fair, really. You see,

it's putting me in such a 'orribly delicate position."

"I don't think you're very kind, Sidney. You don't think of me, or

what sort of a position you put me in. I'm sure I wouldn't have said a

word, only you asked me to tell you all about it; you needn't say you

didn't."

"That was when I thought, p'raps, I could help you to patch it up. But

if I can't, it's another matter."

"Patch it up? Do you think I'd let you try? I don't believe in

patching things up, once they're--broken off."

"I say Flossie, it hasn't come to that?"

"It couldn't come to anything else, the way it was going."

"Oh Lord"--Spinks buried a crimson face in his hands. If only he

hadn't felt such a horrible exultation!

"I thought you knew. Isn't that what we've been talking about all the

time?"

"I didn't understand. I only thought--_he_ didn't tell me, mind you--I

thought it was just put off because he couldn't afford to marry quite

so soon."

"Don't you think three hundred a year is enough to marry on?"

"Well, I shouldn't care to marry on that myself; not if it wasn't

regular. He's quite right, Flossie. You see, a man hasn't got only his

wife to think of."

"No--I suppose he must think of himself a little too."

"Oh well, no; if he's a decent chap, he thinks of his children."

Flossie's face was crimson, too, while her thoughts flew to that

unfurnished room in the brown house at Ealing. She was losing sight of

Keith Rickman; for behind Keith Rickman there was Sidney Spinks; and

behind Sidney Spinks there was the indomitable Dream. She did not look

at Spinks, therefore, but gazed steadily at the top of Mr. Partridge's

head. With one word Spinks had destroyed the effect he had calculated

on from his honourable reticence. Perhaps it was because Flossie's

thoughts had flown so far that her voice seemed to come from somewhere

a long way off, too.

"What would you think enough to marry on, then?"

"Well, I shouldn't care to do it much under four hundred myself," he

said guardedly.

"And I suppose if you hadn't it you'd expect a girl to wait for you

any time until you'd made it?"

"Well of course I should, if we were engaged already. But I shouldn't

ask any girl to marry me unless I could afford to keep her--"

"You wouldn't _ask_, but--"

"No, and I wouldn't let on that I cared for her either. I wouldn't let

on under four hundred--certain."

"Oh," said Flossie very quietly. And Spinks was crushed under a sense

of fresh disloyalty to Rickman. His defence of Rickman had been made

to turn into a pleading for himself. "But Razors is different; he'll

be making twice that in no time, you'll see. I shouldn't be afraid to

ask any one if I was him."

Vainly the honourable youth sought to hide his splendour; Flossie had

drawn from him all she needed now to know.

"Look, here, Floss, you say it's broken off. Would you mind telling me

was it you--or was it he who did it?" His tone expressed acute anxiety

on this point, for in poor Spinks's code of honour it made all the

difference. But he felt that his question was clearly answered, for

the silence of Razors argued sufficiently that it was he.

"Well," said Flossie with a touch of maidenly dignity, "whichever it

was, it wasn't likely to be Keith."

Spinks's face would have fallen, but for its immense surprise. In this

case Rickman ought, yes, he certainly ought to have told him. It

wasn't behaving quite straight, he considered, to keep it from the man

who had the best right in the world to know, a fellow who had always

acted straight with him. But perhaps, poor chap, he was only waiting a

little on the chance of the Beaver changing her mind.

"Don't you think, Flossie, that if he tried hard he could bring it on

again?"

"No, he couldn't. Never. Not if he tried from now till next year. Not

if he went on his bended knees to me."

Spinks reflected that Rickman's knees didn't take kindly to bending.

"Haven't you been a little, just a little hard on him? He's such a

sensitive little chap. If I was a woman I don't think I could let him

go like that. You might let him have another try."

Poor Spinks was so earnest, so sincere, so unaffectedly determined not

to take advantage of the situation, that it dawned on Flossie that

dignity must now yield a little to diplomacy. She was not making the

best possible case for herself by representing the rupture as

one-sided. "To tell you the truth, Sidney, he doesn't want to try.

We've agreed about it. We've both of us found we'd made a great

mistake--".

"I wish _I_ could be as sure of that."

"Why, what difference could it make to you?" said Flossie, turning on

him the large eyes of innocence, eyes so dark, so deep, that her

thoughts were lost in them.

"It would make all the difference in the world, if I knew you weren't

making a lot bigger mistake now." He rose, "I think, if you don't

mind, I'll 'ave a few words with Rickets, after all. I think I'll go

up and see him now."

There was no change in the expression of her eyes, but her eyelids

quivered. "No, Sidney, don't. For Goodness' sake don't go and say

anything."

"I'm not going to say anything. I only want to know--"

"I've told you everything--everything I can."

"Yes; but it's what you can't tell me that I want to know."

"Well, but do wait a bit. Don't you speak to him before I see him.

Because I don't want him to think I've given him away."

"I'll take good care he doesn't think that, Flossie. But I'm going to

get this off my mind to-night."

"Well then, you must just take him a message from me. Say, I've

thought it over and that I've told you everything. Don't forget. I've

told you everything, say. Mind you tell him that before you begin

about anything else. Then he'll understand."

"All right. I'll tell him."

Her eyes followed him dubiously as he stumbled over Mr. Partridge's

legs in his excited crossing of the room. She was by no means sure of

her ambassador's discretion. His heart would make no blunder; but

could she trust his head?

Up to this point Flossie had played her game with admirable skill. She

had, without showing one card of her own, caused Spinks to reveal his

entire hand. It was not until she had drawn from him the assurance of

his imperishable devotion, together with the exact amount of his

equally imperishable income, that she had committed herself to a

really decisive move. She was perfectly well aware of its delicacy and

danger. Not for worlds would she have had Spinks guess that Rickman

was still waiting for her decision. And yet, if Spinks referred rashly

and without any preparation to the breaking off of the engagement,

Rickman's natural reply would be that this was the first he had heard

of it. Therefore did she so manoeuvre and contrive as to make Rickman

suppose that Spinks was the accredited bearer of her ultimatum, while

Spinks himself remained unaware that he was conveying the first

intimation of it. It was an exceedingly risky thing to do. But

Flossie, playing for high stakes, had calculated her risk to a nicety.

She must make up her mind to lose something. As the game now stood the

moral approbation of Spinks was more valuable to her than the moral

approbation of Rickman; and in venturing this final move she had

reckoned that the moral approbation of Rickman was all she had to

lose. Unless, of course, he chose to give her away.

But Rickman could be trusted not to give her away.

When Spinks presented himself in Rickman's study he obtained admission

in spite of the lateness of the hour. The youth's solemn agitation was

not to be gainsaid. He first of all delivered himself of Flossie's

message, faithfully, word for word.

"Oh, so she's told you everything, has she? And what did she tell

you?"

"Why, that it was all over between you, broken off, you know."

"And you've come to me to know if it's true, is that it?"

"Well no, why should I? Of course it's true if she says so."

Rickman reflected for a moment; the situation, he perceived, was

delicate in the extreme, delicate beyond his power to deal with it.

But the god did not forsake his own, and inspiration came to him.

"You're right there, Spinky. Of course it's true if she says so."

"She seemed to think you wouldn't mind her telling me. She said you'd

understand."

"Oh yes, I think I understand. Did she tell you she had broken it

off?" (He was really anxious to know how she had put it.)

"Yes, but she was most awfully nice about it. I made out--I mean she

gave me the impression--that she did it, well, partly because she

thought you wanted it off. But that's just what I want to be sure

about. Do you want it off, or don't you?"

"Is that what she wants to know?"

"No. It's what I want to know. What's more, Rickets, I think I've got

a fair right to know it, too."

"What do you want me to say? That I don't want to marry Miss Walker or

that I do?"

Spinks's face flushed with the rosy dawn of an idea. It was possible

that Rickets didn't want to marry her, that he was in need of

protection, of deliverance. There was a great deed that he, Spinks,

could do for Rickets. His eyes grew solemn as they beheld his destiny.

"Look here," said he, "I want you to tell me nothing but the bally

truth. It's the least you can do under the circumstances. I don't want

it for her, well--yes I do--but I want it for myself, too."

"All right, Spinky, you shall have the best truth I can give you at

such uncommonly short notice. I can't say I don't want to marry Miss

Walker, because that wouldn't be very polite to the lady. But I can

say I think she's shown most admirable judgement, and that I'm

perfectly satisfied with her decision. I wouldn't have her go back, on

it for worlds. Will that satisfy you?"

"It would if I thought you really meant it."

"I do mean it, God forgive me. But that isn't her fault, poor little

girl. The whole thing was the most infernal muddle and mistake."

"Ah--that was what she called it--a mistake." Spinks seemed to be

clinging to and cherishing this word of charm.

"I'm glad for her sake that she found it out in time. I'm not the sort

of man a girl like Flossie ought to marry. I ought never to have asked

her."

"Upon my soul, Rickets, I believe you're right there. That's not

saying anything against you, or against her either."

"No. Certainly not against _her_. She's all right, Spinky--"

"I know, I know."

Still Spinks hesitated, restraining his ardent embrace of the truth

presented to him, held back by some scruple of shy unbelieving

modesty.

"Then you think, you really _do_ think, that there isn't any reason

why I shouldn't cut in?"

"No, Heaven bless you; no reason in the world, as far as I'm

concerned. For God's sake cut in and win; the sooner the better. Now,

this minute, if you feel like it."

But still he lingered, for the worst was yet to come. He lingered,

nursing a colossal scruple. Poor Spinks's honour was dear to him

because it was less the gift of nature than the supreme imitative

effort of his adoring heart. He loved honour because Rickman loved it;

just as he had loved Flossie for the same reason. These were the only

ways in which he could imitate him; and like all imitators he

exaggerated the master's manner.

"I say, I don't know what you'll think of me. I said I'd never let on

to Flossie that I cared; and I didn't mean to, I didn't on my word. I

don't know how it happened; but to-night we got talking--to tell you

the truth I thought I was doing my best to get her to make it up with

you--"

"Thanks; that was kind," said Rickman in a queer voice which put

Spinks off a bit.

"I was really, Razors. I do believe I'd have died rather than let her

know how I felt about her; but before I could say knife--"

"She got it out of you?"

"No, she didn't do anything of the sort. It was all me. Like a damn

fool I let it out--some'ow."

Nothing could have been more demoralizing than the spectacle of

Spinks's face as he delivered himself of his immense confession; so

fantastically did it endeavour to chasten rapture with remorse.

Rickman controlled himself the better to enjoy it; for Spinks, taken

seriously, yielded an inexhaustible vein of purest comedy. "Oh,

Spinky," he said with grave reproach, "how could you?"

"Well, I know it was a beastly dishonourable thing to do; but you see

I was really most awkwardly situated."

"I daresay you were." It was all very well to laugh; but in spite of

his amusement he sympathized with Spinky's delicacy. He also had found

himself in awkward situations more than once.

"Still," continued Spinks with extreme dejection, "I can't think how I

came to let it out."

That, and the dejection, was too much for Rickman's gravity.

"If you want the truth, Spinky, the pity was you ever kept it in."

And his laughter, held in, piled up, monstrous, insane, ungovernable,

broke forth, dispersing the last scruple that clouded the beatitude of

Spinks.

CHAPTER LXV

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 on _The Planet_, his place on _Metropolis_, 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 to _The Planet_ now beyond his

lively column once a week; and Rickman was frequently called on to

fill his place. _The Planet_ was 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 of _The

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's_ old contributors knew it no more; or failed to

recognise it in _Metropolis_. 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

of _The 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's _In Arcadia_ lay 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 of _Metropolis_ wore 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, as _I_ said."

"As you didn't say--The mother _only_. 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 the _Prolegomena 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, _and_ unpoetic."

"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--they _were_ so."

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? I _am_ modern--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 that _I_ am 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?"

"Where _are_ the 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 of _Metropolis_. 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 Arcadia_ supplying 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 of _Saturnalia_ would have been prejudicial to the

interests of _The Museion_; a series of triumphant _Helens in Leuce_

would have turned Rickman aside for ever from the columns of

_Metropolis_; 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.

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

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 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 nobler 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 destitute 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 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 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; 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 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 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

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 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 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 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."

"He _is_ a classic--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. Nobody cares a tuppenny damn 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?"