"Style be d----d. For all I care you may cut up my style till you can"t tell it from Fulcher"s. I object to your transposing my meaning to suit your own. Honestly, Jewdwine, I"d rather write like Fulcher than write as you"ve made me appear to have written."
"My dear Rickman, that"s where you make the mistake. You don"t appear at all." He smiled with urbane tolerance of the error. "The editor, as you know, is solely responsible for unsigned reviews."
So far Jewdwine had come off well. He had always a tremendous advantage in his hereditary manners; however right you had been to start with, his imperturbable refinement put you grossly in the wrong.
And at this point Rickman gave himself away.
"What"s the good of that?" said he, "if young Paterson believes I wrote them?"
"Young Paterson isn"t ent.i.tled to any belief in the matter."
"But--he knew."
There was a shade of genuine annoyance on Jewdwine"s face.
"Oh of course, if you"ve told him that you were the author. That"s rather awkward for you, but it"s hardly my fault. I"m sorry, Rickman, but you really _are_ a little indiscreet."
"I wish I could explain your behaviour in the same way."
"Come, since you"re so keen on explanations, how do you propose to explain your own? I gave you certain instructions, and what right had you to go beyond them, not to say against them?"
"What earthly right had you to make me say the exact opposite of what I did say? But I didn"t go against your instructions. Here they are."
He produced them. "You"ll see that you gave me a perfectly free hand as to s.p.a.ce."
Jewdwine looked keenly at him. "You knew perfectly well what I meant.
And you took advantage of--of a trifling ambiguity in my phrasing, to do--as you would say--the exact opposite. That was hardly what I expected of you."
As he spoke Jewdwine drew his shawl up about his waist, thus delicately drawing attention to his enfeebled state. The gesture seemed to convict Rickman of taking advantage not only of his phrase but of his influenza, behaviour superlatively base.
"I can give you a perfectly clear statement of the case. You carefully suppressed _my_ friend and you boomed your own for all you were worth.
Naturally, I reversed your judgment. Of course, if you had told me you wanted to do a little log-rolling on your own account, I should have been only too delighted--but I always understood that you disapproved of the practice."
"So I do. Paterson isn"t a friend of mine."
"He"s your friend"s friend then. I think Mr. Maddox might have been left to look after his own man."
Rickman rose hastily, as if he were no longer able to sit still and bear it.
"Jewdwine," he said, and his voice had the vibration which the master had once found so irresistible. "Have you read young Paterson"s poems?"
"Yes. I"ve read them."
"And what is your honest--your private opinion of them?"
"I"m not a fool, Rickman. My private opinion of them is the same as yours."
"What an admission!"
"But," said Jewdwine suavely, "that"s not the sort of opinion my public--the public that pays for _Metropolis_--pays to have."
"You mean it"s the sort of opinion I"m paid to give."
"Well, broadly speaking--of course there are exceptions, and Paterson in other circ.u.mstances might have been one of them--that"s very much what I do mean."
"Then--I"m awfully sorry, Jewdwine--but if that"s so I can"t go on working for _Metropolis_. I must give it up. In fact, that"s really what I came to say."
Jewdwine too had risen with an air of relief, being anxious to end an interview which was becoming more uncomfortable than he cared for. He had stood, gazing under drooping eyelids at his disciple"s feet.
n.o.body would have been more surprised than Jewdwine if you had suggested to him that he could have any feeling about looking anybody in the face. But at that last incredible, impossible speech of his he raised his eyes and fixed them on Rickman"s for a moment.
In that moment many things were revealed to him.
He turned and stood with his back to Rickman, staring through the open window. All that he saw there, the quiet walled garden, the rows of elms on the terrace beside it, the dim green of the Heath, and the steep unscaleable grey blue barrier of the sky, had taken on an unfamiliar aspect, as it were a tragic simplicity and vastness. For these things, once so restfully indifferent, had in a moment become the background of his spiritual agony, a scene where his soul appeared to him, standing out suddenly shelterless, naked and alone. No--if it _had_ only been alone; but that was the peculiar horror of it. He could have borne it but for the presence of the other man who had called forth the appalling vision, and remained a spectator of it.
There was at least this much comfort for him in his pangs--he knew that a man of coa.r.s.er fibre would neither have felt nor understood them. But it was impossible for Jewdwine to do an ign.o.ble thing and not to suffer; it was the innermost delicacy of his soul that made it writhe under the destiny he had thrust upon it.
And in the same instant he recognized and acknowledged the greatness of the man with whom he had to do; acknowledged, not grudgingly, not in spite of himself, but because of himself, because of that finer soul within his soul which spoke the truth in secret, being born to recognize great things and admire them. He wondered now how he could ever have mistaken Rickman. He perceived the origin and significance of his att.i.tude of disparagement, of doubt. It dated from a certain hot July afternoon eight years ago when he lay under a beech-tree in the garden of Court House and Lucia had insisted on talking about the poet, displaying an enthusiasm too ardent to be borne. He had meant well by Rickman, but Lucia"s ardour had somehow put him off. Maddox"s had had the same effect, though for a totally different reason, and so it had gone on. He had said to himself that if other people were going to take Rickman that way he could no longer feel the same peculiar interest.
He turned back again.
"Do you really mean it?" said he.
"I"m afraid I do."
"You mean that you intend to give up reviewing for _Metropolis_?"
"I mean that after this I can"t have anything more to do with it."
He means, thought Jewdwine, that he won"t have anything more to do with me.
And Rickman saw that he was understood. He wondered how Jewdwine would take it.
He took it n.o.bly. "Well," he said, "I"m sorry. But if you must go, you must. To tell the truth, my dear fellow, at this rate, you know, I couldn"t afford to keep you. I wish I could. You are not the only thing I can"t afford." He said it with a certain emotion not very successfully concealed beneath his smile. Rickman was about to go; but he detained him.
"Wait one minute. Do you mind telling me whether you"ve any regular sources of income besides _Metropolis_?"
"Well, not at the moment."
"And supposing--none arise?"
"I must risk it."
"You seem to have a positive mania for taking risks." Yes, that was Rickman all over, he found a brilliant joy in the excitement; he was in love with danger.
"Oh well, sometimes, you know, you"ve _got_ to take them."
Happy Rickman! The things that were so difficult and complicated to Jewdwine were so simple, so incontestable to him. "Some people, Rickman, would say you were a fool." He sighed, and the sigh was a tribute his envy paid to Rickman"s foolishness. "I won"t offer an opinion; the event will prove."
"It won"t prove anything. Events never do. They merely happen."