"How long have you known her?"
"About six months, on and off."
"Oh, only on and off."
"On and off the _stage_, I mean. And that"s knowledge," said Rickman.
"Anybody can know them on; but it"s not one man in a thousand knows them off--really knows them."
"I"m very glad to hear it."
He changed the subject. In Rickman the poet he was deeply interested; but at the moment Rickman the man inspired him with disgust.
Jewdwine had a weak digestion. When he sat at the high table, peering at his sole and chicken, with critical and pathetic twitchings of his fastidious nose, he shuddered at the vigorous animal appet.i.tes of undergraduates in Hall.
Even so he shrank now from the coa.r.s.e exuberance of Rickman"s youth.
When it came to women, Rickman _was_ impossible.
Now Jewdwine, while pursuing an inner train of thought that had Rickman for its subject, was also keeping his eye on a hansom, and wondering whether he would hail it and so reach Hampstead in time for dinner, or whether he would dine at the Club. Edith would be annoyed if he failed to keep his appointment, and the Club dinners were not good. But neither were Edith"s; moreover, by dining at the Club for one-and-six, and taking a twopenny tram instead of a three-and-sixpenny cab, he would save one and tenpence.
"And yet," he continued thoughtfully, "the man who wrote _Helen in Leuce_ was a poet. Or at least," he added, "one seventh part a poet."
Though Jewdwine"s lower nature was preoccupied, the supreme critical faculty performed its functions with precision. The arithmetical method was perhaps suggested by the other calculation. He could not be quite sure, but he believed he had summed up Savage Rickman pretty accurately.
"Thanks," said Rickman, "you"ve got the fraction all right, anyhow. A poet one day out of seven; the other six days a potman in an infernal, stinking, flaring Gin-Palace-of-Art."
As he looked up at Rickman"s, blazing with all its lights, he felt that he had hit on the satisfying, the defining phrase.
His face expressed a wistful desire to confer further with Jewdwine on this matter; but a certain delicacy restrained him.
Something fine in Jewdwine"s nature, something half-human, half-tutorial, responded to the mute appeal that said so plainly, "Won"t you hear me? I"ve so much to ask, so much to say. So many ideas, and you"re the only man that can understand them." Jewdwine impressed everybody, himself included, as a person of prodigious understanding.
The question was, having understood Rickman, having discovered in him a neglected genius, having introduced him to the Club and asked him to dinner on the strength of it, how much further was he prepared to go?
Why--provided he was sure of the genius, almost any length, short of introducing him to the ladies of his family. But was he sure? Savage Rickman was young, and youth is deceptive. Supposing he--Jewdwine--was deceived? Supposing the genius were to elude him, leaving him saddled with the man? What on earth should he do with him?
Things had been simpler in the earlier days of their acquaintance, when the counter stood between them, and formed a firm natural barrier to closer intercourse. n.o.body, not even Jewdwine, knew what that handshake across the counter had meant for Rickman; how his soul had hungered and thirsted for Jewdwine"s society; how, in "the little rat"ole in the City," it had consumed itself with longing. It was his first great pa.s.sion, a pa.s.sion that waited upon chance; to be gratified for five minutes, ten minutes at the most. Once Jewdwine had hung about the shop for half an hour talking; the interview being broken by Rickman"s incessant calls to the counter. Once, they had taken a walk together down Cheapside, which from that moment became a holy place. Then came the day when, at Jewdwine"s invitation, _Helen in Leuce_ travelled down from London to Oxford, and from Oxford to Harmouth. Her neo-cla.s.sic beauty appealed to Jewdwine"s taste (and to the taste of Jewdwine"s cousin); he recognized in Rickman a disciple, and was instantly persuaded of his genius. At one bound Rickman had leapt the barrier of the counter; and here he was, enthusiastic and devoted. To be sure, his devotion was not fed largely upon praise; for, unlike the younger man, Jewdwine admired but sparingly. Neither was it tainted with any thought of material advantage. Jewdwine was very free with his criticism and advice; but, beyond these high intellectual aids, it never occurred to Rickman that he had anything to gain by Jewdwine"s friendship. Discipleship is the purest of all human relations.
Jewdwine divined this purity, and was touched by it. He prepared to accept a certain amount of responsibility. He looked at his watch. He could still get to Hampstead by eight o"clock, if he took a cab--say,--twenty minutes. He could spare him another ten. The Junior Journalists were coming back from their dinner and the room would soon be crowded. He took his disciple"s arm in a protecting manner and steered him into a near recess. He felt that the ten minutes he was about to give him would be decisive in the young man"s career.
"You"ve still got to find your formula. Not to have found your formula," he said solemnly, "is not to have found yourself."
"Perhaps I haven"t been looking in very likely places," said Rickman, n.o.bly touched, as he always was by the more personal utterances of the master.
"The Jubilee Variety Theatre, for instance. Do you go there to find the ideal, or in pursuit of the fugitive actuality?"
"Whichever you like to call it. Its name on the programme is Miss Poppy Grace."
"Look here, Rickman," said Jewdwine, gently; "when are you going to give up this business?"
"Which business?"
"Well, at the moment I referred to your situation in the Gin Palace of Art--"
"I can"t chuck it just yet. There"s my father, you see. It would spoil all his pleasure in that new plate-gla.s.s and mahogany devilry. He"s excited about it; wants to make it a big thing--"
"So he puts a big man into it?"
"Oh, well, I must see him started."
He spoke simply, as of a thing self-evident and indisputable. Jewdwine admired.
"You"re quite right. You _are_ handicapped. Heavily handicapped. So, for Goodness" sake, don"t weight yourself any more. If you can"t drop the Gin Palace, drop Miss Poppy Grace."
"Poppy Grace? She weighs about as much as a feather."
"Drop her, drop her, all the same."
"I can"t. She wouldn"t drop. She"d float."
"Don"t float with her."
As he rose he spoke slowly and impressively. "What you"ve got to do is to pull yourself together. You can"t afford to be dissolute, or even dissipated."
Rickman looked hard at Jewdwine"s boots. Irreproachable boots, well made, well polished, unspotted by the world. And the only distinguishable word in Rickman"s answer was "Life." And as he said "Life" he blushed like a girl when for the first time she says "Love,"
a blush of rapture and of shame, her young blood sensitive to the least hint of apathy in her audience.
Jewdwine"s apathy was immense.
"Another name for the fugitive actuality," he said. "Well, I"m afraid I haven"t any more time--" He looked round the room a little vaguely, and as he did so he laid on the young man"s shoulder a delicate fastidious hand. "There are one or two men here I should have liked to introduce you to, if I"d had time.--Another night, perhaps--" He piloted him downstairs and so out into the Strand.
"Good night. Good night. Take my advice and leave the fugitive actuality alone."
Those were Jewdwine"s last words, spoken from the depths of the hansom. It carried him to the cla.s.sic heights of Hampstead, to the haunts of the cultivated, the intellectual, the refined.
Rickman remained a moment. His dreamy gaze was fixed on the ma.s.sive pile before him, that rose, solidly soaring, flaunting a brutal challenge to the tender April sky. It stood for the vast material reality, the whole of that eternal, implacable Power which is at enmity with dreams; which may be conquered, propitiated, absorbed, but never annihilated or denied.
_That_ actuality was not fugitive.
CHAPTER VII
Perhaps it was not to be wondered at if Mr. Rickman had not yet found himself. There were, as he sorrowfully reflected, so many Mr.
Rickmans.
There was Mr. Rickman of the front shop and second-hand department, known as "our Mr. Rickman." The shop was proud of him; his appearance was supposed to give it a certain _cachet_. He neither strutted nor grovelled; he moved about from shelf to shelf in an absent-minded scholarly manner. He served you, not with obsequiousness, nor yet with condescension, but with a certain remoteness and abstraction, a n.o.ble apathy. Though a bookseller, his literary conscience remained incorruptible. He would introduce you to his favourite authors with a magnificent take-it-or-leave-it air, while an almost imperceptible lifting of his eyebrows as he handed you _your_ favourite was a subtle criticism of your taste. This method of conducting business was called keeping up the tone of the establishment. The appearance and disappearance of this person was timed and regulated by circ.u.mstances beyond his own control, so that of necessity all the other Mr.
Rickmans were subject to him.