"I mean that what you said you might have written."
"Ah, _litera scripta manet_. It isn"t safe to prophesy. Remember, I saw him a very long way off. n.o.body had a notion there was anybody there."
"You could have given them a notion."
"I couldn"t. The world, Lucia, is not like you or me. It has no imagination. It wouldn"t have seen, and it wouldn"t have believed. I should have been a voice crying in the wilderness; a voice and nothing behind it. And as I said prophecy is a dangerous game. In the first place, there is always a chance that your prediction may be wrong; and the world, my dear cousin, has a nasty way of stoning its prophets even when they"re right."
"Oh, I thought it provided them with bread and b.u.t.ter, plenty of b.u.t.ter."
"It does, on the condition that they shall prophesy b.u.t.tery things.
When it comes to hard things, if they ask for bread the world retaliates and offers them a stone. And that stone, I need not tell you, has no b.u.t.ter on it."
"I see. You were afraid. You haven"t the courage of your opinion."
"And I haven"t much opinion of my courage. I own to being afraid."
"Afraid to do your duty as a critic and as a friend?"
"My first duty is to the public--_my_ public; not to my friends.
Savage Keith Rickman may be a very great poet--I think he is--but if my public doesn"t want to hear about Savage Keith Rickman, I can"t insist on their hearing, can I?"
"No, Horace, after all you"ve told me, I don"t believe you can."
"Mind you, it takes courage, of a sort, to own it."
"I"m to admire your frankness, am I? You say you"re afraid. But you said just now you had such power."
"If I had taken your advice and devoted myself to the role of Vates I should have lost my power. n.o.body would have listened to me. I began that way, by preaching over people"s heads. The _Museion_ was a pulpit in the air. I stood in that pulpit for five years, spouting literary transcendentalism. n.o.body listened. When I condescended to come down and talk about what people could understand then everybody listened.
It wouldn"t have done Rickman any good if I"d pestered people with him. But when the time comes I shall speak out."
"I daresay, when the time comes--it will come too--when he has made his name with no thanks to you, then you"ll be the first to say "I told you so." It would have been a greater thing to have helped him when he needed it."
"I did help him. He wouldn"t be writing now if it wasn"t for me."
"Do you see much of him?"
"Not much. It isn"t my fault," he added in answer to her reproachful eyes. "He"s shut himself up with Maddox in a stuffy little house at Ealing."
"Does that mean that he"s very badly off?"
"Well, no; I shouldn"t say so. He"s got an editorship. But he isn"t the sort that"s made for getting on. In many things he is a fool."
"I admire his folly more than some people"s wisdom."
From the look in Lucia"s eyes Jewdwine was aware that his cousin no longer adored him. Did she adore Rickman?
"You"re a little hard on me, I think. After all, I was the first to help him."
"_And_ the last. Are you quite sure you helped him? How do you know you didn"t hinder him? You kept him for years turning out inferior work for you, when he might have been giving us his best."
"He might--if he"d been alive to do it."
"I"m only thinking of what you might have done. The sort of thing you"ve done for other people--Mr. Fulcher, for instance."
Jewdwine blushed as he had never blushed before. He was not given to that form of self-betrayal.
"You said just now you could either kill a book in twenty-four hours, or make it--did you say?--immortal."
"I might have said I could keep it alive another twenty-four hours."
"You know the reputations you have made for people."
"I do know them. I"ve made enough of them to know. The reputations I"ve made will not last. The only kind that does last is the kind that makes itself. Do you seriously suppose a man like Rickman needs my help? I am a journalist, and the world that journalists are compelled to live in is very poor and small. He"s in another place altogether. I couldn"t dream of treating him as I treat, say, Rankin or Fulcher. The best service I could do him was to leave him alone--to keep off and give him room."
"Room to stand in?"
"No. Room to grow in, room to fight in--"
"Room to measure his length in when he falls?"
"If you like. Rickman"s length will cover a considerable area."
Lucia looked at her cousin with genuine admiration. How clever, how amazingly clever he was! She knew and he knew that he had failed in generosity to Rickman; that he had been a more than cautious critic and a callous friend. She had been prepared to be nice to him if they had kept Rickman out of their conversation; but as the subject had arisen she had meant to give Horace a terribly bad quarter of an hour; she had meant to turn him inside out and make him feel very mean and pitiful and small. And somehow it hadn"t come off. Instead of diminishing as he should have done, Horace had worked himself gradually up to her height, had caught flame from her flame, and now he was consuming her with her own fire. It was she who had taken, the view most degrading to the man she admired; she who would have dragged her poet down to earth and put him on a level with Rankin and Fulcher and such people. Horace would have her believe that his own outlook was the clearer and more heavenly; that he understood Rickman better; that he saw that side of him that faced eternity.
His humility, too, was pathetic and disarmed her indignation. At the same time he made it appear that this was a lifting of the veil, a glimpse of the true Jewdwine, the soul of him in its naked simplicity and sincerity. And she was left uncertain whether it were not so.
"Even so," she said gently; "think of all you will have missed."
"Missed, Lucia?"
"Yes, missed. I think, to have believed in any one"s greatness--the greatness of a great poet--to have been allowed to hold in your hands the pure, priceless thing, before the world had touched it--to have seen what n.o.body else saw--to feel that through your first glorious sight of him he belonged to you as he never could belong to the world, that he was your own--that would be something to have lived for. It would be greatness of a kind."
He bowed his head as it were in an att.i.tude as humble and reverent as her own. "And yet," he said, "the world does sometimes see its poet and believe in him."
"It does--when he works miracles."
"Someday he will work his miracle."
"And when the world runs after him you will follow."
"I shall not be very far behind."
CHAPTER LXXVI