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."