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?"
"Because bribery's too harsh a term to apply to an editor, mon semblable, mon frère; but in a woman, or a parliamentary candidate, it might possibly be called corruption."
"Thanks. Well, you've made me a very generous offer, Maddox, so generous that I'm glad you've explained yourself before I took it. For after that, you know, it would have been rather awkward for me to have to tell you you're a liar!"
"You consider me a liar, do you?" said Maddox in a mild dispassionate voice.
"Certainly I do, when you say these thing about Jewdwine."
"How about Rankin? He says them."
"Then Rankin's a liar, too!"
"And Stables?"
"And Stables—if he says them."
"My dear Rickman, everybody says them; only they don't say them to you. We can't all be liars."
"There's a difference, I admit. Anybody who says them is a liar; and anybody who says them to me is a d——d liar! That's the difference."
Whereupon Maddox intimated (as honour indeed compelled him) that Rickman was the sort of young fool for which there is no salvation. And by the time Rickman had replied with suitable hyperbole; and Maddox, because of the great love he bore to Rickman, had observed that if Rickman chose to cut his confused throat he might do so without its being a matter of permanent regret to Maddox; and Rickman, because of the great love he bore to Maddox, had suggested his immediate departure for perdition, it was pretty clearly understood that Rickman himself preferred to perish, everlastingly perish, rather than be connected even remotely with Maddox and his paper. And on that understanding they separated.
And when the door was closed between them, Rickman realised that his folly was even as Maddox had described it. In one night, and at a crisis of his finances, he had severed himself from a fairly permanent source of income; flung up the most desirable chance that had presented itself hitherto in his career; and quarrelled disgracefully and disagreeably with his best friend. He supposed the split was bound to come; but if he could only have staved it off for another year, till he had collected that seven hundred and fifty! There could be no doubt that that was what he ought to have done. He ought to have been prudent for Lucia's sake. And on the top of it all came the terrible reflection—Was it really worth it? Did he really believe in Jewdwine? Or had he sacrificed himself for an idea?