He had tested it because of his fear. He had chosen his profession as the extreme test, because of his fear. He had given up his profession, again because of his fear, fear of success in it, fear of the world's way of rewarding heroism, the dreadful fear of promotion, of being caught and branded and tied down. He had thought that to be forced into a line, to be committed to medicine and surgery, was to burn the ships of God, to cut himself off for ever from his vision.
Looking back, he saw that his fear of the world had been nothing to his fear of women, of the half-spiritual, half-sensual snare. He had put away this fear, and stood the ultimate test. He had tied himself to a woman and bowed his neck for her to cling to. He would have judged this attitude perilous in the extreme, incompatible with vision, with seeing anything but two diminutive feet and the inches of earth they stood in. And it was only since he had done this dangerous thing and done it thoroughly, only since he had staked his soul to redeem his body, that his vision had become secure. It really stayed. He could turn from it, but it was always with him; he could hold and command it at his will.
She was right. If he could take that from her, if he was in for it to that extent, why did he bother about the other stupid things?
And yet he bothered. All that autumn he worked harder than ever at his journalism. He seemed to gather to himself all the jobs that were going on the "Morning Telegraph." He went the round of the theatres on first nights, reporting for the "Morning Telegraph" on plays that were beneath the notice of its official dramatic critic. He reviewed poetry and belles lettres for the "Morning Telegraph;" and he did a great deal of work for it down in Fleet Street with a paste-pot and a pair of scissors.
Prothero's genius had liberated itself for the time being in his last poem; it was detached from him; it wandered free, like a blessed spirit invisible, while Prothero's brain agonized and journalized as Laura said. There was no compromise this time, no propitiation, no playing with the beautiful prose of his occasional essays. He plunged from his heavenly height sheer into the worst blackness of the pit; he contorted himself there in his obscure creation of paragraphs and columns. His spirit writhed like a fine flame, trammelled and tortured by the grossness of the stuff it kindled, and the more it writhed the more he piled on the paragraphs and columns. He seemed, Laura said, to take a pleasure in seeing how much he could pile on without extinguishing it.
In December he caught cold coming out of a theatre on a night of north wind and sleet, and he was laid up for three weeks with bronchitis.
And at night, that winter, when sounds of coughing came from the Consumption Hospital, they were answered through the open windows of the house with the iron gate. And Laura at Owen's side lay awake in her fear.
LVIII
There was one thing that Prothero, in his journalism, drew the line at. He would not, if they paid him more than they had ever paid him, more than they had ever dreamed of paying anybody, he would not review another poet's work. For some day, he said, Nicky will bring out a volume of his poems, and in that day he will infallibly turn to me. If, in that day, I can lay my hand upon my heart and swear that I never review poetry, that I never have reviewed it and never shall, I can look Nicky in his innocent face with a clean soul.