The Divine Fire Part 74

"I? To you?"

"Yes. You have satisfied my curiosity. I own that sometimes I have wanted to know what sort of voice will be singing after I am dead. And now I _do_ know. Good-bye, and thank you."

He pressed his hand, turned abruptly and shuffled into the house. He was noticeably the worse for his walk, and Rickman felt that he had to answer for it to Miss Gurney.

"I'm afraid I've tired him. I hope I haven't done him harm."

Miss Gurney glanced sharply at him, turned, and disappeared through the study window. Her manner implied that if he had harmed Fielding she would make him feel it.

She came back still unsmiling. "No. You have not tired him."

"Then," said he as he followed her into the drawing-room, "I am forgiven?"

"Yes. But I did not say you had not done him harm."

The lady paused in her amenities to pour out his tea.

"Miss Gurney," he said as he took the cup from her, "can you tell me the name of the friend who sent my book to you?"

"No, I'm afraid I cannot."

"I see. After all, I am not forgiven?"

"I am not at all sure that you ought to be."

"I heard what he said to you," she went on almost fiercely. "That's why I hate young poets. He says there is only you to hate."

"So, of course, you hate me?"

"I think I do. I wish I had never heard of you. I wish he had never seen you. I hope you will never come again. I haven't looked at your poems that he praises so. He says they are beautiful. Very well, I shall hate them _because_ they are beautiful. He says they have more life in them than his. Do you understand _now_ why I hate them and you? He was young before you came here. You have made him feel that he is old, that he must die. I don't know what else he said to you. Shall I tell you what he said to me? He said that the world will forget him when it's listening to you."

"You misunderstood him." He thought that he understood her; but it puzzled him that, adoring Fielding as she did, she yet permitted herself to doubt.

"Do you suppose I thought that he grudged you your fame? Because he doesn't. But I do."

"You needn't. At present it only exists in his imagination."

"That's enough. If it exists there--"

"You mean, it will go down the ages?"

She nodded.

"And you don't want it to go?"

"Not unless his goes too, and goes farther."

"You need hardly be afraid."

"I'm _not_ afraid. Only, he has always stood alone, so high that no one has touched him. I've always seen him that way, all my life--and I can't bear to see him any other way. I can't bear any one to touch him, or even to come anywhere near him."

"No one ever will touch him. Whoever comes after him, he will always stand alone. And," he added gently, "you will always see him so."

"Yes," she said, but in a voice that told him she was still unconsoled. "If I had seen him when he was young, I suppose I should always see him young. Not that I care about that so much. His youth is the part of him that interests me least; perhaps because it was never in any way a part of me."

He looked at her. Did she realize how far Fielding's youth, if report spoke truly, had belonged to, or in her own words, "been a part of"

other women? Did she resent their part in him? He thought not. It was not so much that she was jealous of Fielding's youth, as that she shrank from any appearance of disloyalty to his age.

"And yet," she said, "I feel that no one has a right to be young when he is old. I hate young poets because they are young. I hate my own youth--"

Her youth? Yes, it was youth that leapt quivering in her tragic face, like a blown flame. Her body hardly counted except as fuel to the eager and incessant fire.

"Don't hate it," he said. "It is the most beautiful thing you have to give him."

"Ah--if I _could_ give it him!"

He smiled. "You have given it him. He isn't old when he can inspire such devotion. He is to be envied."

He rose and held out his hand. As she took it, Miss Gurney's flame-like gaze rested on him a moment and grew soft.

"If you want to know, it was Lucia Harden who sent me your poems,"

said she. And he knew that for once Miss Gurney had betrayed a secret.

He wondered what had made her change her mind. He wondered whether Lucia had really made a secret of it. He wondered what the secret had to do with Fielding. And wondering he went away, envying him the love that kept its own divine fire burning for him on his hearth.

CHAPTER LI

There were times when Rickman, hara.s.sed by his engagement, reviewed his literary position with dismay. Of success as men count success, he had none. He was recognized as a poet by perhaps a score of people; to a few hundreds he was a mere name in the literary papers; to the great ma.s.s of his fellow-countrymen he was not even a name. He had gone his own way and remained obscure; while his friends, Jewdwine and Maddox, had gone theirs and won for themselves solid reputations. As for Rankin (turned novelist) he had achieved celebrity. They had not been able to impart to him the secret of success. But the recognition and something more than recognition of the veteran poet consoled him for the years of failure, and he felt that he could go through many such on the strength of it.

The incident was so momentous that he was moved to speak of it to Jewdwine and to Maddox. As everything that interested him interested Maddox, he related it to Maddox in full; but with Jewdwine (such was his exceeding delicacy) he observed a certain modest reticence. Still there was no diminution in his engaging candour, his innocent a.s.sumption that Jewdwine would be as pleased and excited as Maddox and himself.

"He really seemed," said he, selecting from among Fielding's utterances, "to think the things were great."

Jewdwine raised his eyebrows. "My dear Rickman, I congratulate you."

He paused for so long that his next remark, thoughtfully produced, seemed to have no reference to Rickman's communication. "Fielding is getting very old." If Rickman had been in a state of mind to attend carefully to Jewdwine's manner, he might have gathered that the incident had caused him some uneasiness.

It had indeed provided the editor of _The Museion_ with much matter for disagreeable thought. As it happened (after months of grave deliberation), he had lately had occasion to form a very definite opinion as to the value of Rickman the journalist. He knew that Rickman the journalist had no more deadly enemy than Rickman the poet; and at that particular moment he did not greatly care to be reminded of his existence. Jewdwine's att.i.tude to Rickman and his confidences was the result of a change in the att.i.tude of _The Museion_ and its proprietors. _The Museion_ was on the eve of a revolution, and to Jewdwine as its editor Rickman the journalist had suddenly become invaluable.

The revolution itself was not altogether sudden. For many months the behaviour of _The Museion_ had been a spectacle of great joy to the young men of its contemporary, _The Planet_. The spirit of compet.i.tion had latterly seized upon that most severely academic of reviews, and it was now making desperate efforts to be popular. It was as if a middle-aged and absent-minded don, suddenly alive to the existence of athletic sports in his neighbourhood, should insist on entering himself for all the events, clothed, uniquely, if inappropriately, in cap and gown. He would be a very moving figure in the eyes of hilarious and immortal youth. And such a figure did _The Museion_ in its latter days present. But the proprietors were going to change all that. _The Museion_ was about to be withdrawn from circulation and reissued in a new form under the new t.i.tle of _Metropolis_. As if aware of the shocking incongruity it was going to fling off its cap and gown. Whatever its staying power might be, its spirit and its outward appearance should henceforth in no way differ from those of other compet.i.tors in the race for money and position.

While the details of the change were being planned in the offices of _The Museion_, the burning question for the proprietors was this: would their editor, their great, their unique and lonely editor, be prepared to go with them? Or would he (and with him his brilliant and enthusiastic staff) insist on standing by the principles that had been the glory of the paper and its ruin? Mr. Jewdwine had shown himself fairly amenable so far, but would he be any use to them when it really came to the point?

To Jewdwine that point was the turning-point in his career. He had had to put that burning question to himself. Was he, after all, prepared to stand by his principles? It was pretty certain that if he did, his principles would not stand by him. Was there anything in them that _would_ stand at all against the brutal pressure that was moulding literature at the present hour? No organ of philosophic criticism could (at the present hour) exist, unless created and maintained by Jewdwine single-handed and at vast expense. His position was becoming more unique and more lonely every day, quite intolerably lonely and unique. For Jewdwine after all was human. He longed for eminence, but not for such eminence as meant isolation. Isolation is not powerful; and even more than for eminence he longed for power. He longed for it with the pa.s.sion of a weak will governed despotically by a strong intellect. It amounted to a positive obsession, the tyranny of a cold and sane idea. He knew perfectly well now what his position as editor of _The Museion_ was worth. Compared with that great, that n.o.ble but solitary person, even Maddox had more power. But the editor of _Metropolis_, by a few trifling concessions to the spirit of modernity, would in a very short time carry all before him. He must then either run with the race or drop out of it altogether; and between these two courses, Jewdwine, with all his genius for hesitation, could not waver. After much deliberation he had consented (not without some show of condescension) to give his name and leaders.h.i.+p to Metropolis; and he reaped the reward of his plasticity in a substantial addition to his income.