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It was Jewdwine's excuse that the vitality seemed inexhaustible. Jewdwine, as he had once said, dreaded the divine fire. He would ultimately have subdued the flame by a persistent demand for brilliance of another kind. He admired his immortal adolescence; he would have him young and lyrical for ever. He had discovered everything in him but the dramatic poet he was yet to be.
"But," said Jewdwine suavely, "that's not the sort of opinion my public the public that pays for Metropolis pays to have." "You mean it's the sort of opinion I'm paid to give." "Well, broadly speaking of course there are exceptions, and Paterson in other circumstances might have been one of them that's very much what I do mean."
As an editor and critic he was respected for his incorruptibility and for the purity of his passion for literature. His utterances were considered to carry authority and weight. Just at first the weight was perhaps the more conspicuous quality of the two. Jewdwine could not be parted from his "Absolute."
Otherwise his natural inclination would have been to leave it to his daughter, for whom he had more or less affection, rather than to his nephew, for whom he had none. As it happened, it was Horace Jewdwine who was responsible for the labour which Lucia had so impetuously undertaken. Lucia was aware that her grandfather's desire had been to rearrange and catalogue the library.
Nobody, not even Jewdwine, knew what that handshake across the counter had meant for Rickman; how his soul had hungered and thirsted for Jewdwine's society; how, in "the little rat'ole in the City," it had consumed itself with longing. It was his first great passion, a passion that waited upon chance; to be gratified for five minutes, ten minutes at the most.
"We want new blood," said the proprietors. The difficulty was how to combine new blood with the old spirit, and Horace Jewdwine solved their problem, presenting the remarkable combination of an old head upon comparatively young shoulders. He was responsible, authoritative, inspired by a high and noble seriousness.
"My dear fellow, why on earth should I say so if I didn't?" "N no. Only I thought, after the mess I've made of things, that none of your family would ever care to have anything to do with me again." It was the nearest he had come to mentioning Lucia Harden, and the pain it cost him was visible on his face. "My family," said Jewdwine with a stiff smile, "will not have anything to do with you.
Jewdwine was another link. And at that thought his heart heaved and became alive again.
Jewdwine was not aware of the extent of Rickman's acquaintance with his cousin, neither could he well have conceived it. And for Rickman it was not yet possible either to speak or to hear of Lucia without pain. It was not until dinner was over, and Rickman was no longer eating Jewdwine's food, that they ventured on the unpleasant topic that lay before them, conspicuous, though untouched.
In this instance Maddox, whose Celtic soul grew wanton at the prospect of a fight, would have fallen upon Jewdwine with an infernal joy, but he would have been the first to deprecate Rickman's decision as absurd. As for Rankin of Stables, instead of flying into a passion they would, in similar circumstances, have sat still and smiled.
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