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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."
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.
Whether it was his own spirit or somebody else's did not definitely appear; but now and again it broke loose altogether, and then, when people complimented him on the brilliance of his appearance that week, he smiled inscrutably. It was impossible to say how far Jewdwine's conscience approved of these outbursts of individuality.
With the readers of Metropolis he passed as Jewdwine's which was all that Jewdwine wanted. With the earnest aspiring public, striving to admire Keith Rickman because they had been told they ought to, he passed as their own. The few who had known him from the first knew also that poets like Rickman are never discovered until they discover themselves.
The triumph of Rickman's greater qualities appealed to her as a spectacle; it was not spoiled for her by the reflection that she personally had been more affected by his failure. If she showed her insight into Rickman's character by admitting the relative insignificance of that failure, she showed an equal insight into Jewdwine's by suppressing all mention of it now.
If Maddox was urged to these excesses by his contempt for Jewdwine's critical cowardice, Jewdwine was cooled by the spectacle of Maddox's intemperance. He had begun by feeling a little bitter towards Rickman on his own account. He was disappointed in him. Rickman had shown that he was indifferent to his opinion.
Rickman's Saturnalia remained where Hanson had placed it, rather low in the ranks of young Decadence. And then, just because he had suppressed the truth about him, because he felt that he had given Rickman some grounds for bitterness, Jewdwine began to feel more and more bitter himself. If Rickman felt any bitterness he never showed it. He had only two thoughts on reading Jewdwine's articles.
Once Jewdwine had hung about the shop for half an hour talking; the interview being broken by Rickman's incessant calls to the counter. Once, they had taken a walk together down Cheapside, which from that moment became a holy place. Then came the day when, at Jewdwine's invitation, Helen in Leuce travelled down from London to Oxford, and from Oxford to Harmouth.
But there was one person to whom she had not given pleasure; and that person was Horace Jewdwine's friend. On the contrary, she had robbed the poor man of the one solitary pleasure he had anticipated in his three days' holiday; with what disastrous results she had just witnessed. It was impossible for Lucia to do anybody a wrong, however innocently, without making up for it.
"You see you'll think it sheer lunacy, but I've a sort of idea that if I'm to go on at all, myself, it must be on those lines. Modern poetic drama It's that or nothing, you know." Jewdwine's face said very plainly that he had no doubt whatever of the alternative. It also expressed a curious and indefinable relief. "Modern poetic drama? So that's your modest ambition, is it?"
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