The Divine Fire Part 112

"He can make--or kill--a reputation in twenty-four hours."

"Does that satisfy your ambition?"

"Yes. It satisfies my ambition. But it doesn't satisfy me."

"I was afraid it didn't."

"You needn't be afraid, dear; for you know perfectly well what would."

"Do I know? Do you know yourself, Horace?"

"Yes, Lucia," he said gently; "after ten years. You may not be proud of your cousin--"

"I used to be proud of him always--or nearly always."

"When were you proud of him?"

"When he was himself; when he was sincere."

"I ought to be very proud of _my_ cousin; for she is pitilessly sincere."

"Horace--"

"It is so, dear. Never mind, you needn't be proud of me, if you'll only care--"

"I have always cared."

"Or is it--nearly always?"

"Well--nearly always."

"You're right. I _am_ insincere, I was insincere when I said you needn't be proud of me. I want you, I mean you to be."

"Do you mean to give up _Metropolis_, then?"

"Well, no. That's asking rather too much."

"I know it is."

"Do you hate it so much, Lucia? I wish you didn't."

"I have hated it so much, Horace, that I once wished I had been a rich woman, that you might be"--she was going to say "an honourable man."

"What's wrong with it? It's a better paper than the old one. There are better men on it, and its editor's a better man."

"Is he?"

"Yes. He's a simpler, humbler person, and--I should have thought--more possible to like."

In her heart Lucia admitted that it was so. There was a charm about this later Horace Jewdwine which was wanting in that high spirit that had essayed to move the earth. He had come down from his chilly alt.i.tudes to mix with men; he had shed the superst.i.tion of omnipotence, he was aware of his own weakness and humanized by it. The man was soiled but softened by his traffic with the world. There was moreover an indescribable pathos in the contrast presented by the remains of the old self, its loftiness, its lucidity, and the vulgarity with which he had wrapped it round. Jewdwine's intellectual splendour had never been so impressive as now when it showed thus tarnished and obscured.

"At any rate," he went on, "he is infinitely less absurd. He knows his limitations. Also his mistakes. He tried to turn the republic of letters into a limited monarchy. Now he has surrendered to the omnipotence of facts."

"You mean he has lowered his standard?"

"My dear girl, what am I to do with my standard? Look at the rabble that are writing. I can't compare Tompkins with Shakespeare or Brown with Sophocles. I'm lucky if I can make out that Tompkins has surpa.s.sed Brown this year as Brown surpa.s.sed Tompkins last year; in other words, that Tompkins has surpa.s.sed himself."

"And so you go on, looking lower and lower."

"N-n-no, Lucia. I don't look lower; I look closer, I see that there is something to be said for Tompkins after all. I find subtler and subtler shades of distinction between him and Brown. I become more just, more discriminating, more humane."

"I know how fine your work is, and that's just the pity of it. You might have been a great critic if you hadn't wasted yourself on little things and little men."

"If a really big man came along, do you think I should look at them?

But he doesn't come. I've waited for him ten years, Lucia, and he hasn't come."

"Oh, Horace--"

"He hasn't. Show me a big man, and I'll fall down and wors.h.i.+p him.

Only show him me."

"That's your business, isn't it, not mine? Still, I can show you one, not very far off, in fact very near."

"Too near for us to judge him perhaps. Who is he?"

"If I'm not mistaken, he's a sort of friend of yours."

"Keith Rickman? Oh--"

"Do you remember the day we first talked about him?"

He did indeed. He remembered how unwilling he had been to talk about him; and he was still more unwilling now. He wanted, and Lucia knew that he wanted, to talk about himself.

"It's ten years ago," she said. "Have you been waiting all this time to see him?"

He coloured. "I saw him before you did, Lucia. I saw him a very long way off. I was the first to see."

"Were you? Then--oh Horace, if you saw all those years ago why haven't you said so?"

"I have said so, many times."

"Whom have you said it to?"

"To you for one. To every one, I think, who knows him. They'll bear me out."

"The people who know him? What was the good of that? You should have said it to the people who don't know him--to the world."

"You mean I should have posed as a prophet?"