Those little men had
remained invincibly, imperturbably friendly. They knew perfectly well
that he thought them little men, and they delighted in their great man
all the same, more than ever, in fact, since his new suit of morals
provided them with a subject of eternal jest. For Maddox was but
human, and he had found Rickman's phrase too pregnant with humour to
be lost. They were sometimes very funny, those Junior Journalists,
especially on a Saturday night. But Rickman was not interested in the
unseemly obstacle race they dignified by the name of a career, and he
did not care to mix too freely with young men so little concerned
about removing the dirt and sweat of it. He clung to Maddox and Rankin
as the strongest and the cleanest of them all. But even they had
inspirations that left him cold, and they thought many things large
and important that were too small for him to see. He would have died
rather than let either of them know what he was doing now. He saw with
dismay that they suspected him of doing something, that their
suspicions excited them most horribly, that they were watching him;
and he had told Maddox that what he desired most was peace and
quietness.
He found it in the Secret Chamber of the Muse, where he shut himself
up when his work with them was done. In there, his days and nights
were as the days and nights of God. There he forecast the schemes of
dramas yet to be, dramas no longer neo-classic.
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