He
would have done anything to strengthen the tie that attached him to
the sources of his spiritual content. But Rickman was not prudent. He
let the golden hours slip by while he sat polishing up his blank verse
as if he had all eternity before him.
Meanwhile he did all he could for Jewdwine. Jewdwine indeed could not
have done a better thing for himself than in giving Rickman that free
hand. In six months there was a marked improvement in the tone of
_Metropolis_ and the reputation of its editor, and, but for the
unexpected which is always happening, Jewdwine might in the long run
have emerged without a stain.
Nothing in fact could have been more utterly unforeseen, and yet, in
reviewing all the steps which led to the ultimate catastrophe, Rickman
said to himself that nothing would have been more consistent and
inevitable. It came about first of all through a freak, a wanton freak
of Fate in the form of a beardless poet, a discovery, not of
Jewdwine's nor of Rickman's but of Miss Roots'. That Miss Roots could
make a discovery clearly indicated the finger of fate. Miss Roots
promptly asked Rickman to dinner and presented to him the discovery,
beardless, breathless also and hectic, wearing an unclean shirt and a
suit of frayed shoddy.
He came away from that dinner, that embarrassing, palpitating
encounter, with a slender sheaf of verses in his pocket. It did not
take him long to read them, nor to see (the unforeseen again!) that
the verses would live longer than their maker.
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