And when the door was closed between them, Rickman realised that his folly was even as Maddox had described it.  In one night, and at a crisis of his finances, he had severed himself from a fairly permanent source of income; flung up the most desirable chance that had presented itself hitherto in his career; and quarrelled disgracefully and disagreeably with his best friend.  He supposed the split was bound to come; but if he could only have staved it off for another year, till he had collected that seven hundred and fifty!  There could be no doubt that that was what he ought to have done.  He ought to have been prudent for Lucia’s sake.  And on the top of it all came the terrible reflection—­Was it really worth it?  Did he really believe in Jewdwine?  Or had he sacrificed himself for an idea?

CHAPTER LXVII

Rickman could never be made to speak of the quarrel with Maddox.  He merely mentioned to Jewdwine in the most casual manner that he had left The Planet.  As for his grounds for that abrupt departure Jewdwine was entirely in the dark.  It was Lucia that enlightened him.

For all things, even the deep things of journalism, sooner or later come to light.  Rickman, before the quarrel, had given Miss Roots an introduction to the young men of The Planet, and its editor had taken kindly to Miss Roots.  Maddox, it is true, did his best to keep the matter quiet, until in a moment of expansion he allowed that shrewd lady to lure him into confidences.  Maddox tried to take it and present it philosophically.  “It was bound to happen,” he said.  “Our Ricky-ticky is a bad hand at serving two masters,” but as to which was God and which Mammon in this connection he modestly reserved his opinion.  Jewdwine’s name was carefully avoided, but Miss Roots was left in no doubt as to the subject of dispute.

She and Maddox were one in their inextinguishable enthusiasm for their Rickman, for Rickman had the gift, the rarest of all gifts, of uniting the hearts that loved him.  If Jewdwine had showed anything like a proper appreciation of the poet, Maddox would have spared him now.  So the two looked at each other, with eyes that plumbed all the depths of the unspoken and unspeakable, eyes that sent out a twinkling flash of admiration as they agreed that it was “just like Rickman.”  That phrase was for ever on the lips of his admirers, a testimony to the fact that Rickman was invariably true to himself.

He was being true to himself now in being true to Jewdwine, and it was in that form that the tale went round.  “I can’t tell you all the ins and outs of it,” wrote Miss Roots to Lucia, “but he is paying for his loyalty to Mr. Jewdwine;” and Lucia, with equal pride in her cousin and her friend, repeated it to Kitty Palliser, who repeated it to somebody else with the comment, “I’m not surprised to hear it”; and somebody else repeated it in a good many quarters without any comment at all.  For everybody but Lucia understood that it spoke for itself.