Under Two Skies/An Idle Sinner

by Ernest William Hornung

AN IDLE SINNER

I

'I HAVE it!' cried the Editor suddenly.

Adeane, who was spoken to, looked up quickly, but a little mechanically, for his mind was inconveniently preoccupied with the sestett of an unwritten sonnet; and 'it' was merely the subject of his prose contribution to the Christmas Number of the Spider. Still, as this contribution meant as many sovereigns in Adeane's pocket as the sonnet would fetch shillings, he was compelled to roll down from poetic heights, to trump up a look of acute personal interest, and to ask what 'it' was to be after all.

The Editor of the Spider—who was the Spider—got up from his chair and went into a corner where a small table stood stacked with new books. He chuckled as he found the book he wanted, and he handed it to Adeane with an air of occult humour.

'The Lesser Man,' Adeane read aloud from the cover. 'But I don't see who it's by?'

'Anonymous—some woman, in spite of the title.'

Adeane glanced at the title-page, but it was innocent of previous record: this was a first conviction.

'All right,' said he, tucking the volume under his arm, and letting his soul soar back to the sestett. 'I suppose you aren't in a great hurry for the review?'

'Review! I didn't say anything about a review, did I?' The Spider spoke rather sharply; and really Adeane was very absent. 'We were talking about your thing for the Christmas Number. I want you to fill a couple of pages with your smartest stuff—something in story shape, but topical. And you say you can't get a subject. Very good, here's your subject: write me a smart, tart skit on The Lesser Man, and it'll be the very thing—the very thing!'

'Is it so popular?' asked Adeane, who worked too hard to keep quite abreast of the literary current.

'Now my dear Mr. Adeane!' said the Spider, with a kind of fatherly compassion for his youthful contributor, 'both press and public are idiotic about this book; I'm surprised you haven't heard of it. I haven't read it, but I've glanced at it, and it looks pretty good, though plainly feminine; it's highly impassioned, and a little embittered; and the title's ironical—one for us. There's humour in the title before you touch it! I saw no humour anywhere else, but that's all the better; you'll extract lots. Popularity apart, from what I've seen and heard of it, the book was made to burlesque; some books are. Mind you mangle the title; it's a pity there's no author's name to hash up as well; but you must just do your best, Mr. Adeane.'

'I'll certainly try to,' Adeane said earnestly, with the timorous humility with which he treated all his editors in those days. But he had just skimmed half a page of The Lesser Man and seen a phrase that pleased him, and he could not help adding, a little nervously: 'It does seem a bit unkind, though!'

'Unkind!' The Spider seized on the word with evident glee. 'That's it exactly; you must make it so. Unkindness is the soul of parody, and we may as well own it. Good nature is insipid, Mr. Adeane, too insipid for the Spider. As for parody, why it is the greatest flattery there is, and a far sincerer sort than imitation; besides which, it's the best advertisement a book can have. But don't try to do the thing by halves. Laugh loud if you laugh at all. Make fun of the whole thing, and of the public that reads it. That's it. Show up the British public and their precious taste. That's the touch! Copy by the twentieth, and your weekly stuff as usual. Good afternoon, Mr. Adeane, and glad to have seen you.'

Those were the days of Adeane's apprenticeship. The particular day on which he carried home a copy of The Lesser Man, for what he euphemistically described to a man in the street as 'a professional purpose,' occurred in the second year of Adeane's sojourn in London, and in the twenty-third of his age. He was at this time beating round the financial Horn, and not yet out of dangerous waters; in fact, his income was trembling between two and three figures a year. He was a literary free lance, and more or less a poet; more by inclination, by necessity less. At present he could afford to mix very little verse with his assorted prose. Verse supplied but a doubtful tithe of that extremely doubtful hundred a year. On the other hand, more than half of this income was derived from the Spider.

There is little to be said about the Spider. It dealt with most things, and it seldom dealt gently. It cost a piece of silver, it was nicely printed, its wrapper suggested respectability and good taste, and from some points of view the paper may have justified its publication. Certainly the Christmas and Summer Numbers were in fair demand; but these were something special. In the ordinary way it was written by a clever, if a slightly lawless, crew; and Adeane was glad enough to be one of them; though if he found one paper absolutely unreadable (with the exception of his own things, over which he was inclined to gloat when they were in type) that paper was the Spider.

Now Adeane was a curious compound, or rather, he would have been a curious compound if he had not been a poet. Being a poet it was no more than his duty to be peculiar; it showed that he did not look upon himself as superior to his position, or to other poets. Yet his peculiarities were not on the surface. His hair was not long. His coat was not velvet. His neck-tie did not flow, neither did his hat slouch. He shaved himself at least as regularly as other young men whose beards have not yet arrived at their full strength. He even did without glasses, that sure sign of ink, if not of poetry. Externally, in a word, Adeane was the most incomplete of all poets. But internally——

Well, he might have been worse. He was self-centred, but not self-seeking; he was hard working, and wonderfully persevering, though in many ways weak; and if he was not always quite admirable, he was very lovable—which is something. It is true that he had lofty ideals which he made no earnest effort to realise, and principles which he did not exert himself to live up to personally; and his intimate friend, Digby Willock, who had a legal mind, but no principles and no ideals, had certainly the advantage of him here; but for all that there was some good in Adeane, quite apart from his brains.

He carried The Lesser Man between two and three miles to his lodging, which so far consisted of one room only. But he forgot about the book as he walked; he had got back to his sestett, and his mind did not quit it again for some time. The words seemed very nearly to have sorted themselves by the time he reached his room. He sat down for a minute to write them roughly; and the minute lasted a couple of hours. For it is one thing to get a poem into your head, and another thing to get it out again, on paper. The fitting together of any form of verse is the most soul-possessing employment to be found; but its hard-and-fast requirements render the sonnet the greatest strain of all. Adeane did not even smoke during those two hours, nor pause to put on his slippers; yet he was a terrible fellow for his slippers and his pipe. But when he did rise he had not only ground the thing out at last but rewritten it, and enclosed it in an envelope, with an 'accompanying note.' Moreover, he took that sonnet to the post before either looking at his slippers or smelling tobacco; and after many days it brought back ten-and-sixpence.

Rid at last of the sonnet, which had been with him all day, Adeane washed his mind of it with bird's-eye, relit the fire (versifying invariably put it out) and carelessly cut open The Lesser Man.

An hour later Adeane's landlady came up with tea and eggs, the poet's repast. She kept him very comfortable up in his garret; there was nothing she would not do for him. The gas was lit, and the poet was lying on his bed reading. The landlady introduced the tea in a word or two of rather timid entreaty, received no answer, and discreetly retired. Her young man was reading much too attentively to look up from his book or to speak to her.

She returned in another hour. Adeane had not moved; his tray was untouched, and the woman felt personally stung, and complained. But Adeane only opened his mouth to refuse sustenance, waved his hand as from another world, and was once more left in peace, reading now with a ravenous, glistening eye.

'Is Mr. Adeane in?' a young fellow inquired at the street door later in the evening.

'Well, now, Mr. Willock, you're the very gentleman I wanted to see,' cried Mrs. Trotter, with warm welcome, and an air of personal relief. 'He is in, sir; but he wants rousing—he wants rousing very bad. He's lying like a log, a-reading some new trash or other he brought home this afternoon. He won't look an' he won't speak, and, would you believe it, he's never touched his tea, though it was that strong it might ha' lifted his 'air off, which he will persist in, though I tell him what it'll end in till I'm sick and tired. And the eggs done as he likes 'em to a second. What do you think o' that, sir? What am I to do with him?'

'It's very sad,' said Willock, clicking his tongue and affecting concern; 'but, you see, he's a poet. They're all either sad, or bad, or mad. Our friend's all three by turns. I'll run up and see which it is to-night.'

'Do, sir. It's what he wants, to have somebody at him. But, Mr. Willock, happen he fancies his eggs still, I've more good 'uns where them came from, or I could send for a chop, as he's been so long fasting——'

'All right, I'll see,' said Willock, running upstairs, and adding to himself: 'The spoilt baby! Heaven, what a soft place he manages to find in the female heart!'

Now, Adeane had been intensely moved by The Lesser Man. His eyes had been frequently dimmed by sudden, swift, surprising touches. Over one situation he had cried like a girl. The story was entrancing, in spite of its bitterness. The title turned out to be the finest bit of feminine irony Adeane had yet met with. It was the kind of story he fancied he might have written himself, had he written stories at all; in that case it would have made him jealous, as of words snatched out of his mouth; as it was, it satisfied his soul.

But the spell had relaxed, as such spells will, even before the arrival of Digby Willock. Adeane had thrown down the book after finishing it, and been for some time perambulating the floor with his hands in his pockets and a cutty in his mouth; he had walked himself back into realities; he had smoked himself into the frame of mind required by the Spider. At first, indeed, he had been weak enough to think of returning the book to the Spider, with a sturdy, independent letter; but he had conquered that temptation as he conquered few others. Perhaps it was not a really powerful temptation. And no doubt the smoking had blunted his moral sense. For already, actually, he had seen the comic side of the situation which had upset him, and made a note or two for his own version of that scene; and Willock found him with the fag-end of a grin on his lips—in very queer contrast to certain signs about the eyes.

And Willock incurred—on the spot, and without the option of other refreshment—a dose of The Lesser Man, so potent and so absurdly sweet as to prejudice anybody against the best book ever written. But Willock knew better than to listen; he knew Adeane of old. He hadn't read the book, he rarely did read novels; he only read his law books and the amusing papers; but he was a kind of intimate friend of Adeane—not a very true friend—and he pretended to listen, and caught a sentence here and there. He sneered when the poet paused. He had a trick of sneering at Adeane in a quasi-friendly way, which Adeane used to note, as he noted most things, more on reflection than at the moment.

'So this is the best book you ever read in your life, eh?'

'I believe it is, upon my word,' said Adeane, childishly. 'In some ways it most certainly is.'

'But you always say that,' rejoined Willock, rolling up his smooth upper lip and showing his teeth. 'It always is the last love with you.'

'Not always now, hang it!' cried Adeane, quite earnestly. He was fully conscious of a certain fickle strain in his character; he was beginning to get reconciled to this, as you do get reconciled to your faults between twenty and thirty. 'But it is a treat to be able to like a new book unstintedly, and to be in a position to say so.'

'Are you going to say so in the Spider?'

'What?'

'Are you going to review the book?'

'No, I'm not.' Adeane hesitated. 'The fact is,' he explained, with a frank little laugh, 'I'm going to guy it for the Spider's Christmas Number; it's had a great run, you know.'

'I like that. That's choice!' murmured Willock, in pure self-congratulation. He had a sense of humour which could not be gratified too often; he frequently looked up Adeane just to have it gratified. 'So you're going to burlesque the book you've been crying over.'

His upper lip was furled nearly to his nose, but Adeane himself was laughing heartily. 'My dear fellow, it's the fortune of war—war against poverty,' he said; 'besides, it will really burlesque rather easily—genius always does.'

'But do you like doing it? asked Willock, who had not to work for his living, and lacked the imagination to appreciate Adeane's position.

'My dear old chap, you know I don't.'

'No, I'm not omniscient. For one thing I should have thought it was against those principles of yours to turn into rot what you think so admirable.'

'Well, it is against them,' Adeane owned.

'Then why do it?'

'Well, I must.'

'Then why have principles?'

Willock was filing his fingers upon his chin; he was quite grave, and looking at his friend in a psychological light, as he generally did. The result gratified in some subtle way his peculiar order of mind. But Adeane laughed again, and still good-humouredly.

'Confound you,' he said, 'I'm not in the witness-box, nor are you public prosecutor—yet. Come, I say, I can't stand your shrewd questions to-night. Besides, after all, there's no greater advertisement for a book than a skit on it; the Spider said so this afternoon, and the thing's obvious.'

'Much the Spider cares about the advertisement!'

'But I do.'

'Come, I don't think the advertisement has much to do with it in your case either,' said Willock, buttoning up his coat; and this rankled with Adeane when he remembered it afterwards: for it was perfectly true.

'Will you come out and see something?' Willock added.

'No, thanks; I shall be working late.'

'Good-night, then. No, I won't have anything to drink,' said the legal limb, looking askance at what Adeane offered him; he was as bad as a teetotaler, and he could not refuse to drink—at all events with Adeane—without a faint suggestion of personal superiority. Some men are like this.

'I'm afraid he doesn't like me so much as he used to,' Adeane said rather sadly to himself; not because he had a particularly exalted opinion of Digby Willock, but because they had been greater friends once than they were now, and he had very few friends in the world; and also because liking to be liked was his weakest point but one.

But Willock had met the landlady on the stairs with a loaded tray. And he was thinking:

'A set of principles, for ornament, not use; the fine art of self-humbug; a secret passage to the feminine soft side, and vanity, which goes without saying. These seem to be the chief points of the poetic temperament; and they're not so amusing as they used to be.'

II

It fell out later that the name of Adeane became known in the town. To his own thinking, and to that of the two or three who had watched his unsigned career, this happened only in the fulness of time; but for the rest of the world his name was made in a moment. It seems incredible, but he did the trick with a parcel of verses. Variations the book was called, and its shade was olive, and its edges rough. On the title-page it came out for the first time, even to many who knew him pretty well, that his Christian name was Bertram; and very old maids, and very young girls, said that Bertram and Adeane 'went' sweetly together. The chances are that the queerest name might get sweetened by association with lovable work; and this is just what Adeane's work was. His notes were sweet, his tone tender, his manner airy; but it was a lovable something, on every page, in every stanza, that sold Variations.

A new poet was wanted, to cultivate the masses, to educate the classes, to elevate the age, and to hustle up the millennium. That poet is wanted still. The post remains vacant. Adeane never applied for it. He had neither the qualifications nor the temperament of a professional prophet. He was no Thinker: he could simply sing; and he owed half his success to his doing very well what it was well within him to do—the other half to his knowing where to stop. He lacked the public spirit of a social thorough-cleaner: he let the dust lie on the old order of things, save where he traced his verses in it, and his finger but skimmed it then—he never handled the corruption underneath. For he was confessedly of the minor poets: in an age infested with them he had the insolence to come forward and make one more. He was a minor poet to the marrow; he never tried to be anything better. But in one respect (apart from his unorthodox personal tidiness) he was differentiated from the other ruffians of the band: he was a minor poet with no sort of preference for the minor key.

There were no sonnets in Variations; but sonnet-writing had been good practice, from the architectural point of view, in Adeane's earlier days, and he owed to it more of his grace and facility in easier forms than he was himself aware of. The book was mainly vers de société—elegant, fanciful, and saucily flippant. It contained, however, some sentimental pieces, which secured Adeane a clientèle among the ladies; and it was salted throughout with pinches of a not too sincere cynicism, which made the book popular in clubs. So Adeane pleased on all sides, and if he pleased himself too, and became slightly vain, you cannot blame the boy.

He was enticed from his lodgings—which now consisted of two rooms—into certain drawing-rooms further west. There his eyes were opened to many things—first of all to himself. He simply amazed himself by taking rather kindly to society, for all his life he had spoken of it with the loftiest scorn. His ignorant poet's prejudices died a violent death. He had his eyes opened, which did him good. And he heard many untrue and ridiculous things about his Variations and himself.

He heard that they were so very original. This tickled him. Considering that he had saturated himself with Locker and Praed, among others, and that he said the Variations were on them, their alleged originality tickled him immensely. Yet what he had absorbed came out in such a very fresh form that few but himself could have believed this. Praed had certainly inspired him; his was the standard to which Adeane humbly strove to attain. Yet a lot of original Adeane did come out with the imitation Praed; so much, in fact, that the model was seldom suggested. Adeane, you perceive, was self-conscious on the point; he could not forget his method. Yet even Adeane must have known that there was freshness in his stuff. He did know it; only he was such an excessively modest young man. He heard that this also was being said about him, and the rumour amused his vanity.

For the people who praised his cool-headedness knew very little of what they were talking about. They could not see into the poet's heart; they could not even peep into the poet's den. One glimpse of his den, with him in it, warm from their praises, would have been a sufficient revelation to them. They would have seen him pacing his floor, unable to work, unable to think closely, but gloating inanely over phrases to which he had lately listened with a marble mien. He kept every compliment, no matter how ridiculous—and compliments can be very ridiculous indeed—for private consumption of a contemptible kind. So much for their modest young man.

You can enjoy the sweets of gratified vanity all the more for not putting on a vulgar swagger. That is only possible to the thick-skinned man, who doesn't know how to make the most of things. To play the hedge-sparrow while you feel a peacock is the acme of refined egotistical indulgence; so Adeane said.

Adeane actually took a delight in posing as unspoilt; but nevertheless he did get a little sick of flattery; and he was honestly delighted one evening by a chat he had with a peerless creature, who never flattered him once. At least, he was honestly delighted at first. He forgot to be secretly self-conscious, and for a few minutes he was at his very best; but it dawned upon him presently that the lady had never heard of him, and at that, very properly, he felt slightly piqued—more than slightly, indeed, for he vastly admired her.

He went up to his hostess afterwards to inquire the lady's name. He had not caught it at the introduction. Who ever does? Yet this conscientious hostess seemed sincerely shocked with herself.

'How exceedingly stupid! Now I am sorry! I wanted you two to make the greatest friends.'

'But who is she?' pursued the poet, with mild insistence. He had said how glad he had been not to be talked to about his twopenny poems. It is as unnecessary to explain that in reality he was not glad as to point out the insincerity of the commercial adjective.

'It was Miss Cunningham,' said the hostess, regretfully—'Maud Cunningham, you know, who writes the novels. Don't you know them? I think you must. But she is only just beginning to own up to them. The first were anonymous, and the first of all was, as usual, the best of all—The Lesser Man.'

Adeane's jaw should have fallen: Adeane's bones should have rattled; but the young sinner did not turn a hair. So many things had happened since he had wept over that story before spitting it for the fire; he had written so much since then, and the Spider had so long been incorporated with some other insect, and become unfit to write for, that Adeane had succeeded in forgetting his particular contributions to those obsolete columns. He said he remembered reading the book, he thought, and being struck by it; but he had quite forgotten what it was about. He added that he would go and introduce himself over again. He went off to do so, but did not succeed that night, for the rooms were crowded, and at that moment Miss Cunningham was gravitating towards the hostess from the opposite pole, to say good-bye—and something else.

'Do you know,' she began, in an aggrieved tone, 'I never caught that young man's name? I think it was too bad of you! He is charming. Only fancy, he spared me the least reference to my stories, which is such a relief!' She looked by no means relieved. 'Do at least tell me his name now, so that I may know another time.'

The poor hostess was scandalised beyond words: she had not dreamt that her delinquency was two-edged. She explained now, with abject apologies, who the young man was; but that only made the matter worse, for Maud Cunningham knew half the Variations by heart. She went home in high displeasure, and her hostess, who was also her intimate friend, was left considering. She had brought these two together without any important design. They had begun their acquaintance with mutual pleasure, yet with mutual pique—she was shrewd enough to see that. They could not have begun better if they had been brought together with an important design.

As for Adeane, he went home and dipped once more into The Lesser Man, without even waiting to relieve himself of his dress coat. And the old spell held him as before. He only dipped this time; but it all came back to him, and he saw what a book it was; and even now, when he tasted the strong situation, it dimmed his eyes.

He remembered now, of course, how he had read it before simply to burlesque it for the Spider; and when he had closed the book, he fished out that Christmas Number to have another look at what he had written; and when he had done with that, his face was a study.

'Heavens! what a savage I must have been in those days!' he said, with unfeigned horror, as he put the paper behind the fire. 'It knocks the conceit out of a man to read his old stuff. I knew it was pretty bad, but I didn't think I had ever done anything quite so brutal as this. After this, I'll believe there's no crime man wouldn't commit for bread. … And she … she's the ideal I thought I was never, never to find!'

III

Variations appeared one autumn, and by the following spring Adeane and Miss Cunningham had seen a good deal of each other. They had met many times and in many houses, and Adeane had frequently dined at the Cunning hams'. Old Cunningham was a London M.P.; he was a genial widower; Miss Cunningham was the lady of his house, and the most charming hostess in the town.

It looked a promising thing enough. Adeane would never be rich, certainly; but he was a popular poet, you must be conventional in some things, and one would not have had him rich on any account. Really the money element was all right; and their spirits dove-tailed in a way that was enough to spoil them both for the society of other mortals. They reacted upon each other quite ideally. He modified her opinion of men, which had been early warped; she drew out his finest side as no one had ever done before. For a long time, of course, it was all strictly according to Plato; but Ovid is a jealous Shade, who sooner or later puts a stop to that. The friends of Adeane and of Miss Cunningham said that in this case it would be sooner; and neither of them made friends of fools.

They soon knew each other too well to have their private frailties mutually obscured by their public form. This was a great thing, especially as regards Adeane's frailties, which, I trust, are pretty conspicuous by this time. Miss Cunningham had only one important weakness: she was touchy; bad notices cut her to the heart, and she had very little else but bad ones now, because her first book had been her best. Also she had an incomplete sense of humour, but this is only admitting that she was human, and a woman. Adeane could stand chaff better than some other things, but then he was a man, and his heart had been hardened on the Spider.

The Cunninghams had a country house in one of the Home Counties. Here they entertained small parties—chiefly senatorial—over the various holidays; and hither, at Whitsuntide, came Adeane the poet. It was the first time they had invited him down. He packed up with great care and a little trepidation; and he went down first class, partly because it would run to that now, but more from a strong suspicion that one of the Abbey carriages would be waiting to meet him at the other end. And when the train was clear of Waterloo, and the light of day in the compartment, Adeane discovered that he sat facing Digby Willock, whom he had not seen for years.

Adeane was cordial, as he always had been; and Willock was friendly after his own fashion—which included the sneer of former days. He had heard of Adeane's success, but he was ostentatiously unimpressed by it. Still, he asked some questions, and drew Adeane out. Experience had not taught the poet to be reserved with an old friend; he let himself go in the old, childish way; he amused Digby almost as much as ever. At the element of society in Adeane's later life he was very highly amused indeed.

'Do you remember your ancient fiat on society?' he asked of the poet.

'I recollect that I wasn't very keen to know people,' Adeane admitted.

'Nicely put! You had vigorous views on the subject.'

'I know.' Adeane laughed softly at his own expense. 'But, you perceive, I have grown out of those views. And now you haven't told me a word about yourself, Digby. Where have you been? What are you doing?'

Digby Willock smiled; this was so like Adeane! It was his old sweet way to talk volubly about himself until he had talked himself out (for the moment), and then, prompted by some sudden twinge of conscious egotism, to show an almost painful interest in the affairs of his friend. But Digby was not as poets are as regards egotistical talking; his egotism was of the hard-headed, self-sufficing, secretive kind; he would take a man's confidence, not necessarily to betray it, but more as a possible fund of private amusement. He was never caught confiding in anybody himself.

He stated a few facts, however.

'I'm not doing much; I'm still reading. I take my time over it, you see. I have been round the world since I saw you, and on the Continent all this winter. I've only just got home. Travelling spoils you for this climate—at least, in winter. I wonder you don't go abroad sometimes. You can do your work anywhere; and I assure you there are more inspiring spots than London lodgings; only I suppose society couldn't spare you. I must say I like knocking about. You meet a better set of Britishers out of Britain than in it. I am on my way at the present moment to stay with some people of whom I saw a good deal at Schwalbach last autumn. What's more—by Jove! here's the station, so I shall have to say ta-ta, and glad to have seen you.'

'But what station is it?' Adeane asked, peering through the window.

'Reading.'

'Then I get out here, too,' said Adeane, jumping up.

'Going any further?'

'No. I also am going to stay with friends near here. I half expect they'll have sent a trap of some sort to meet me.'

On the platform the young fellows were accosted by a male beauty in livery.

'For Bladen Abbey, sir?' said this person ambiguously.

Adeane and Willock said the same thing in the same breath, and were mutually staggered. Adeane laughed heartily, and declared, genuinely, that he was delighted; but Digby Willock did not appear to appreciate the coincidence so highly. For a moment he looked almost put out; but for a moment only; as the young men sat side by side in the Bladen carriage Willock made himself more agreeable than he had been in the train. He enlarged on his relations with the Cunninghams at Schwalbach; told how they had asked him—pressed him, he put it—to let them know directly he returned to England; how he had thought it only civil to take them at their word, since they had made such a point of it; and how he had received an invitation to Bladen by return of post. Adeane subsequently had reason to smile at this version; but it sounded all right at the time; and Adeane, besides being always prepared for sincerity, was generally too preoccupied to see through people in a moment—his insight was all retrospective. And Adeane, in his turn, made no secret of the almost intimate footing on which he himself stood with the Cunninghams; while as to Miss Cunningham—Willock had merely to press that button, and his friend was a bell ringing her praises until the pressure was removed. He praised her unreservedly, with that fine childish indiscretion which was one of the sweet traits of his character. And Willock leant so far back in his corner that his face was little seen; its expression was not pretty. He was silent for some time when Adeane stopped. Then he took a curious line.

Adeane had been wont to tell him everything in the very old days. He reminded Adeane now of things, such as no fellow would care to remember. He did it, of course, very craftily, very innocently, and Adeane answered as carelessly as he could. They were foolish things rather than bad ones; Adeane had crammed many follies into his earlier years; he was a poet. He had tried to realise his ideal more than once before meeting Miss Cunningham; that was all. Willock knew all about those old affairs, and inquired after each in turn, in the ostensible innocence of his heart. Adeane's answers afforded him a certain amount of gratification, which was more subtle than satisfying. But the conversation, very naturally, was not to Adeane's taste just then; and in the end he put a stop to it, though not before they had entered the Bladen drive.

Bladen Abbey lies in a rich little bit of pastoral England. It is an undulating country, with waves of juicy meadow-land curling to wooded crests, and the weather-beaten Abbey in their trough. The woods did not always delight the eye as on this afternoon of budding summer, though on the other hand they became more than delightful under an autumn tarnish; the sky could smile, as now, and it could also frown and weep, and fill with wailing; but there was an air of superiority about the gray old Abbey, which was always the same. Even the Abbey, however, looked the better for the level sunlight now gilding the windows and picking out buttresses and balustrades with sharp black shadows. Adeane's poetic heart leapt against his ribs at the first sight of it. He gazed raptly, looking much more the poet than usual. But immediately the æsthetic fire in his eyes burnt a softer flame, for there, waiting to receive them on the stone terrace, stood the lady of the house.

Miss Cunningham was not the hostess to welcome one young man more cordially than the other. She was charming to them both, as also to those amiable fogies, her father's friends, during the remainder of the afternoon. But Digby Willock was not wanting in perception, and, unlike Adeane's, his vision was instantaneous; he saw from the first moment that the poet stood on very much higher ground in the lady's favour than he did. She did, indeed, take both young men together to see the little room in which she worked; but in that little room Willock had found himself unable to contribute a word to the somewhat esoteric conversation. He had too good an ear not to know from Miss Cunningham's lightest tones that Adeane was the favourite friend, if not worse, for he knew the fellow's wheedling way with women; while he, who had really seen a great deal of her at Schwalbach, was the mere acquaintance. Considering how much he had seemed to amuse Miss Cunningham in the German hotel, this was galling to Willock. Over there he had amused and delighted her, he was sure of it, with his wit and his personal charm, of course. And, as a matter of fact, he had delighted her, but not quite in the way he imagined. His hair would have stood on end had he dreamt how it was that he came to delight her, or what she was doing with him, or why he had been invited to Bladen. His hair would stand up now if he could recognise himself in the book. But he can't; because he told her himself that she had drawn that nasty fellow to the life.

Adeane dressed for dinner in the best possible spirits; and his best spirits were as effervescent and as pure as an infant's. He had been paid some pretty compliments by the fogies, and poets are very human in these things; but what really exhilarated him was the gracious sweetness of his goddess. Already she had been as he had never known her before. She had never seemed so near him in town. And yet he had only been two or three hours at the Abbey! They had spoken very few words together—quite together—as yet. But already her dear tones were throbbing in his ears. How he worshipped her! How he adored her! And she—and she——

He threw up speculation, and took to murmuring verses: not his own—another Immortal's:

'I can give not what men call love,
But wilt thou accept not
The worship the heart lifts above
And the heavens reject not,
The desire of the moth for the star—'

There was another moth, also dressing for dinner, who dressed in a vile temper. This one seldom had bad spirits; he had laughed at Adeane, in the old days, for his misfortune hit Digby Willock only in the temper. He was a moth, in a sense, but not one to singe his wings, even if he had been in love; and he was not the least in love with Miss Cunningham. His feeling was that it might be a good move to marry her, some day or other, if she would have him; when, of course, it would make it all the more pleasant to have been in love with her. With this feeling, it was well worth while getting to know her better; for Digby Willock was no deliberate self-deceiver (that was more Adeane's temperament), and he knew well enough how very superficial Miss Cunningham's regard for him must be; though, doubtless, her admiration for him was great. But here was this poetaster, who was certainly the most insidious dog for a woman's soft side, winning her heart under his very nose! It was vexatious and humiliating, especially when you considered the respective incomes of Willock and Adeane; but it was never actively mortifying until dinner, when the poetic moth sat next the flame, while the legal one was as far from her as he could possibly be placed.

He joined in the political conversation at his end of the table. He was no fool, and he argued with the professional politicians both closely and cleverly; it was amusing to hear him. So 'shop' was being talked at both ends of the table; for Miss Cunningham and Adeane were rather sinners in this respect. But of the two kinds of 'shop,' the literary is not only far the more interesting—it is infinitely the less debasing. This is not prejudice, but fact. When one or two authors are gathered together you can trust them to saturate the general talk in something under five minutes; and the politicians are only too glad (as they may well be) to get into the purer atmosphere. It is so, honestly; it was more so than usual on the present occasion; only—Mr. Cunningham should have kept out of it.

Some disinterested person should have told himself off to confine this old gentleman to the House. He was all right there; he had enjoyed personal relations with leaders, of which he delighted to speak; but in literary talk he was impossible. He approached the sacred subject in a thoroughly profane spirit. He had no respect for the creative temperament. He was destitute of imagination, and, what was worse, of consideration for those who had it. His daughter's work, about which she was peculiarly sensitive, he had always regarded as the family joke.

'Reviews?' he said, catching at a word, and feeling that here, at least, he was qualified to speak. 'How do you stand reviews, Adeane?'

Adeane replied, like a nice little boy, that he tried to find a spark of goodness in the most ill-conditioned notice, though, on the whole, he steeled himself against taking them unduly to heart, whatever they said.

'I'm glad to hear it,' said Mr. Cunningham approvingly, 'for it's the very thing you don't do, isn't it, Maud? I assure you, Adeane, she was ill for a week after that review of her first book in the Times.'

'How absurd you are, father,' said the clever girl—girlishly, not cleverly; and she blushed a little.

'But it's a fact,' said her father, turning confidently to the lady on his right.

'The ghost of a fact, grossly exaggerated, and all wrong besides!' declared Miss Cunningham, disliking the subject, but disliking still more to appear to dislike it. 'For it wasn't the Times at all.'

'She's right,' said Mr. Cunningham to his right-hand neighbour, and to the whole party, for all were listening. 'I recollect perfectly. My memory never plays the fool for long—kept too well oiled for that. It wasn't the Times, I beg it's pardon, it was that uncommon smart skit in the Spider.'

The ladies shivered—all but Miss Cunningham, who smiled, though her heart frowned heavily.

'I was very young then, and I hadn't written a book before,' she said, almost apologetically, to everybody. 'But you all remember what a horrid, common paper the Spider was, and that thing about my story was even more odious than its standard.'

As she closed her lips she looked at Adeane, perhaps for sympathy, and perhaps unconsciously. And she nearly jumped from her chair to support him, for he wore the look that comes over the face before one faints. There was no colour in his face, no flexibility, and the forehead—the fine, poetic forehead—shone in the candle-light like wet marble.

She watched him with a shocked fascination; he was recovering himself. She heard her father speaking; his voice sounded as if the length of the table had been trebled.

'I thought it pretty rich, you know,' he was saying to the lady on his right, 'though nasty, distinctly nasty.'

'It was detestable!' said Miss Cunningham severely. She had not taken her eyes from Adeane. She heard some one asking:

'Did you say the Spider, sir?' The voice was Willock's.

'Yes; you mayn't remember the paper; dead some time since. I was rather sorry,' remarked Mr. Cunningham; 'there is plenty of room for that sort of thing.'

'Oh, I remember the paper perfectly; but it didn't die, sir—it married beneath it—incorporated with something rather more so,' returned Willock cheerily; and quite suddenly he leant forward and twisted himself about until he had discovered a passage through the flowers and ferns and candles, at the end of which was Adeane's white face. 'By the way, Adeane,' he said airily, 'didn't you use to write for the Spider?'

'To be sure, I wrote a bit for them in my struggling days,' Adeane replied, with forced frankness. 'But'—to all—'you'll write for anything, you know, in the beginning.'

'And write anything, too!' said Digby, still leaning forward, with his head on one side, and his teeth showing; Adeane was colouring up; it did his old friend good to watch him.

'Why, Maud!' cried Mr. Cunningham inevitably, 'perhaps Mr. Adeane's the culprit! If so, you can have your revenge at last. Was it you that guyed her book, Adeane?'

The old savage was laughing heartily; it was the greatest of jokes to him.

'No, Mr. Cunningham,' said Adeane, in a clear voice.

Maud seemed not to have heard her father's question. She had never taken her eyes from the face of Adeane. 'Did you write it?' she asked.

Her voice sounded quite unconcerned to all but Adeane. He knew her tones as none other knew them, and his heart beat badly. But he did not look at her; he looked steadily at Willock through the ferns and candles, and answered coolly:

'No, I didn't write it; and I don't know who did.'

Miss Cunningham gave him one glance, as he turned and bent his eyes on her, which meant nothing to anybody but Adeane. But Adeane knew her glances as he knew her tones. To him it meant death. She did not look at him again.

Neither was silenced. They talked after that with the greatest energy. But not together—practically not together. And Miss Cunningham made the move rather abruptly—almost clumsily, for so good a hostess. What was worse, she deserted her ladies in the drawing-room; luckily they were ladies whom she knew very well.

She was a woman who had seen something of the world, and known something of men, and of their love. That made it so much the worse. At twenty she had hardened her heart against men for ever. Hence at least one excellent novel. At twenty-five, Adeane—with his boyish winning ways, his taking tone, and all that seemed to lie so much lightlier on him than it really did—had softened her. And now—and now she went to that little room on the ground floor which was her workshop here at Bladen. The window was wide open, and the rising moon shone full upon her writing-table. She put her hands upon the brass-bound desk which contained the work now in hand—which had held, also, the heart of Maud Cunningham from twenty to twenty-five. Adeane had taken this out of it. Adeane had greatly injured the work now in hand. Adeane, the low lampooner, the still lower liar, whose facile talk had charmed her, here in this very room, but a few hours earlier!

Maud Cunningham knelt at the table on which it stood, flung her arms around that brass-bound desk, and let her hot cheek lie on the cold smooth lid.

IV

An hour had passed. The young May moon shone down into the meadows. From the wooded rise beyond them nightingales were singing. The night wind was as the breath of a child asleep. It was a night of nights to inspire the lyric muse. Yet the poet hung over the old stone balustrade of the terrace, unmoved, untouched.

There was no poetry in Adeane to-night. The moon, the nightingales, and the sweet breath of May were less than nothing to the miserable young man. A weeping, wailing, passionate night might have spoken to his spirit; but in this peaceful sweetness his spirit was deaf and blind, and no better than dead. His soul was heavy with what had happened and with what might never happen now.

As to the lie he had told, he was less ashamed of it than he should have been. He was filled to overflowing with shame and self-contempt, but not exclusively on account of his barefaced falsehood at the dinner-table; he felt it far more degrading to stand suddenly convicted of frequent contributions to the Spider. Even had his pen been guiltless of that unlucky parody, he would have found it difficult to look Maud Cunningham in the eyes again. But he had written it, she knew that he had written it; and she had learnt this, not from himself, but from his friend. The friend had given him a rude lesson in human nature—a salutary experience for Adeane and his sort; but this bit of education had cost him his happiness. She would never forgive him. She would have forgiven him fast enough had she heard the story as he would have told it to her one day, when he was sure of her. He was bitterly sure of her now; so sure that it would be idle and humiliating even to ask her forgiveness.

The moon became blurred and big: his sight was dimmed.

Adeane dreaded humiliation more than most things. He fancied the proud contempt in her voice; he had already seen it in her eyes; the memory of that look would hurt him enough without a memory of words to double the pain. That look was for the lie; he had not been able to deceive the one soul that understood his soul. The lie alone would never be forgiven him; no power on earth could make Maud Cunningham see its justification; because it was a lie—and she a woman. She was a slave to unreasoning principles, like the rest of them. And she was not only a woman, but a woman who wrote; even a lie would become a venial offence in a woman's eyes when compared with a travesty on what the woman had written. Miss Cunningham had always struck him as too sensitive about her work. Adeane felt that he could have helped her out of this weakness; she would have helped him out of worse failings.

He was deeply distressed, and he did not stand his distress very well. The nightingales sang, and earthlier music floated through the open windows; but he heard neither. It was long before he stirred. At last he turned, and leant with his back against the stone balustrade, fixing his eyes upon the building. He did not try to fix his thoughts upon it too; but the low soft pile, with the even windows unevenly lighted, made a more distinct appeal to his æsthetic intelligence than the moonlit meadows with the woods beyond. The moon was behind him now; he realised his pleasure that it was not behind the Abbey, hardening its outlines and blackening all within them. It threw out every buttress, and let the embrasures sink inward, instead of painting parallelograms of light on a sable screen. Even in his trouble Adeane could not help appreciating the difference; and he watched the windows with a kind of personal pride in the moonshine, which so chastened and subdued the gaslit panes. But, as he watched, the sudden illumination of one window on the basement killed his artistic sense and quickened his heart. This window belonged to Maud Cunningham's den, which she had herself graciously shown him, within an hour of his arrival.

He found himself moving firmly towards her window without knowing in the least what he was going to do or to say. He saw the lamp on her desk; he saw her white face behind the lamp; he had the presence of mind to delight in the swift reflection that with the lamp set on this side of her she could not possibly see him. As he came nearer he saw that she was examining a heap of manuscript, turning over the leaves impatiently—merely glancing at them, nothing more. He divined at once that the manuscript was her new novel—which was not going very well. She had told him she was out of love with it; but it was himself she was out of love with now; she had flown to her poor discarded work for consolation and refuge.

'Miss Cunningham!' cried Adeane; and the girl started up from her chair, but sat down again as he came within the outer rays of the lamp. She was extremely pale; but the look she levelled at him across her table was uncompromisingly stern.

He stood a foot from the low sill.

'May I speak to you now, Miss Cunningham?'

'I would rather you chose some other time,' answered the girl coldly. 'You will find the others in the billiard-room,' she added.

'Then I cannot speak at all! I shall be gone before any of you are down to-morrow morning; I am going by the first train.'

'Have you ordered something to take you to the station?' asked Maud Cunningham; and she was subsequently ashamed of this sarcasm.

'I intend to walk,' returned Adeane shortly. 'I told you a lie,' he added plainly, after a pause.

She waited for more. She had lowered her eyes; she was putting her manuscript together again. Her indifference irritated Adeane.

'I would tell it you again!' cried the young man, with sudden vigour.

This time he had the satisfaction of diverting Miss Cunningham's attention from her novel to himself; her indignant stare transfixed him, and her hands grasped the arms of her chair.

'I am afraid I should do it again,' he said more quietly, though by no means tamely. 'That settles it, of course. I ought to thank you for not getting up and going out of the room after that! As you are lenient enough to remain listening, you must judge between this fellow and me. I mean Willock. He is a friend of yours; I don't want to blacken him in your eyes so as to whiten myself; but you must know that some time ago he was a friend of mine. He knew I had written that abominable thing; he was in my room the night I began it, and I remember how he laughed at me. Would you have had him make a scene before you all—as he was trying hard to do—as he would have done had I told you the truth? Wasn't it better to lie as I did, and score off him for the moment, and explain to you afterwards? I meant to explain to you at once; but this is my first chance as well as my last. Well, I am sorrier about the whole thing than you would be likely to believe, even if I could ever tell you how sorry I am. As to the stuff I wrote—shall I tell you why Willock laughed at me the night I began it? It was because your book had made me cry when I read it, though I had read it only to make fun of it, at my editor's orders!'

Miss Cunningham favoured him with a markedly incredulous smile; at the same time she could not repress a slight access of colour to her cheeks.

'You do not believe me!' he cried bitterly.

'Do you deserve to be believed?' Maud Cunningham inquired, in a voice, however, that had certainly been more severe some minutes before.

'Yes, in this; you can ask Willock!'

'Thank you, I will ask him nothing.'

'Then it is no good my telling you. At least I liked the book; only at that time—I was forced to write much that I detested,' said Adeane, with visible shame, 'or I would hardly have written for the Spider.'

'I see; for the money.'

'For one's bread—to be bombastic'

There was no need to make a point of this. Maud Cunningham was essentially sympathetic and imaginative. As she gazed at him, certainly he was standing in the moonlight not far from where she sat; but she beheld him at the same moment, and almost as plainly, ill-dressed, ill-fed, and in a garret. Her imagination overdid the garret a little, but at any rate the picture touched her. Before she could help herself she felt the sting of that travesty less, and her sympathy with Adeane greater than she had ever felt either before. She was not likely to say so, however; she wished very much that he would go; her hands went back to her manuscript.

'Is that the novel?' Adeane felt emboldened to inquire.

'Yes,' sighed the girl; for this novel had stuck.

'You have taken it up again! I am so glad!'

Miss Cunningham glanced at him sharply. 'Why?' she asked. 'Do you hope to make fun of this one too?'

'I hope to read it some day.'

The manuscript was put away; the desk was shut with some vehemence.

'That you will never do; no one will; I am done with it.'

She spoke with the bitterness of the artist who has failed so badly as to have acute conviction of the failure; and the cause of it all stood before her, for Adeane had long ago spoilt her for her work, and sown a nobler interest only to pluck it up and leave her desolate in the end. The tears were in her eyes as she rose from her chair. Adeane saw them.

'If you were to let me see it as it is,' he said, with much diffidence, 'I might convince you that it is better than you think, or I might even suggest some way of making it so. I don't write stories; but two heads are better than one.'

She gazed down upon him with appealing eyes. This was exactly what she had begun of late to realise. But she did not want him to point this out to her now; she wished him to leave her. And, as always, he understood her desire; but for once he could not accede to it. Though a poet, he was a man, and this was the woman he loved; and but a few minutes ago he had dreamt of losing her for ever, of facing life without her.

'Maud, you forgive me!'

Her eyes told him that she did; she was raising her hand to the window sash, to shut it down; but it was caught in his, with a tender roughness not a little refreshing in one whose softer side was so soft as Adeane's.

'Then if you forgive that, you can forgive this! Darling, I love you, and I want to marry you. I want to make you happy; I believe I can. I know we were made for one another!'

•⁠•⁠•⁠•⁠•

'But to think you should know I wrote for the Spider!'

Miss Cunningham was shutting down the window at last. She paused with her hands upon the sash, and looked long and keenly at her lover.

'You are a poet,' she said slowly, 'but you are all the man as well. You have told a downright lie, and told it to me, and you are not ashamed of it. You have wounded me deeply, since it turns out that it was you who wrote the cruellest thing that over was written about me and mine; but no, you are not greatly ashamed of that either. But we have got to know that our popular poet was on the Spider in its time; and that, and that only, has stung you. You are thoroughly ashamed of that. Do you know, I begin to think you are as bad as other men, and very, very vain after all?'

'I always was,' he answered, in quite sad and serious humility. 'I am glad you have found it out, for I am afraid I always shall be.'

'Yet you hide it very well, you know!'

'I do know; but that's the acute form of vanity.'

'It's the best form,' said Maud Cunningham, with a touch of envy in her tone. 'The complaint is common in our tribe. Perhaps you are not the only one whose troubles arise from it!'