Complete Works of E W Hornung

by E. W. Hornung

  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 tonight.”

  “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 teetotaller, 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 Christi
an 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 clientele 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 un-spoilt; 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 Cunninghams’. 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 dovetailed 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.