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 fogeys, 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 fogeys, 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 coldly:
“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 over-flowing 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.
Complete Works of E W Hornung Page 407