Under Two Skies Page 12

  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 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 un-necessary 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 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 importan
t 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 aesthetic 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.