When a Man's Single: A Tale of Literary Life

THE WIGWAM

Rob had a tussle for it, but he managed to live down his first winter in London, and May-day saw him sufficiently prosperous and brazen to be able to go into restaurants and shout out 'Waiter.' After that nothing frightened him but barmaids.

For a time his chief struggle had been with his appetite, which tortured him when he went out in the afternoons. He wanted to dine out of a paper bag, but his legs were reluctant to carry him past a grill-room. At last a compromise was agreed upon. If he got a proof over night, he dined in state next day; if it was only his manuscript that was returned to him, he thought of dining later in the week. For a long time his appetite had the worse of it. It was then that he became so great an authority on penny buns. His striking appearance always brought the saleswomen to him promptly, and sometimes he blushed, and often he glared, as he gave his order. When they smiled he changed his shop.

There was one terrible month when he wrote from morning to night and did not make sixpence. He lived by selling his books, half a dozen at a time. Even on the last day of that black month he did not despair. When he wound up his watch at nights before going hungry to bed, he never remembered that it could be pawned. The very idea of entering a pawnshop never struck him. Many a time when his rejected articles came back he shook his fist in imagination at all the editors in London, and saw himself twisting their necks one by one. To think of a different death for each of them exercised his imagination and calmed his passion, and he wondered whether the murder of an editor was an indictable offence. When he did not have ten shillings, 'I will get on' cried Rob to himself. 'I'm not going to be starved out of a big town like this. I'll make my mark yet. Yes,' he roared, while the housekeeper at the other side of the door quaked to hear him, 'I will get on; I'm not going to be beaten.' He was waving his arms fiercely, when the housekeeper knocked. 'Come in,' said Rob, subsiding meekly into his chair. Before company he seemed to be without passion, but they should have seen him when he was alone. One night he dreamt that he saw all the editors in London being conveyed (in a row) to the hospital on stretchers. A gratified smile lit up his face as he slept, and his arm, going out suddenly to tip one of the stretchers over, hit against a chair. Rob jumped out of bed and kicked the chair round the room. By and by, when his articles were occasionally used, he told his proofs that the editors were capital fellows.

The only acquaintances he made were with journalists who came to his chambers to see Rorrison, who was now in India. They seemed just as pleased to see Rob, and a few of them, who spoke largely of their connection with literature, borrowed five shillings from him. To his disappointment Noble Simms did not call, though he sometimes sent up notes to Rob suggesting likely articles, and the proper papers to which to send them. 'I would gladly say "Use my name,"' Simms wrote, 'but it is the glory of anonymous journalism that names are nothing and good stuff everything. I assure you that on the Press it is the men who have it in them that succeed, and the best of them become the editors.' He advised Rob to go to the annual supper given by a philanthropic body to discharged criminals and write an account of the proceedings; and told him that when anything remarkable happened in London he should at once do an article (in the British Museum) on the times the same thing had happened before. 'Don't neglect eclipses,' he said, 'nor heavy scoring at cricket matches any more than what look like signs of the times, and always try to be first in the field.' He recommended Rob to gather statistics of all kinds, from the number of grandchildren the crowned heads of Europe had to the jockeys who had ridden the Derby winner more than once, and suggested the collecting of anecdotes about celebrities, which everybody would want to read if his celebrities chanced to die, as they must do some day; and he assured him that there was a public who liked to be told every year what the poets had said about May. Rob was advised never to let a historic house disappear from London without compiling an article about its associations, and to be ready to run after the fire brigade. He was told that an article on flagstone artists could be made interesting. 'But always be sure of your facts,' Simms said. 'Write your articles over again and again, avoid fine writing as much as dishonest writing, and never spoil a leaderette by drawing it out into a leader. By and by you may be able to choose the kind of subject that interests yourself, but at present put your best work into what experienced editors believe interests the general public.'

Rob found these suggestions valuable, and often thought, as he passed Simms's door, of going in to thank him, but he had an uncomfortable feeling that Simms did not want him. Of course Rob was wrong. Simms had feared at first to saddle himself with a man who might prove incapable, and besides, he generally liked those persons best whom he saw least frequently.

For the great part of the spring Simms was out of town; but one day after his return he met Rob on the stair, and took him into his chambers. The sitting-room had been originally furnished with newspaper articles; Simms, in his younger days, when he wanted a new chair or an etching having written an article to pay for it, and then pasted the article on the back. He had paid a series on wild birds for his piano, and at one time leaderettes had even been found in the inside of his hats. Odd books and magazines lay about his table, but they would not in all have filled a library shelf; and there were no newspapers visible. The blank wall opposite the fireplace showed in dust that a large picture had recently hung there. It was an oil-painting which a month earlier had given way in the cord and fallen behind the piano, where Simms was letting it lie.

'I wonder,' said Rob, who had heard from many quarters of Simms's reputation, 'that you are content to put your best work into newspapers.'

'Ah,' answered Simms, 'I was ambitious once, but, as I told you, the grand book was a failure. Nowadays I gratify myself with the reflection that I am not stupid enough ever to be a great man.'

'I wish you would begin something really big,' said Rob earnestly.

'I feel safer,' replied Simms, 'finishing something really little.'

He turned the talk to Rob's affairs as if his own wearied him, and, after hesitating, offered to 'place' a political article by Rob with the editor of the Morning Wire.

'I don't say he'll use it, though,' he added.

This was so much the work Rob hungered for that he could have run upstairs and begun it at once.

'Why, you surely don't work on Saturday nights?' said his host, who was putting on an overcoat.

'Yes,' said Rob, 'there is nothing else to do. I know no one well enough to go to him. Of course I do nothing on the Sab—I mean on Sundays.'

'No? Then how do you pass your Sundays?'

'I go to church, and take a long walk, or read.'

'And you never break this principle—when a capital idea for an article strikes you on Sunday evening, for instance?'

'Well,' said Rob, 'when that happens I wait until twelve o'clock strikes, and then begin.'

Perceiving nothing curious in this, Rob did not look up to see Simms's mouth twitching.

'On those occasions,' asked Simms, 'when you are waiting for twelve o'clock, does the evening not seem to pass very slowly?'

Then Rob blushed.

'At all events, come with me to-night,' said Simms, 'to my club. I am going now to the Wigwam, and we may meet men there worth your knowing.'

The Wigwam is one of the best known literary clubs in London, and as they rattled to it in a hansom, the driver of which was the broken son of a peer, Rob remarked that its fame had even travelled to his saw-mill.

'It has such a name,' said Simms in reply, 'that I feel sorry for any one who is taken to it for the first time. The best way to admire the Wigwam is not to go to it.'

'I always thought it was considered the pleasantest club in London,' Rob said.

'So it is,' said Simms, who was a member of half a dozen; 'most of the others are only meant for sitting in on padded chairs and calling out "sh-sh" when any other body speaks.'

At the Wigwam there is a special dinner every Saturday evening, but it was over before Simms and Rob arrived, and the members were crowding into the room where great poets have sat beating time with churchwardens, while great artists or coming Cabinet ministers sang songs that were not of the drawing-room. A popular novelist, on whom Rob gazed with a veneration that did not spread to his companion's face, was in the chair when they entered, and the room was full of literary men, actors, and artists, of whom, though many were noted, many were also needy. Here was an actor who had separated from his wife because her notices were better than his; and another gentleman of the same profession took Rob aside to say that he was the greatest tragedian on earth if he could only get a chance. Rob did not know what to reply when the eminent cartoonist sitting next him, whom he had looked up to for half a dozen years, told him, by way of opening a conversation, that he had just pawned his watch. They seemed so pleased with poverty that they made as much of a little of it as they could, and the wisest conclusion Rob came to that night was not to take them too seriously. It was, however, a novel world to find oneself in all of a sudden, one in which everybody was a wit at his own expense. Even Simms, who always upheld the Press when any outsider ran it down, sang with applause some verses whose point lay in their being directed against himself. They began—

Every one abandoned himself to the humour of the evening, and as song followed song, or was wedged between entertainments of other kinds, the room filled with smoke until it resembled London in a fog.

By and by a sallow-faced man mounted a table to show the company how to perform a remarkable trick with three hats. He got his hats from the company, and having looked at them thoughtfully for some minutes, said that he had forgotten the way.

'That,' said Simms, mentioning a well-known journalist, 'is K——. He can never work unless his pockets are empty, and he would not be looking so doleful at present if he was not pretty well off. He goes from room to room in the house he lodges in, according to the state of his finances, and when you call on him you have to ask at the door which floor he is on to-day. One week you find him in the drawing-room, the next in the garret.'

A stouter and brighter man followed the hat entertainment with a song, which he said was considered by some of his friends a recitation.

'There was a time,' said Simms, who was held a terrible person by those who took him literally, 'when that was the saddest man I knew. He was so sad that the doctors feared he would die of it. It all came of his writing for Punch.'

'How did they treat him?' Rob asked.

'Oh, they quite gave him up, and he was wasting away visibly, when a second-rate provincial journal appointed him its London correspondent, and saved his life.'

'Then he was sad,' asked Rob, 'because he was out of work?'

'On the contrary,' said Simms gravely, 'he was always one of the successful men, but he could not laugh.'

'And he laughed when he became a London correspondent?'

'Yes; that restored his sense of humour. But listen to this song; he is a countryman of yours who sings it.'

A man, who looked as if he had been cut out of a granite block, and who at the end of each verse thrust his pipe back into his mouth, sang in a broad accent, that made Rob want to go nearer him, some verses about an old university—

'Now, you could never guess,' Simms said to Rob, 'what profession our singer belongs to.'

'He looks more like a writer than an artist,' said Rob, who had felt the song more than the singer did.

'Well, he is more an artist than a writer, though, strictly speaking, he is neither. To that man is the honour of having created a profession. He furnishes rooms for interviews.'

'I don't quite understand,' said Rob.

'It is in this way,' Simms explained. 'Interviews in this country are of recent growth, but it has been already discovered that what the public want to read is not so much a celebrity's views on any topic as a description of his library, his dressing-gown, or his gifts from the king of Kashabahoo. Many of the eminent ones, however, are very uninteresting in private life, and have no curiosities to show their interviewer worth writing about, so your countryman has started a profession of providing curiosities suitable for celebrities at from five pounds upwards, each article, of course, having a guaranteed story attached to it. The editor, you observe, intimates his wish to include the distinguished person in his galaxy of "Men of the Moment," and then the notability drops a line to our friend saying that he wants a few of his rooms arranged for an interview. Your countryman sends the goods, arranges them effectively, and puts the celebrity up to the reminiscences he is to tell about each.'

'I suppose,' said Rob, with a light in his eye, 'that the interviewer is as much taken in by this as—well, say, as I have been by you?'

'To the same extent,' admitted Simms solemnly. 'Of course he is not aware that before the interview appears the interesting relics have all been packed up and taken back to our Scottish friend's show-rooms.'

The distinguished novelist in the chair told Rob (without having been introduced to him) that his books were beggaring his publishers.

'What I make my living off,' he said, 'is the penny dreadful, complete in one number. I manufacture two a week without hindrance to other employment, and could make it three if I did not have a weak wrist.'

It was thus that every one talked to Rob, who, because he took a joke without changing countenance, was considered obtuse. He congratulated one man on his article on chaffinches in the Evening Firebrand, and the writer said he had discovered, since the paper appeared, that the birds he described were really linnets. Another man was introduced to Rob as the writer of In Memoriam.

'No,' said the gentleman himself, on seeing Rob start, 'my name is not Tennyson. It is, indeed, Murphy. Tennyson and the other fellows, who are ambitious of literary fame, pay me so much a page for poems to which they put their names.'

At this point the applause became so deafening that Simms and Rob, who had been on their way to another room, turned back. An aged man, with a magnificent head, was on his feet to describe his first meeting with Carlyle.

'Who is it?' asked Rob, and Simms mentioned the name of a celebrity only a little less renowned than Carlyle himself. To Rob it had been one of the glories of London that in the streets he sometimes came suddenly upon world-renowned men, but he now looked upon this eminent scientist for the first time. The celebrity was there as a visitor, for the Wigwam cannot boast quite such famous members as he.

The septuagenarian began his story well. He described the approach to Craigenputtock on a warm summer afternoon, and the emotions that laid hold of him as, from a distance, he observed the sage seated astride a low dyke, flinging stones into the duck-pond. The pedestrian announced his name and the pleasure with which he at last stood face to face with the greatest writer of the day; and then the genial author of Sartor Resartus, annoyed at being disturbed, jumped off the dyke and chased his visitor round and round the duck-pond. The celebrity had got thus far in his reminiscence when he suddenly stammered, bit his lip as if enraged at something, and then trembled so much that he had to be led back to his seat.

'He must be ill,' whispered Rob to Simms.

'It isn't that,' answered Simms; 'I fancy he must have caught sight of Wingfield.'

Rob's companion pointed to a melancholy-looking man in a seedy coat, who was sitting alone glaring at the celebrity.

'Who is he?' asked Rob.

'He is the great man's literary executor,' Simms replied: 'come along with me and hearken to his sad tale; he is never loth to tell it.'

They crossed over to Wingfield, who received them dejectedly.

'This is not a matter I care to speak of, Mr. Angus,' said the sorrowful man, who spoke of it, however, as frequently as he could find a listener. 'It is now seven years since that gentleman'—pointing angrily at the celebrity, who glared in reply—'appointed me his literary executor. At the time I thought it a splendid appointment, and by the end of two years I had all his remains carefully edited and his biography ready for the Press. He was an invalid at that time, supposed to be breaking up fast; yet look at him now.'

'He is quite vigorous in appearance now,' said Rob.

'Oh, I've given up hope,' continued the sad man dolefully.

'Still,' remarked Simms, 'I don't know that you could expect him to die just for your sake. I only venture that as an opinion, of course.'

'I don't ask that of him,' responded Wingfield. 'I'm not blaming him in any way; all I say is that he has spoilt my life. Here have I been waiting, waiting for five years, and I seem farther from publication than ever.'

'It is hard on you,' said Simms.

'But why did he break down in his story,' asked Rob, 'when he saw you?'

'Oh, the man has some sense of decency left, I suppose, and knows that he has ruined my career.'

'Is the Carlylean reminiscence taken from the biography?' inquired Simms.

'That is the sore point,' answered Wingfield sullenly. 'He used to shun society, but now he goes to clubs, banquets, and "At Homes," and tells the choice things in the memoir at every one of them. The book will scarcely be worth printing now.'

'I dare say he feels sorry for you,' said Simms, 'and sees that he has placed you in a false position.'

'He does in a way,' replied the literary executor, 'and yet I irritate him. When he was ill last December I called to ask for him every day, but he mistook my motives; and now he is frightened to be left alone with me.'

'It is a sad business,' said Simms, 'but we all have our trials.'

'I would try to bear up better,' said the sad man, 'if I got more sympathy.'

It was very late when Simms and Rob left the Wigwam, yet they were amongst the first to go.

'When does the club close?' Rob asked, as they got into the fresh air.

'No one knows,' answered Simms wearily, 'but I believe the last man to go takes in the morning's milk.'

In the weeks that followed Rob worked hard at political articles for the Wire, and at last began to feel that he was making some headway. He had not the fatal facility for scribbling that distinguishes some journalists, but he had felt life before he took to writing. His style was forcible if not superfine, and he had the faculty that makes a journalist, of only seeing things from one point of view. The successful political writer is blind in one eye.

Though one in three of Rob's articles was now used, the editor of the Wire did not write to say that he liked them, and Rob never heard any one mention them. Even Simms would not read them, but then Simms never read any paper. He got his news from the placards, and bought the Scalping Knife, not to read his own articles, but to measure them and calculate how much he would get for them. Then he dropped them into the gutter.

Some weeks had passed without Rob's seeing Simms, when one day he got a letter that made him walk round and round his table like a circus horse. It was from the editor of the Wire, asking him to be in readiness to come to the office any evening he might be wanted to write. This looked like a step toward an appointment on the staff if he gave satisfaction (a proviso which he took complacently), and Rob's chest expanded, till the room seemed quite small. He pictured Thrums again. He jumped to Mary Abinger, and then he distinctly saw himself in the editorial chair of the Times. He was lying back in it, smoking a cigar, and giving a Cabinet minister five minutes.

Nearly six months had passed since Rob saw Miss Abinger—a long time for a young man to remain in love with the same person. Of late Rob had been less given to dreaming than may be expected of a man who classifies the other sex into one particular lady and others, but Mary was coming to London in the early summer, and when he thought of summer he meant Mary. Rob was oftener in Piccadilly in May than he had been during the previous four months, and he was always looking for somebody. It was the third of June, a day to be remembered in his life, that he heard from the editor of the Wire. At five o'clock he looked upon that as what made it a day of days, but he had changed his mind by a quarter past.

Rob had a silk hat now, and he thrust it on his head, meaning to run downstairs to tell Simms of his good fortune. He was in the happy frame of mind that makes a man walk round improbabilities, and for the first time since he came to London he felt confident of the future, without becoming despondent immediately afterwards. The future, like the summer, was an allegory for Miss Abinger. For the moment Rob's heart filled with compassion for Simms. The one thing our minds will not do is leave our neighbours alone, and Rob had some time before reached the conclusion that Simms's nature had been twisted by a disappointment in love. There was nothing else that could account for his fits of silence, his indifference to the future. He was known to have given the coat off his back to some miserable creature in the street, and to have been annoyed when he discovered that a friend saw him do it. Though Simms's walls were covered with engravings, Rob remembered all at once that there was not a female figure in one of them.

To sympathise with others in a love affair is delightful to every one who feels that he is all right himself. Rob went down to Simms's rooms with a joyous step and a light heart. The outer door stood ajar, and as he pushed it open he heard a voice that turned his face white. From where he stood paralysed he saw through the dark passage into the sitting-room. Mary Abinger was standing before the fireplace, and as Rob's arm fell from the door, Simms bent forward and kissed her.

ROB IS STRUCK DOWN

Rob turned from Simms's door and went quietly downstairs, looking to the beadle, who gave him a good-evening at the mouth of the inn, like a man going quietly to his work. He could not keep his thoughts. They fell about him in sparks, raised by a wheel whirling so fast that it seemed motionless.

Sleep-walkers seldom come to damage until they awake; and Rob sped on, taking crossings without a halt; deaf to the shouts of cabmen, blind to their gesticulations. When you have done Oxford Circus you can do anything; but he was not even brought to himself there, though it is all savage lands in twenty square yards. For a time he saw nothing but that scene in Simms's chambers, which had been photographed on his brain. The light of his life had suddenly been turned out, leaving him only the last thing he saw to think about.

By and by he was walking more slowly, laughing at himself. Since he met Mary Abinger she had lived so much in his mind that he had not dared to think of losing her. He had only given himself fits of despondency for the pleasure of dispelling them. Now all at once he saw without prejudice the Rob Angus who had made up his mind to carry off this prize, and he cut such a poor figure that he smiled grimly at it. He realised as a humorous conception that this uncouth young man who was himself must have fancied that he was, on the whole, less unworthy of Miss Abinger than were most of the young men she was likely to meet. With the exaggerated humility that comes occasionally to men in his condition, without, however, feeling sufficiently at home to remain long, he felt that there was everything in Simms a girl could find lovable, and nothing in himself. He was so terribly open that any one could understand him, while Simms was such an enigma as a girl would love to read. His own clumsiness contrasted as disastrously with Simms's grace of manner as his blunt talk compared with Simms's wit. Not being able to see himself with the eyes of others, Rob noted only one thing in his favour, his fight forward; which they, knowing, for instance, that he was better to look at than most men, would have considered his chief drawback. Rob in his calmer moments had perhaps as high an opinion of his capacity as the circumstances warranted, but he never knew that a good many ladies felt his presence when he passed them.

Most men are hero and villain several times in a day, but Rob went through the whole gamut of sensations in half an hour, hating himself the one moment for what seemed another's fault the next, fancying now that he was blessing the union of Mary with the man she cared for, and, again, that he had Simms by the throat. He fled from the fleeting form of woman, and ran after it.

Simms had deceived him, had never even mentioned Silchester, had laughed at the awakening that was coming to him. All these months they had been waiting for Mary Abinger together, and Simms had not said that when she came it would be to him. Then Rob saw what a foolish race these thoughts ran in his brain, remembering that he had only seen Simms twice for more than a moment, and that he himself had never talked of Silchester. He scorned his own want of generosity, and recalled his solicitude for Simms's welfare an hour before.

Rob saw his whole future life lying before him. The broken-looking man with the sad face aged before his time, who walked alone up Fleet Street, was Rob Angus, who had come to London to be happy. Simms would ask him sometimes to his house to see her, but it was better that he should not go. She would understand why, if her husband did not. Her husband! Rob could not gulp down the lump in his throat. He rushed on again, with nothing before him but that picture of Simms kissing her.

Simms was not worthy of her. Why had he always seemed an unhappy, disappointed man if the one thing in the world worth striving for was his? Rob stopped abruptly in the street with the sudden thought, Was it possible that she did not care for Simms? Could that scene have had any other meaning? He had once heard Simms himself say that you never knew what a woman meant by anything until she told you, and probably not even then. But he saw again the love in her eyes as she looked up into Simms's face. All through his life he would carry that look with him.

They took no distinct shape, but wild ways of ending his misery coursed through his brain, and he looked on calmly at his own funeral. A terrible stolidity seized him, and he conceived himself a monster from whom the capacity to sympathise had gone. Children saw his face and fled from him.

He had left England far behind, and dwelt now among wild tribes who had not before looked upon a white face. Their sick came to him for miracles, and he either cured them or told them to begone. He was not sure whether he was a fiend or a missionary.

Then something remarkable happened, which showed that Rob had not mistaken his profession. He saw himself in the editorial chair that he had so often coveted, and Mary Abinger, too, was in the room. Always previously when she had come between him and the paper he had been forced to lay down his pen, but now he wrote on and on, and she seemed to help him. He was describing the scene that he had witnessed in Simms's chambers, describing it so vividly that he heard the great public discussing his article as if it were an Academy picture. His passion had subsided, and the best words formed slowly in his brain. He was hesitating about the most fitting title, when some one struck against him, and as he drew his arm over his eyes he knew with horror that he had been turning Mary Abinger into copy.

For the last time that night Rob dreamt again, and now it was such a fine picture he drew that he looked upon it with sad complacency. Many years had passed. He was now rich and famous. He passed through the wynds of Thrums, and the Auld Lichts turned out to gaze at him. He saw himself signing cheques for all kinds of charitable objects, and appearing in the subscription lists, with a grand disregard for glory that is not common to philanthropists, as X. Y. Z. or 'A Wellwisher.' His walls were lined with books written by himself, and Mary Abinger (who had not changed in the least with the years) read them proudly, knowing that they were all written for her. (Simms somehow had not fulfilled his promise.) The papers were full of his speech in the House of Commons the night before, and he had declined a seat in the Cabinet from conscientious motives. His imagination might soon have landed him master in the Mansion House, had it not deserted him when he had most need of it. He fell from his balloon like a stone. Before him he saw the blank years that had to be traversed without any Mary Abinger, and despair filled his soul. All the horrible meaning of the scene he had fled from came to him like a rush of blood to the head, and he stood with it, glaring at it, in the middle of a roaring street. Three hansoms shaved him by an inch, and the fourth knocked him senseless.

An hour later Simms was lolling in his chambers smoking, his chair tilted back until another inch would have sent him over it. His gas had been blazing all day because he had no blotting-paper, and the blinds were nicely pulled down because Mary Abinger and Nell were there to do it. They were sitting on each side of him, and Nell had on a round cap, about which Simms subsequently wrote an article. Mary's hat was larger and turned up at one side; the fashion which arose through a carriage wheel's happening to pass over the hat of a leader of fashion and make it perfectly lovely. Beyond the hats one does not care to venture, but out of fairness to Mary and Nell it should be said that there were no shiny little beads on their dresses.

They had put on their hats to go, and then they had sat down again to tell their host a great many things that they had told him already. Even Mary, who was perfect in a general sort of way, took a considerable time to tell a story, and expected it to have more point when it ended than was sometimes the case. Simms, with his eyes half closed, let the laughter ripple over his head, and drowsily heard the details of their journey from Silchester afresh. Mary had come up with the Merediths on the previous day, and they were now staying at the Langham Hotel. They would only be in town for a few weeks; 'just to oblige the season,' Nell said, for she had inveigled her father into taking a house-boat on the Thames, and was certain it would prove delightful. Mary was to accompany them there too, having first done her duty to society, and Colonel Abinger was setting off shortly for the Continent. In the middle of her prattle, Nell distinctly saw Simms's head nod, as if it was loose in its socket. She made a mournful grimace.

Simms sat up.

'Your voices did it,' he explained, unabashed. 'They are as soothing to the jaded journalist as the streams that murmur through the fields in June.'

'Cigars are making you stupid, Dick,' said Mary; 'I do wonder why men smoke.'

'I have often asked myself that question,' thoughtfully answered Simms, whom it is time to call by his real name of Dick Abinger. 'I know some men who smoke because they might get sick otherwise when in the company of smokers. Others smoke because they began to do so at school, and are now afraid to leave off. A great many men smoke for philanthropic motives, smoking enabling them to work harder, and so being for their family's good. At picnics men smoke because it is the only way to keep the midges off the ladies. Smoking keeps you cool in summer and warm in winter, and is an excellent disinfectant. There are even said to be men who admit that they smoke because they like it, but for my own part I fancy I smoke because I forget not to do so.'

'Silly reasons,' said Nell. If there was one possible improvement she could conceive in Dick it was that he might make his jests a little easier.

'It is revealing no secret,' murmured Abinger in reply, 'to say that drowning men clutch at straws.'

Mary rose to go once more, and sat down again, for she had remembered something else.

'Do you know, Dick,' she said, 'that your two names are a great nuisance. On our way to London yesterday there was an acquaintance of Mr. Meredith's in the carriage, and he told us he knew Noble Simms well.'

'Yes,' said Nell, 'and that this Noble Simms was an old gentleman who had been married for thirty years. We said we knew Mr. Noble Simms and that he was a barrister, and he laughed at us. So you see some one is trading on your name.'

'Much good may it do him,' said Abinger generously.

'But it is horrid,' said Nell, 'that we should have to listen to people praising Noble Simms's writings, and not be allowed to say that he is Dick Abinger in disguise.'

'It must be very hard on you, Nell, to have to keep a secret,' admitted Dick, 'but you see I must lead two lives or be undone. In the Temple you will see the name of Richard Abinger, barrister-at-law, but in Frobisher's Inn he is J. Noble Simms.'

'I don't see the good of it,' said Nell.

'My ambition, you must remember,' explained Dick, 'is to be Lord Chancellor or Lord Chief Justice, I forget which, but while I wait for that post I must live, and I live by writings (which are all dead the morning after they appear). Now such is the suspicion with which literature is regarded by the legal mind, that were it known I wrote for the Press my chance of the Lord Chancellorship would cease to be a moral certainty. The editor of the Scalping Knife has not the least notion that Noble Simms is the rising barrister who has been known to make as much by the law as a guinea in a single month. Indeed, only my most intimate friends, some of whom practise the same deception themselves, are aware that the singular gifts of Simms and Abinger are united in the same person.'

'The housekeeper here must know?' asked Mary.

'No, it would hopelessly puzzle her,' said Dick; 'she would think there was something uncanny about it, and so she is happy in the belief that the letters which occasionally come addressed to Abinger are forwarded by me to that gentleman's abode in the Temple.'

'It is such an ugly name, Noble Simms,' said Nell; 'I wonder why you selected it.'

'It is ugly, is it not?' said Dick. 'It struck me at the time as the most ridiculous name I was likely to think of, and so I chose it. Such a remarkable name sticks to the public mind, and that is fame.'

As he spoke he rose to get the two girls the cab that would take them back to the hotel.

'There is some one knocking at the door,' said Mary.

'Come in,' murmured Abinger.

The housekeeper opened the door, but half shut it again when she saw that Dick was not alone. Then she thought of a compromise between telling her business and retiring.

'If you please, Mr. Simms,' she said apologetically, 'would you speak to me a moment in the passage?'

Abinger disappeared with her, and when he returned the indifferent look had gone from his face.

'Wait for me a few minutes,' he said; 'a man upstairs, one of the best fellows breathing, has met with an accident, and I question if he has a friend in London. I am going up to see him.'

'Poor fellow!' said Mary to Nell, after Dick had gone; 'fancy his lying here for weeks without any one going near him but Dick.'

'But how much worse it would be without Dick!' said Nell.

'I wonder if he is a barrister,' said Mary.

'I think he will be a journalist rather,' Nell said thoughtfully, 'a tall, dark, melancholy-looking man, and I should not wonder though he had a broken heart.'

'I'm afraid it is more serious than that,' said Mary.

Nell set off on a trip round the room, remarking with a profound sigh that it must be awful to live alone and have no one to speak to for whole hours at a time. 'I should go mad,' she said, in such a tone of conviction that Mary did not think of questioning it.

Then Nell, who had opened a drawer rather guiltily, exclaimed, 'Oh, Mary!'

A woman can put more meaning into a note of exclamation than a man can pack in a sentence. It costs Mr. Jones, for instance, a long message simply to telegraph to his wife that he is bringing a friend home to dinner, but in a sixpenny reply Mrs. Jones can warn him that he had better do no such thing, that he ought to be ashamed of himself for thinking of it, that he must make some excuse to his friend, and that he will hear more of this when he gets home. Nell's 'Oh, Mary!' signified that chaos was come.

Mary hastened round the table, and found her friend with a letter in her hand.

'Well,' said Mary, 'that is one of your letters to Dick, is it not?'

'Yes,' answered Nell tragically; 'but fancy his keeping my letters lying about carelessly in a drawer—and—and, yes, using them as scribbling paper!'

Scrawled across the envelopes in a barely decipherable handwriting were such notes as these: 'Schoolboys smoking master's cane-chair, work up'; 'Return of the swallows (poetic or humorous?)'; 'My First Murder (magazine?)'; 'Better do something pathetic for a change.'

There were tears in Nell's eyes.

'This comes of prying,' said Mary.

'Oh, I wasn't prying,' said Nell; 'I only opened it by accident. That is the worst of it. I can't say anything about them to him, because he might think I had opened his drawer to—to see what was in it—which is the last thing in the world I would think of doing. Oh, Mary,' she added woefully, 'what do you think?'

'I think you are a goose,' said Mary promptly.

'Ah, you are so indifferent,' Nell said, surrendering her position all at once. 'Now when I see a drawer I am quite unhappy until I know what is in it, especially if it is locked. When we lived opposite the Burtons I was miserable because they always kept the blind of one of their windows down. If I had been a boy I would have climbed up to see why they did it. Ah! that is Dick; I know his step.'

She was hastening to the door, when she remembered the letters, and subsided primly into a chair.

'Well?' asked Mary, as her brother re-entered with something in his hand.

'The poor fellow has had a nasty accident,' said Dick; 'run over in the street, it seems. He ought to have been taken to the infirmary, but they got a letter with his address on it in his pocket, and brought him here.'

'Has a doctor seen him?'

'Yes, but I hardly make out from the housekeeper what he said. He was gone before I went up. There are some signs, however, of what he did. The poor fellow seems to have been struck on the head.'

Mary shuddered, understanding that some operation had been found necessary.

'Did he speak to you?' asked Nell.

'He was asleep,' said Dick, 'but talking more than he does when he is awake.'

'He must have been delirious,' said Mary.

'One thing I can't make out,' Dick said, more to himself than to his companions. 'He mumbled my name to himself half a dozen times while I was upstairs.'

'But is there anything remarkable in that,' asked Mary, 'if he has so few friends in London?'

'What I don't understand,' explained Dick, 'is that the word I caught was Abinger. Now, I am quite certain that he only knew me as Noble Simms.'

'Some one must have told him your real name,' said Mary. 'Is he asleep now?'

'That reminds me of another thing,' said Dick, looking at the torn card in his hand. 'Just as I was coming away he staggered off the couch where he is lying to his desk, opened it, and took out this card. He glared at it, and tore it in two before I got him back to the couch.'

There were tears in Nell's eyes now, for she felt that she understood it all.

'It is horrible to think of him alone up there,' she cried. 'Let us go up to him, Mary.'

Mary hesitated.

'I don't think it would be the thing,' she said, taking the card from Nell's hand. She started slightly as she looked at it, and then became white.

'What is his name, Dick?' she faltered, in a voice that made Nell look at her.

'Angus,' said Dick. 'He has been on the Press here for some months.'

The name suggested nothing at the moment to Nell, but Mary let the card fall. It was a shabby little Christmas card.

'I think we should go up and see if we can do anything,' Dick's sister said.

'But would it be the thing?' Nell asked.

'Of course it would,' said Mary, a little surprised at Nell.

THE STUPID SEX

Give a man his chance, and he has sufficient hardihood for anything. Within a week of the accident Rob was in Dick Abinger's most luxurious chair, coolly taking a cup and saucer from Nell, while Mary arranged a cushion for his poor head. He even made several light-hearted jests, at which his nurses laughed heartily—because he was an invalid.

Rob's improvement dated from the moment he opened his eyes and heard the soft rustle of a lady's skirts in the next room. He lay quietly listening, and realised by and by that he had known she was Mary Abinger all along.

'Who is that?' he said abruptly to Dick, who was swinging his legs on the dressing-table. Dick came to him as awkwardly as if he had been asked to hold a baby, and saw no way of getting out of it. Sick-rooms chilled him.

'Are you feeling better now, old fellow?' he asked.

'Who is it?' Rob repeated, sitting up in bed.

'That is my sister,' Dick said.

Rob's head fell back. He could not take it in all at once. Dick thought he had fallen asleep, and tried to slip gently from the room, discovering for the first time as he did so that his shoes creaked.

'Don't go,' said Rob, sitting up again. 'What is your sister's name?'

'Abinger, of course, Mary Abinger,' answered Dick, under the conviction that the invalid was still off his head. He made for the door again, but Rob's arm went out suddenly and seized him.

'You are a liar, you know,' Rob said feebly; 'she's not your sister.'

'No, of course not,' said Dick, humouring him.

'I want to see her,' Rob said authoritatively.

'Certainly,' answered Dick, escaping into the other room to tell Mary that the patient was raving again.

'I heard him,' said Mary.

'Well, what's to be done?' asked her brother. 'He's madder than ever.'

'Oh no, I think he's getting on nicely now,' Mary said, moving toward the bedroom.

'Don't,' exclaimed Dick, getting in front of her; 'why, I tell you his mind is wandering. He says you're not my sister.'

'Of course he can't understand so long as he thinks your name is Simms.'

'But he knows my name is Abinger. Didn't I tell you I heard him groaning it over to himself?'

'Oh, Dick,' said Mary, 'I wish you would go away and write a stupid article.'

Dick, however, stood at the door, ready to come to his sister's assistance if Rob got violent.

'He says you are his sister,' said the patient to Mary.

'So I am,' said Mary softly. 'My brother writes under the name of Noble Simms, but his real name is Abinger. Now you must lie still and think about that; you are not to talk any more.'

'I won't talk any more,' said Rob slowly. 'You are not going away, though?'

'Just for a little while,' Mary answered. 'The doctor will be here presently.'

'Well, you have quieted him,' Dick admitted.

They were leaving the room, when they heard Rob calling.

'There he goes again,' said Dick, groaning.

'What is it?' Mary asked, returning to the bedroom.

'Why did he say you were not his sister?' Rob said, very suspiciously.

'Oh, his mind was wandering,' Mary answered cruelly.

She was retiring again, but stopped undecidedly. Then she looked from the door to see if her brother was within hearing. Dick was at the other end of the sitting-room, and she came back noiselessly to Rob's bedside.

'Do you remember,' she asked, in a low voice, 'how the accident happened? You know you were struck by a cab.'

'Yes,' answered Rob at once, 'I saw him kissing you. I don't remember anything after that.'

Mary, looking like a culprit, glanced hurriedly at the door. Then she softly pushed the invalid's unruly hair off his brow, and glided from the room smiling.

'Well?' asked Dick.

'He was telling me how the accident happened,' Mary said.

'And how was it?'

'Oh, just as you said. He got bewildered at a crossing and was knocked over.'

'But he wasn't the man to lose his reason at a crossing,' said Dick. 'There must have been something to agitate him.'

'He said nothing about that,' replied Mary, without blushing.

'Did he tell you how he knew my name was Abinger?' Dick asked, as they went downstairs.

'No,' his sister said, 'I forgot to ask him.'

'There was that Christmas card, too,' Dick said suddenly. 'Nell says Angus must be in love, poor fellow.'

'Nell is always thinking people are in love,' Mary answered severely.

'By the way,' said Dick, 'what became of the card? He might want to treasure it, you know.'

'I—I rather think I put it somewhere,' Mary said.

'I wonder,' Dick remarked curiously, 'what sort of girl Angus would take to?'

'I wonder,' said Mary.

They were back in Dick's chambers by this time, and he continued with some complacency—for all men think they are on safe ground when discussing an affair of the heart:—

'We could build the young lady up from the card, which, presumably, was her Christmas offering to him. It was not expensive, so she is a careful young person; and the somewhat florid design represents a blue bird sitting on a pink twig, so that we may hazard the assertion that her artistic taste is not as yet fully developed. She is a fresh country maid, or the somewhat rich colouring would not have taken her fancy, and she is short, a trifle stout, or a big man like Angus would not have fallen in love with her. Reserved men like gushing girls, so she gushes and says "Oh my!" and her nicest dress (here Dick shivered) is of a shiny satin with a dash of rich velvet here and there. Do you follow me?'

'Yes,' said Mary; 'it is wonderful. I suppose, now, you are never wrong when you "build up" so much on so little?'

'Sometimes we go a little astray,' admitted Dick. 'I remember going into a hotel with Rorrison once, and on a table we saw a sailor-hat lying, something like the one Nell wears—or is it you?'

'The idea of your not knowing!' said his sister indignantly.

'Well, we discussed the probable owner. I concluded, after narrowly examining the hat, that she was tall, dark, and handsome, rather than pretty. Rorrison, on the other hand, maintained that she was a pretty, baby-faced girl, with winning ways.'

'And did you discover if either of you was right?'

'Yes,' said Dick slowly. 'In the middle of the discussion a little boy in a velvet suit toddled into the room, and said to us, "Gim'me my hat."'

In the weeks that followed, Rob had many delicious experiences. He was present at several tea-parties in Abinger's chambers, the guests being strictly limited to three; and when he could not pretend to be ill any longer, he gave a tea-party himself in honour of his two nurses—his one and a half nurses, Dick called them. At this Mary poured out the tea, and Rob's eyes showed so plainly (though not to Dick) that he had never seen anything like it, that Nell became thoughtful, and made a number of remarks on the subject to her mother as soon as she returned home.

'It would never do,' Nell said, looking wise.

'Whatever would the colonel say!' exclaimed Mrs. Meredith. 'After all, though,' she added—for she had been to see Rob twice, and liked him because of something he had said to her about his mother—'he is just the same as Richard.'

'Oh no, no,' said Nell, 'Dick is an Oxford man, you must remember, and Mr. Angus, as the colonel would say, rose from obscurity.'

'Well, if he did,' persisted Mrs. Meredith, 'he does not seem to be going back to it, and universities seem to me to be places for making young men stupid.'

'It would never, never do,' said Nell, with doleful decision.

'What does Mary say about him?' asked her mother.

'She never says anything,' said Nell.

'Does she talk much to him?'

'No; very little.'

'That is a good sign,' said Mrs. Meredith.

'I don't know,' said Nell.

'Have you noticed anything else?'

'Nothing except—well, Mary is longer in dressing now than I am, and she used not to be.'

'I wonder,' Mrs. Meredith remarked, 'if Mary saw him at Silchester after that time at the castle?'

'She never told me she did,' Nell answered, 'but sometimes I think—however, there is no good in thinking.'

'It isn't a thing you often do, Nell. By the way, he saw the first Sir Clement at Dome Castle, did he not?'

'Yes,' Nell said, 'he saw the impostor, and I don't suppose he knows there is another Sir Clement. The Abingers don't like to speak of that. However, they may meet on Friday, for Dick has got Mr. Angus a card for the Symphonia, and Sir Clement is to be there.'

'What does Richard say about it?' asked Mrs. Meredith, going back apparently upon their conversation.

'We never speak about it, Dick and I,' said Nell.

'What do you speak about, then?'

'Oh, nothing,' said Nell.

Mrs. Meredith sighed.

'And you such an heiress, Nell,' she said; 'you could do so much better. He will never have anything but what he makes by writing; and if all stories be true, half of that goes to the colonel. I'm sure your father never will consent.'

'Oh yes, he will,' Nell said.

'If he had really tried to get on at the Bar,' Mrs. Meredith pursued, 'it would not have been so bad, but he is evidently to be a newspaper man all his life.'

'I wish you would say journalist, mamma,' Nell said, pouting, 'or literary man. The profession of letters is a noble one.'

'Perhaps it is,' Mrs. Meredith assented, with another sigh, 'and I dare say he told you so, but I can't think it is very respectable.'

Rob did not altogether enjoy the Symphonia, which is a polite club attended by the literary fry of both sexes; the ladies who write because they cannot help it, the poets who excuse their verses because they were young when they did them, the clergymen who publish their sermons by request of their congregations, the tourists who have been to Spain and cannot keep it to themselves. The club meets once a fortnight, for the purpose of not listening to music and recitations; and the members, of whom the ladies outnumber the men, sit in groups round little lions who roar mildly. The Symphonia is very fashionable and select, and having heard the little lions a-roaring, you get a cup of coffee and go home again.

Dick explained that he was a member of the Symphonia because he rather liked to put on the lion's skin himself now and again, and he took Mrs. Meredith and the two girls to it to show them of what literature in its higher branches is capable. The elegant dresses of the literary ladies, and the suave manner of the literary gentlemen, impressed Nell's mother favourably, and the Symphonia, which she had taken for an out-at-elbows club, raised letters in her estimation.

Rob, however, who never felt quite comfortable in evening dress, had a bad time of it, for Dick carried him off at once, and got him into a group round the authoress of My Baby Boy, to whom Rob was introduced as a passionate admirer of her delightful works. The lion made room for him, and he sat sadly beside her, wishing he was not so big.

Both of the rooms of the Symphonia club were crowded, but a number of gentlemen managed to wander from group to group over the skirts of ladies' gowns. Rob watched them wistfully from his cage, and observed one come to rest at the back of Mary Abinger's chair. He was a medium-sized man, and for five minutes Rob thought he was Sir Clement Dowton. Then he realised that he had been deceived by a remarkable resemblance.

The stranger said a great deal to Mary, and she seemed to like him. After a long time the authoress's voice broke in on Rob's cogitations, and when he saw that she was still talking without looking tired, a certain awe filled him. Then Mary rose from her chair, taking the arm of the gentleman who was Sir Clement's double, and they went into the other room, where the coffee was served.

Rob was tempted to sit there stupidly miserable, for the easiest thing to do comes to us first. Then he thought it was better to be a man, and, drawing up his chest, boldly asked the lion to have a cup of coffee. In another moment he was steering her through the crowd, her hand resting on his arm, and, to his amazement, he found he rather liked it.

In the coffee-room Rob could not distinguish the young lady who moved like a swan, but he was elated with his social triumph, and cast about for any journalist of his acquaintance who, he thought, might like to meet the authoress of My Baby Boy. It struck Rob that he had no right to keep her all to himself. Quite close to him his eye lighted on Marriott, the author of Mary Hooney: a Romance of the Irish Question, but Marriott saw what he was after, and dived into the crowd. A very young gentleman, with large empty eyes, begged Rob's pardon for treading on his toes, and Rob, who had not felt it, saw that this was his man. He introduced him to the authoress as another admirer, and the round-faced youth seemed such a likely subject for her next work that Rob moved off comfortably.

A shock awaited him when he met Dick, who had been passing the time by taking male guests aside and asking them in an impressive voice what they thought of his great book, Lives of Eminent Washer-women, which they had no doubt read.

'Who is the man so like Dowton?' he repeated, in answer to Rob's question. 'Why, it is Dowton.'

Then Dick looked vexed. He remembered that Rob had been at Dome Castle on the previous Christmas Eve.

'Look here, Angus,' he said bluntly, 'this is a matter I hate to talk about. The fact is, however, that this is the real Sir Clement. The fellow you met was an impostor, who came from no one knows where. Unfortunately, he has returned to the same place.'

Dick bit his lip while Rob digested this.

'But if you know the real Dowton,' Rob asked, 'how were you deceived?'

'Well, it was my father who was deceived rather than myself, but we did not know the real baronet then. The other fellow, if you must know, traded on his likeness to Dowton, who is in the country now for the first time for many years. Whoever the impostor is, he is a humorist in his way, for when he left the castle in January he asked my father to call on him when he came to town. The fellow must have known that Dowton was coming home about that time; at all events, my father, who was in London shortly afterwards, looked up his friend the baronet, as he thought, at his club, and found that he had never set eyes on him before. It would make a delicious article if it had not happened in one's own family.'

'The real Sir Clement seems great friends with Miss Abinger,' Rob could not help saying.

'Yes,' said Dick, 'we struck up an intimacy with him over the affair, and stranger things have happened than that he and Mary——'

He stopped.

'My father, I believe, would like it,' he added carelessly, but Rob had turned away. Dick went after him.

'I have told you this,' he said, 'because, as you knew the other man, it had to be done, but we don't like it spoken of.'

'I shall not speak of it,' said miserable Rob.

He would have liked to be tearing through London again, but as that was not possible he sought a solitary seat by the door. Before he reached it his mood changed. What was Sir Clement Dowton, after all, that he should be frightened at him? He was merely a baronet. An impostor who could never have passed for a journalist had succeeded in passing for Dowton. Journalism was the noblest of all professions, and Rob was there representing it. The seat of honour at the Symphonia was next to Mary Abinger, and the baronet had held it too long already. Instead of sulking, Rob approached the throne like one who had a right to be there. Sir Clement had risen for a moment to put down Mary's cup, and when he returned Rob was in his chair, with no immediate intention of getting out of it. The baronet frowned, which made Rob say quite a number of bright things to Miss Abinger. When two men are in love with the same young lady one of them must be worsted. Rob saw that it was better to be the other one.

The frightfully Bohemian people at the Symphonia remained there even later than eleven o'clock, but the rooms thinned before then, and Dick's party were ready to go by half-past ten. Rob was now very sharp. It did not escape his notice that the gentlemen were bringing the ladies' cloaks, and he calmly made up his mind to help Mary Abinger on with hers. To his annoyance, Sir Clement was too quick for him. The baronet was in the midst of them, with the three ladies' cloaks, just as Rob wondered where he would have to go to find them. Nell's cloak Sir Clement handed to Dick, but he kept Mary's on his arm while he assisted Mrs. Meredith into hers. It was a critical moment. All would be over in five seconds.

'Allow me,' said Rob.

With apparent coolness he took Mary's cloak from the baronet's arm. He had not been used to saying 'allow me,' and his face was white, but he was determined to go on with this thing.

'Take my arm,' he said to Mary, as they joined the crowd that swayed toward the door. After he said it he saw that he had spoken with an air of proprietorship, but he was not sorry. Mary did it.

It took them some time to reach their cab, and on the way Mary asked Rob a question.

'I gave you something once,' she said, 'but I suppose you lost it long ago.'

Rob reddened, for he had been sadly puzzled to know what had become of his Christmas card.

'I have it still,' he answered at last.

'Oh,' said Mary coldly; and at once Rob felt a chill pass through him. It was true, after all, that Miss Abinger could be an icicle on occasion.

Rob, having told a lie, deserved no mercy, and got none. The pity of it is that Mary might have thawed a little had she known that it was only a lie. She thought that Rob was not aware of his loss. A man taking fickleness as the comparative degree of an untruth is perhaps only what may be looked for, but one does not expect it from a woman. Probably the lights had blinded Mary.

Rob had still an opportunity of righting himself, but he did not take it.

'Then you did mean the card for me,' he said, in foolish exultation; 'when I found it on the walk I was not certain that you had not merely dropped it by accident.'