When he answered I had the shivering impression of a wizened old man speaking to me. The slight cast I had noticed in his blue eyes became oddly accentuated.
""The Diamond Gate,"" he said, peering at me uncannily, "was just a pretty amateur story. The new book is going to stagger the soul of humanity."
"I wish you weren"t such a secretive devil," said I. "What"s the book about? Tell an old friend. Get it off your mind. It will do you good."
I put my arm round his shoulders and my hand gave him an affectionate grip. My heart ached for the dear fellow, and I longed, in the plain man"s way, to break down the walls of reserve, which like those of the Inquisition Chamber, I felt were closing tragically upon him.
"Come, come," I continued. "Get it out. It"s obvious that the thing is suffocating you. I"ll tell n.o.body--not even that you"ve told me--neither Doria nor Barbara--it will be the confidence of the confessional. You"ll be all the better for it. Believe me."
He shrugged himself free from my grasp and turned away; his nervous fingers plucked unconsciously at his evening tie until it was loosened and the ends hung dissolutely over his shirt front.
"You"re very good, Hilary," said he, looking at every spot in the room except my eyes. "If I could tell you, I would. But it"s an enormous canvas. I could give you no idea--" The furrow deepened between his brows--"If I told you the scheme you would get about the same dramatic impression as if you read, say, the letter R, in a dictionary. I"m putting into this novel," he flickered his fingers in front of me--"everything that ever happened in human life."
I regarded him in some wonder.
"My dear fellow," said I, "you can"t compress a Liebig"s Extract of Existence between the covers of a six-shilling novel."
"I can," said he, "I can!" He thumped my writing table, so that all the loose bra.s.s and gla.s.s on it rattled. "And by G.o.d! I"m going to do it."
"But, my dearest friend," I expostulated, "this is absurd. It"s megalomania--_la folie des grandeurs_."
"It"s the divinest folly in the world," said he.
He threw a cigar stump into the fireplace and poured himself out and drank a stiff whisky and soda. Then he laughed in imitation of his familiar self.
"You dear prim old prig of a Hilary, don"t worry. It"s all going to come straight. When the novel of the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries is published I guess you"ll be proud of me. And now, good-night."
He laughed, waved his arm in a cavalier gesture and went from the room, slamming the door masterfully behind him.
CHAPTER IX
We kept the unreasonable pair at Northlands as long as we could, doing all that lay in our power to restore Adrian"s idiotically impaired health. I motored him about the county; I took him to golf, a pastime at which I do not excel; and I initiated him into the invigorating mysteries of playing at robbers with Susan. We gave a carefully selected dinner-party or two, and accepted on his behalf a few discreet invitations. At these entertainments--whether at Northlands or elsewhere--we caused it to be understood that the lion, being sick, should not be asked to roar.
"It"s so trying for him," said Doria, "when people he doesn"t know come up and gush over "The Diamond Gate"--especially now when his nerves are on edge."
On the occasion of our second dinner-party, the guests having been forewarned of the famous man"s idiosyncrasies, no reference whatever was made to his achievements. We sat him between two pretty and charming women who chattered amusingly to him with what I, who kept an eye open and an ear c.o.c.ked, considered to be a very subtly flattering deference.
Adrian responded with adequate animation. As an ordinary clever, well-bred man of the world he might have done this almost mechanically; but I fancied that he found real enjoyment in the light and picturesque talk of his two neighbours. When the ladies left us, he discussed easy politics with the Member for our own division of the County. In the drawing-room, afterwards, he played a rubber at bridge, happened to hold good cards and smiled an hour away. When the last guest departed, he yawned, excused himself on the ground of healthy fatigue and went straight off to bed. Barbara and I congratulated ourselves on the success of our dinner-party. The next day Adrian went about as glum as a dinosaur in a museum, and conveyed, even to Susan"s childish mind, his desire for solitude. His hang-dog dismalness so affected my wife, that she challenged Doria.
"What in the world is the matter with him, to-day?"
Doria drew herself up and flashed a glance at Barbara--they were both little bantams of women, one dark as wine, the other fair as corn. If ever these two should come to a fight, thought I who looked on, it would be to the death.
"Your friends are very charming, my dear, and of course I"ve nothing to say against them; but I was under the impression that every educated person in the English-speaking world knew my husband"s name, and I consider the way he was ignored last night by those people was disgraceful."
"But, my dear Doria," cried Barbara, aghast, "we thought that Adrian was having quite a good time."
"You may think so, but he wasn"t. Adrian"s a gentleman and plays the game; but you must see it was very galling to him--and to me--to be treated like any stockbroker--or architect--or idle man about town."
"You are unfortunate in your examples," said I, intervening judicially.
"Pray reflect that there are architects alive whose artistic genius is not far inferior to Adrian"s."
"You know very well what I mean," she snapped.
"No, we don"t, dear," said Barbara dangerously. "We think you"re a little idiot and ought to be ashamed of yourself. We took the trouble to tell every one of those people that Adrian hated any reference to his work, and like decent folk they didn"t refer to it. There--now round upon us."
The pallor deepened a shade in Doria"s ivory cheek.
"You have put me in the wrong, I admit it. But I think it would have been better to let us know."
What could one do with such people? I was inclined to let them work out their salvation in their own eccentric fashion; but Barbara decided otherwise. When one"s friends reached such a degree of lunacy as warranted confinement in an asylum, it was one"s plain duty to look after them. So we continued to look after our genius and his worshipper, and we did it so successfully that before he left us he recovered his sleep in some measure, and lost the squinting look of strain in his eyes.
On the morning of their departure I mildly counselled him to temper his fine frenzy with common-sense.
"Knock off the night work," said I.
He frowned, fidgeted with his feet.
"I wish to G.o.d I hadn"t to work at all," said he. "I hate it! I"d sooner be a coal-heaver."
"Bosh!" said I. "I know that you"re an essentially idle beggar; but you"re as proud as Punch of your fame and success and all that it means to you."
"What does it mean after all?"
"If you talk in that pessimistic way," I said, "you"ll make me cry.
Don"t. It means every blessed thing in the world to you. At any rate it has meant Doria."
"I suppose that"s true," he grunted. "And I suppose I am essentially idle. But I wish the d.a.m.ned thing would get written of its own accord.
It"s having to sit down at that infernal desk that gets on my nerves. I have the same horrible apprehension of it--always have--as one has before a visit to the dentist, when you know he"s going to drill h.e.l.l into you."
"Why do you work in such a depressing room?" I asked. "If I were shut up alone in it, I would stick my nose in the air and howl like a dog."
"Oh, the room"s all right," said he. Then he looked away absently and murmured as if to himself, "It isn"t the room."
"Then what is it?" I persisted.
He turned with a dreary sort of smile. "It"s the born b.u.t.terfly being condemned to do the work of the busy bee."
A short while afterwards we saw them drive off and watched the car disappear round the bend of the drive.
"Well, my dear," said I, "thank goodness I"m not a man of genius."
"Amen!" said Barbara, fervently.
As soon as they had settled down in their flat, Adrian began to work again, in the same unremitting fashion. The only concession he made to consideration of health was to go to bed immediately on his return from dinner-parties and theatres instead of spending three or four hours in his study. Otherwise the routine of toil went on as before. One afternoon, happening to be in town and in the neighbourhood of St.