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

Walsh shook his fist at this insult to the Press.

'It is the baronet I spoke of to you,' he said. 'I forget who he is; indeed, I rather think he travelled incognito when he was here last. I don't understand what he is doing here.'

'Why, I should say this is just the place where he would be if he is to marry Miss Abinger.'

'That was an old story,' said Walsh. 'If there ever was an engagement it was broken off. Besides, if he had been expected we should have known of it at the Argus.'

Walsh was right. Sir Clement Dowton was not expected at Dome Castle, and, like Rob, he was not even certain that he would be welcome. As he drew near his destination his hands fidgeted with the window strap, yet there was an unaccountable twinkle in his eye. Had there been any onlookers they would have been surprised to see that all at once the baronet's sense of humour seemed to overcome his fears, and instead of quaking, he laughed heartily. Sir Clement was evidently one of the men who carry their joke about with them.

This unexpected guest did Rob one good turn. When the colonel saw Sir Clement he hesitated for a moment as if not certain how to greet him. Then the baronet, who was effusive, murmured that he had something to say to him, and Colonel Abinger's face cleared. He did Sir Clement the unusual honour of accompanying him upstairs himself, and so Rob got the seat assigned to him at the dinner-table without having to meet his host in the face. The butler marched him down a long table with a twist in it, and placed him under arrest, as it were, in a chair from which he saw only a few of the company. The dinner had already begun, but the first thing he realised as he took his seat was that there was a lady on each side of him, and a table-napkin in front. He was not sure if he was expected to address the ladies, and he was still less certain about the table-napkin. Of such things he had read, and he had even tried to be prepared for them. Rob looked nervously at the napkin, and then took a covert glance along the table. There was not a napkin in sight except one which a farmer had tied round his neck. Rob's fingers wanted to leave the napkin alone, but by an effort he forced them toward it. All this time his face was a blank, but the internal struggle was sharp. He took hold of the napkin, however, and spread it on his knees. It fell to the floor immediately afterwards, but he disregarded that. It was no longer staring at him from the table, and with a heavy sigh of relief he began to feel more at ease. There is nothing like burying our bogies.

His position prevented Rob's seeing either the colonel at the head of the table or Miss Abinger at the foot of it, and even Walsh was hidden from view. But his right-hand neighbour was a local doctor's wife, whom the colonel had wanted to honour without honouring too much, and she gave him some information. Rob was relieved to hear her address him, and she was interested in a tame Scotsman.

'I was once in the far north myself,' she said, 'as far as Orkney. We were nearly drowned in crossing that dreadful sea between it and the mainland. The Solway Firth, is it?'

Rob thought for a moment of explaining what sea it is, and then he thought, why should he?

'Yes, the Solway Firth,' he said.

'It was rather an undertaking,' she pursued, 'but though we were among the mountains for days, we never encountered any of those robber chieftains one reads about – caterans I think you call them?'

'You were very lucky,' said Rob.

'Were we not? But, you know, we took such precautions. There was quite a party of us, including my father, who has travelled a great deal, and all the gentlemen wore kilts. My father said it was always prudent to do in Rome as the Romans do.'

'I have no doubt,' said Rob, 'that in that way you escaped the caterans. They are very open to flattery.'

'So my father said. We also found that we could make ourselves understood by saying "whatever," and remembering to call the men "she" and the women "he." What a funny custom that is!'

'We can't get out of it,' said Rob.

'There is one thing,' the lady continued, 'that you can tell me. I have been told that in winter the wild boars take refuge in the streets of Inverness, and that there are sometimes very exciting hunts after them?'

'That is only when they run away with children,' Rob explained. 'Then the natives go out in large bodies and shoot them with claymores. It is a most exciting scene.'

When the doctor's wife learned that this was Rob's first visit to the castle, she told him at once that she was there frequently. It escaped his notice that she paused here and awaited the effect. She was not given to pausing.

'My husband,' she said, 'attended on Lady Louisa during her last illness – quite ten years ago. I was married very young,' she added hurriedly.

Rob was very nearly saying he saw that. The words were in his mouth, when he hesitated, reflecting that it was not worth while. This is only noticeable as showing that he missed his first compliment.

'Lady Louisa?' he repeated instead.

'Oh yes, the colonel married one of Lord Tarlington's daughters. There were seven of them, you know, and no sons, and when the youngest was born it was said that a friend of his lordship sent him a copy of Wordsworth, with the page turned down at the poem "We are Seven " – a lady friend, I believe.'

'Is Miss Abinger like the colonel?' asked Rob, who had heard it said that she was beautiful, and could not help taking an interest in her in consequence.

'You have not seen Miss Abinger?' asked the doctor's wife. 'Ah, you came late, and that vulgar-looking farmer hides her altogether. She is a lovely girl, but – '

Rob's companion pursed her lips.

'She is so cold and proud,' she added.

'As proud as her father?' Rob asked, aghast.

'Oh, the colonel is humility itself beside her. He freezes at times, but she never thaws.'

Rob sighed involuntarily. He was not aware that his acquaintances spoke in a similar way of him. His eyes wandered up the table till they rested of their own accord on a pretty girl in blue. At that moment she was telling Greybrooke that he could call her Nell, because 'Miss' Meredith sounded like a reproach.

The reporter looked at Nell with satisfaction, and the doctor's wife followed his thoughts so accurately that, before she could check herself, she said, 'Do you think so?'

Then Rob started, which confused both of them, and for the remainder of the dinner the loquacious lady seemed to take less interest in him, he could not understand why. Flung upon his own resources, he remembered that he had not spoken to the lady on his other side. Had Rob only known it, she felt much more uncomfortable in that great dining-room than he did. No one was speaking to her, and she passed the time between the courses breaking her bread to pieces and eating it slowly, crumb by crumb. Rob thought of something to say to her, but when he tried the words over in his own mind they seemed so little worth saying that he had to think again. He found himself counting the crumbs, and then it struck him that he might ask her if she would like any salt. He did so, but she thought he asked for salt, and passed the salt-cellar to him, whereupon Rob, as the simplest way to get out of it, helped himself to more salt, though he did not need it. The intercourse thus auspiciously begun, went no further, and they never met again. It might have been a romance.

The colonel had not quite finished his speech, which was to the effect that so long as his tenants looked up to him as some one superior to themselves they would find him an indulgent landlord, when the tread of feet was heard outside, and then the music of the waits. The colonel frowned and raised his voice, but his guests caught themselves tittering, and read their host's rage in his darkening face. Forgetting that the waits were there by his own invitation, he signed to James, the butler, to rush out and mow them down. James did not interpret the message so, but for the moment it was what his master meant.

While the colonel was hesitating whether to go on, Rob saw Nell nod encouragingly to Greybrooke. He left his seat, and before any one knew what he was about, had flung open one of the windows. The room filled at once with music, and, as if by common consent, the table was deserted. Will opened the remaining windows, and the waits, who had been singing to shadows on the white blinds, all at once found a crowded audience. Rob hardly realised what it meant, for he had never heard the waits before.

It was a scene that would have silenced a schoolgirl. The night was so clear, that beyond the lawn where the singers were grouped the brittle trees showed in every twig. No snow was falling, and so monotonous was the break of the river, that the ear would only have noticed it had it stopped. The moon stood overhead like a frozen round of snow.

Looking over the heads of those who had gathered at one of the windows, Rob saw first Will Abinger and then the form of a girl cross to the singers. Some one followed her with a cloak. From the French windows steps dropped to the lawn. A lady beside Rob shivered and retired to the fireside, but Nell whispered to Greybrooke that she must run after Mary. Several others followed her down the steps.

Rob, looking round for Walsh, saw him in conversation with the colonel. Probably he was taking down the remainder of the speech. Then a lady's voice said, 'Who is that magnificent young man?'

The sentence ended 'with the hob-nailed boots,' and the reference was to Rob, but he only caught the first words. He thought the baronet was spoken of, and suddenly remembered that he had not appeared at the dinner-table. As Sir Clement entered the room at that moment in evening dress, making most of those who surrounded him look mean by comparison, Rob never learned who the magnificent young man was.

Sir Clement's entrance was something of a sensation, and Rob saw several ladies raise their eyebrows. All seemed to know him by name, and some personally. The baronet's nervousness had evidently passed away, for he bowed and smiled to every one, claiming some burly farmers as old acquaintances though he had never seen them before. His host and he seemed already on the most cordial terms, but the colonel was one of the few persons in the room who was not looking for Miss Abinger. At last Sir Clement asked for her.

'I believe,' said some one in answer to the colonel's inquiring glance round the room, 'that Miss Abinger is speaking with the waits.'

'Perhaps I shall see her,' said Dowton, stepping out at one of the windows.

Colonel Abinger followed him to the window, but no farther, and at that moment a tall figure on the snowy lawn crossed his line of vision. It was Rob, who, not knowing what to do with himself, had wandered into the open. His back was toward the colonel, and something in his walk recalled to that choleric officer the angler whom he had encountered on the Dome.

'That is the man – I was sure I knew the face,' said Colonel Abinger. He spoke in a whisper to himself, but his hands closed with a snap.

Unconscious of all this, Rob strolled on till he found a path that took him round the castle. Suddenly he caught sight of a blue dress, and at the same moment a girl's voice exclaimed, 'Oh, I am afraid it is lost!'

The speaker bent, as if to look for something in the snow, and Rob blundered up to her. 'If you have lost anything,' he said, 'perhaps I can find it.'

Rob had matches in his pocket, and he struck one of them. Then, to his surprise, he noticed that Nell was not alone. Greybrooke was with her, and he was looking foolish.

'Thank you very much,' said Nell sweetly; 'it is a – a bracelet.'

Rob went down on his knees to look for the bracelet, but it surprised him a little that Greybrooke did not follow his example. If he had looked up, he would have seen that the captain was gazing at Nell in amazement.

'I am afraid it is lost,' Nell repeated, 'or perhaps I dropped it in the dining-room.'

Greybrooke's wonder was now lost in a grin, for Nell had lost nothing, unless perhaps for the moment her sense of what was fit and proper. The captain had followed her on to the lawn, and persuaded her to come and look down upon the river from the top of the cliff. She had done so, she told herself, because he was a boy; but he had wanted her to do it because she was a woman. On the very spot where Richard Abinger, barrister-at-law, had said something to her that Nell would never forget, the captain had presumptuously kissed her hand, and Nell had allowed him, because after all it was soon over. It was at that very moment that Rob came in sight, and Nell thought she was justified in deceiving him. Rob would have remained a long time on the snow if she had not had a heart.

'Yes, I believe I did drop it in the dining-room,' said Nell, in such a tone of conviction that Rob rose to his feet. His knees were white in her service, and Nell felt that she liked this young man.

'I am so sorry to have troubled you, Mr. – Mr. – ' began the young lady.

'My name is Angus,' said Rob; 'I am a reporter on the Silchester Mirror.'

Greybrooke started, and Nell drew back in horror, but the next second she was smiling. Rob thought it was kindliness that made her do it, but it was really a smile of triumph. She felt that she was on the point of making a discovery at last. Greybrooke would have blurted out a question, but Nell stopped him.

'Get me a wrap of some kind, Mr. Greybrooke,' she said, with such sweet imperiousness that the captain went without a word. Half-way he stopped to call himself a fool, for he had remembered all at once about Raleigh and his cloak, and seen how he might have adapted that incident to his advantage by offering to put his own coat round Nell's shoulders.

It was well that Greybrooke did not look back, for he would have seen Miss Meredith take Rob's arm – which made Rob start – and lead him in the direction in which Miss Abinger was supposed to have gone.

'The literary life must be delightful,' said artful Nell, looking up into her companion's face.

Rob appreciated the flattery, but his pride made him say that the literary life was not the reporter's.

'I always read the Mirror,' continued Nell, on whom the moon was having a bad effect to-night, 'and often I wonder who writes the articles. There was a book-review in it a few days ago that I – I liked very much.'

'Do you remember what the book was?' asked Rob, jumping into the pit.

'Let me see,' said Nell, putting her head to the side, 'it was – yes, it was a novel called – called The Scorn of Scorns.'

Rob's good angel was very near him at that moment, but not near enough to put her palm over his mouth.

'That review was mine,' said Rob, with uncalled-for satisfaction.

'Was it?' cried his companion, pulling away her arm viciously.

The path had taken them to the top of the pile of rocks, from which it is a sheer descent of a hundred feet to the Dome. At this point the river is joined by a smaller but not less noisy stream, which rushes at it at right angles. Two of the castle walls rise up here as if part of the cliff, and though the walk goes round them, they seem to the angler looking up from the opposite side of the Dome to be part of the rock. From the windows that look to the west and north one can see down into the black waters, and hear the Ferret, as the smaller stream is called, fling itself over jagged boulders into the Dome.

The ravine coming upon him suddenly, took away Rob's breath, and he hardly felt Nell snatch away her arm. She stood back, undecided what to do for a moment, and they were separated by a few yards. Then Rob heard a man's voice, soft and low, but passionate. He knew it to be Sir Clement Dowton's, though he lost the words. A girl's voice answered, however, a voice so exquisitely modulated, so clear and pure, that Rob trembled with delight in it. This is what it said —

'No, Sir Clement Dowton, I bear you no ill-will, but I do not love you. Years ago I made an idol and worshipped it, because I knew no better, but I am a foolish girl no longer, and I know now that it was a thing of clay.'

To Rob's amazement he found himself murmuring these words even before they were spoken. He seemed to know them so well, that had the speaker missed anything, he could have put her right. It was not sympathy that worked this marvel. He had read all this before, or something very like it, in The Scorn of Scorns.

Nell, too, heard the voice, but did not catch the words. She ran forward, and as she reached Rob, a tall girl in white, with a dark hood over her head, pushed aside a bush and came into view.

'Mary,' cried Miss Meredith, 'this gentleman here is the person who wrote that in the Mirror. Let me introduce you to him, Mr. Angus, Miss – ' and then Nell shrank back in amazement, as she saw who was with her friend.

'Sir Clement Dowton!' she exclaimed.

Rob, however, did not hear her, nor see the baronet, for looking up with a guilty feeling at his heart, his eyes met Mary Abinger.

CHAPTER VI

THE ONE WOMAN

Daybreak on the following morning found the gas blazing in Rob's lodgings. Rob was seated in an arm-chair, his feet on the cold hearth. The Scorn of Scorns lay on the mantelpiece carefully done up in brown paper, lest a speck of dust should fall on it, and he had been staring at the ribs of the fireplace for the last three hours without seeing them. He had not thought of the gas. His bed was unslept on. His damp boots had dried on his feet. He did not feel cold. All night he had sat there, a man mesmerised. For the only time in his life he had forgotten to wind up his watch.

At times his lips moved as if he were speaking to himself, and a smile lit up his face. Then a change of mood came, and he beat the fender with his feet till the fire-irons rattled. Thinking over these remarks brought the rapture to his face:

'How do you do, Mr. Angus?'

'You must not take to heart what Miss Meredith said.'

'Please don't say any more about it. I am quite sure you gave your honest opinion about my book.'

'I am so glad you think this like Scotland, because, of course, that is the highest compliment a Scotsman can pay.'

'Good-night, Mr. Angus.'

That was all she had said to him, but the more Rob thought over her remarks the more he liked them. It was not so much the words themselves that thrilled him as the way they were said. Other people had asked, 'How do you do, Mr. Angus?' without making an impression, but her greeting was a revelation of character, for it showed that though she knew who he was she wanted to put him at his ease. This is a delightful attribute in a woman, and worth thinking about.

Just before Miss Abinger said, 'How do you do, Mr. Angus?' Rob had realised what people meant by calling her proud. She was holding her head very high as she appeared in the path, and when Nell told her who Rob was she flushed. He looked hopelessly at her, bereft of speech, as he saw a tear glisten on her eyelid; and as their eyes met she read into the agony that he was suffering because he had hurt her. It was then that Mary made that memorable observation, 'How do you do, Mr. Angus?'

They turned toward the castle doors, Nell and the baronet in front, and Rob blurted out some self-reproaches in sentences that had neither beginning nor end. Mary had told him not to take it so terribly to heart, but her voice trembled a little, for this had been a night of incident to her. Rob knew that it was for his sake she had checked that tear, and as he sat in his lodgings through the night he saw that she had put aside her own troubles to lessen his. When he thought of that he drew a great breath. The next moment his whole body shuddered to think what a brute he had been, and then she seemed to touch his elbow again, and he half rose from his chair in a transport.

As soon as he reached his lodgings Rob had taken up The Scorn of Scorns, which he had not yet returned to Mr. Licquorish, and re-read it in a daze. There were things in it so beautiful now that they caught in his throat and stopped his reading; they took him so far into the thoughts of a girl that to go farther seemed like eavesdropping. When he read it first The Scorn of Scorns had been written in a tongue Rob did not know, but now he had the key in his hands. There is a universal language that comes upon young people suddenly, and enables an English girl, for instance, to understand what a Chinaman means when he looks twice at her. Rob had mastered it so suddenly that he was only its slave at present. His horse had run away with him.

Had the critic of The Scorn of Scorns been a bald-headed man with two chins, who did not know the authoress, he would have smiled at the severity with which she took perfidious man to task, and written an indulgent criticism without reading beyond the second chapter. If he had been her father he would have laughed a good deal at her heroics, but now and again they would have touched him, and he would have locked the book away in his desk, seeing no particular cleverness in it, but feeling proud of his daughter. It would have brought such thoughts to him about his wife as suddenly fill a man with tenderness – thoughts he seldom gives expression to, though she would like to hear them.

Rob, however, drank in the book, his brain filled with the writer of it. It was about a young girl who had given her heart to a stranger, and one day when she was full of the joy of his love he had disappeared. She waited, wondering, fearing, and then her heart broke, and her only desire was to die. No one could account for the change that came over her, for she was proud, and her relatives were not sympathetic. She had no mother to go to, and her father could not have understood. She became listless, and though she smiled and talked to all, when she went to her solitary bed-chamber she turned her face in silence to the wall. Then a fever came to her, and after that she had to be taken to the Continent. What shook her listlessness was an accident to her father. It was feared that he was on his deathbed, and as she nursed him she saw that her life had been a selfish one. From that moment she resolved if he got better (is it not terrible this, that the best of us try to make terms with God?) to devote her life to him, and to lead a nobler existence among the poor and suffering ones at home. The sudden death of a relative who was not a good man frightened her so much that she became ill again, and now she was so fearful of being untruthful that she could not make a statement of fact without adding 'I think so,' under her breath. She let people take advantage of her lest she should be taking advantage of them, and when she passed a cripple on the road she walked very slowly so that he should not feel his infirmity.

Years afterwards she saw the man who had pretended to love her and then ridden away. He said that he could explain everything to her, and that he loved her still; but she drew herself up, and with a look of ineffable scorn, told him that she no longer loved him. When they first met, she said, she had been little more than a child, and so she had made an idol of him. But long since the idol had crumbled to pieces, and now she knew that she had worshipped a thing of clay. She wished him well, but she no longer loved him. As Lord Caltonbridge listened he knew that she spoke the truth, and his eyes drooped before her dignified but contemptuous gaze. Then, concludes the author, dwelling upon this little triumph with a satisfaction that hardly suggests a heart broken beyond mending, he turned upon his heel, at last realising what he was; and, feeling smaller and meaner than had been his wont, left the Grange for the second and last time.

How much of this might be fiction, Rob was not in a mind to puzzle over. It seemed to him that the soul of a pure-minded girl had been laid bare to him. To look was almost a desecration, and yet it was there whichever way he turned. A great longing rose in his heart to see Mary Abinger again and tell her what he thought of himself now. He rose and paced the floor, and the words he could not speak last night came to his lips in a torrent. Like many men who live much alone, Rob often held imaginary conversations with persons far distant, and he denounced himself to this girl a score of times as he paced back and forwards. Always she looked at him in reply with that wonderful smile which had pleaded with him not to be unhappy on her account. Horrible fears laid hold of him that after the guests had departed she had gone to her room and wept. That villain Sir Clement had doubtless left the castle for the second and last time, 'feeling smaller and meaner than had been his wont' (Rob clenched his fists at the thought of him), but how could he dare to rage at the baronet when he had been as great a scoundrel himself? Rob looked about him for his hat; a power not to be resisted was drawing him back to Dome Castle.