The Complete Works of J. M. Barrie (With Illustrations). James Matthew Barrie
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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