"Alas!" said Julian with a comically resigned air--"I shall never be of sufficient importance for that! No one would waste a penny stamp on me! All I can ever hope to win is the unanimous abuse of the press. That will at least give me an interested public!"
They laughed.
"Is Mr. Marius Longford a great friend of yours?" enquired Maryllia.
"Ah, that I cannot tell!" replied Julian--"He may be friend, or he may be foe. He writes for a great literary paper--and is a member of many literary clubs. He has produced three books--all monstrously dull. But he has a Clique. Its members are sworn to praise Longford, or die. Indeed, if they do not praise Longford, they become mysteriously exterminated, like rats or beetles. I myself have praised Longford, lest I also get a dose of his unfailing poison. He will not praise me--but no matter for that. If he would only abuse me!--but he won't! His blame is far more valuable than his eulogy. At present he stands like a kind of neutral whipping-post--very much in my way!"
"He knows Lord Roxmouth, he tells me,"--went on Maryllia; whereat Cicely's sharp glance flashed at her inquisitively--"Lord Roxmouth is by way of being a patron of the arts."
The tone of her voice, slightly contemptuous, was not lost on Adderley. He fancied he was on dangerous ground.
"I have never met Lord Roxmouth myself"--he said--"But I have heard Longford speak of him. Longford however rather 'makes' for society. I do not. Longford is quite at home with dukes and duchesses---"
"Or professes to be--" put in Maryllia, with a slight smile.
"Or professes to be,--I accept the correction!" agreed Adderley.
"Personally, I know nothing of him,"--said Maryllia--"I have never seen him at any of the functions in London, and I should imagine him to be a man who rather over-estimated himself. So many literary men do. That is why most of them are such terrible social bores."
"To the crime of being a literary man I plead not guilty!" and Julian folded his hands in a kind of mock-solemn appeal--"Moreover, I swear never to become one!"
"Good boy!" smiled Cicely--"Be a modern Pan, and run away from all the literary cliques, kicking up the dust behind you in their faces as you go! Roam the woods in solitude and sing!
"'The wind in the reeds and the rushes, The bees on the bells of thyme, The birds on the myrtle bushes, The cicale above in the lime, And the lizards below in the grass, Were as silent as ever old Tinolus was, Listening to my sweet pipings!'"