Philip Van Doren Stern (ed) (92 page)

"I
should
have
thought
evenness
was
just
what
was
wrong
with him.
A
deadly
evenness.
That's
why
I
read
him
here.
The
noise
of this
place
breaks
the
rhythm.
He's
tolerable
here."
Soames
took
up
the book
and
glanced
through
the
pages.
He
laughed.
Soames'
laugh
was a
short,
single
and
mirthless
sound
from
the
throat,
unaccompanied by
any
movement
of
the
face
or
brightening
of
the
eyes.
"What
a period!"
he
uttered,
laying
the
book
down.
And
"What
a
country!" he
added.

I
asked
rather
nervously
if
he
didn't
think
Keats
had
more
or
less held
his
own
against
the
drawbacks
of
time
and
place.
He
admitted that
there
were
"passages
in
Keats,"
but
did
not
specify
them.
Of "the
older
men,"
as
he
called
them,
he
seemed
to
like
only
Milton. "Milton,"
he
said,
"wasn't
sentimental."
Also,
"Milton
had
a
dark insight."
And
again,
"I
can
always
read
Milton
in
the
reading-room."

"The
reading-room?"

"Of
the
British
Museum.
I
go
there
every
day."

"You
do?
I've
only
been
there
once.
I'm
afraid
I
found
it
rather a
depressing
place.
It—it
seemed
to
sap
one's
vitality."

"It
does.
That's
why
I
go
there.
The
lower
one's
vitality,
the
more sensitive
one
is
to
great
art.
I
live
near
the
Museum.
I
have
rooms in
Dyott
Street."

"And
you
go
round
to
the
reading-room
to
read
Milton?"

"Usually
Milton."
He
looked
at
me.
"It
was
Milton,"
he
certifica-tively
added,
"who
converted
me
to
Diabolism."

"Diabolism?
Oh
yes?
Really?"
said
I,
with
that
vague
discomfort and
that
intense
desire
to
be
polite
which
one
feels
when
a
man speaks
of
his
own
religion.
"You—worship
the
Devil?"

Soames
shook
his
head.
"It's
not
exactly
worship,"
he
qualified, sipping
his
absinthe.
"It's
more
a
matter
of
trusting
and
encourag-ing."

"Ah,
yes
.
.
.
But
I
had
rather
gathered
from
the
preface
to 'Negations'
that
you
were
a—a
Catholic."

"Je Tétais
à
cette
époque.
Perhaps
I
still
am.
Yes,
I'm
a
Catholic
diabolist."

This
profession
he
made
in
an
almost
cursory
tone.
I
could
see
that what
was
upmost
in
his
mind
was
the
fact
that
I
had
read
"Negations." His
pale
eyes
had
for
the
first
time
gleamed.
I
felt
as
one
who
is about
to
be
examined,
viva
voce,
on
the
very
subject
in
which
he
is shakiest.
I
hastily
asked
him
how
soon
his
poems
were
to
be
published.
"Next
week,"
he
told
me.

"And
are
they
to
be
published
without
a
title?"

"No.
I
found
a
title,
at
last.
But
I
shan't
tell
you
what
it
is,"
as though
I
had
been
so
impertinent
as
to
inquire.
"I
am
not
sure
that it
wholly
satisfies
me.
But
it
is
the
best
I
can
find.
It
suggests
something
of
the
quality
of
the
poems
.
.
.
Strange
growths,
natural
and wild,
yet
exquisite,"
he
added,
"and
many-hued,
and
full
of
poisons."