"Thanks!--much obliged!" and I gave way to hearty laughter--"Upon my word Lucio, your programme is perfect! It lacks nothing!"
"It is the orthodox round of social success," said Lucio with admirable gravity--"Intellect and originality have nothing whatever to do with it,--only money is needed to perform it all."
"You forget my book"--I interposed--"I know there is some intellect in that, and some originality too. Surely that will give me an extra lift up the heights of fashionable light and leading."
"I doubt it!" he answered--"I very much doubt it. It will be received with a certain amount of favour of course, as a production of a rich man amusing himself with literature as a sort of whim. But, as I told you before, genius seldom develops itself under the influence of wealth.
Then again "swagger" folks can never get it out of their fuddled heads that Literature belongs to Grub Street. Great poets, great philosophers, great romancists are always vaguely alluded to by "swagger" society as "those sort of people." Those sort of people are so "interesting" say the blue-blooded noodles deprecatingly, excusing themselves as it were for knowing any members of the cla.s.s literary. You can fancy a "swagger"
lady of Elizabeth"s time asking a friend--"O do you mind, my dear, if I bring one Master William Shakespeare to see you? He writes plays, and does something or other at the _Globe_ theatre,--in fact I"m afraid he acts a little--he"s not very well off poor man,--but _these sort of people_ are always so amusing!" Now you, my dear Tempest, are not a Shakespeare, but your millions will give you a better chance than he ever had in his life-time, as you will not have to sue for patronage, or practise a reverence for "my lord" or "my lady,"--these exalted personages will be only too delighted to borrow money of you if you will lend it."
"I shall not lend,"--I said.
"Nor give?"
"Nor give."
His keen eyes flashed approval.
"I am very glad," he observed, "that you are determined not to "go about doing good" as the canting humbugs say, with your money. You are wise.
Spend on yourself,--because your very act of spending cannot but benefit others through various channels. Now I pursue a different course. I always help charities, and put my name on subscription-lists,--and I never fail to a.s.sist a certain portion of clergy."
"I rather wonder at that--" I remarked--"Especially as you tell me you are not a Christian."
"Yes,--it does seem strange,--doesn"t it?"--he said with an extraordinary accent of what might be termed apologetic derision--"But perhaps you don"t look at it in the proper light. Many of the clergy are doing their utmost best to _destroy_ religion,--by cant, by hypocrisy, by sensuality, by shams of every description,--and when they seek my help in this n.o.ble work, I give it,--freely!"
I laughed "You must have your joke evidently"--I said, throwing the end of my finished cigar into the fire--"And I see you are fond of satirizing your own good actions. Hullo, what"s this?"
For at that moment Amiel entered, bearing a telegram for me on a silver salver. I opened it,--it was from my friend the publisher, and ran as follows--
"Accept book with pleasure. Send ma.n.u.script immediately."
I showed this to Rimanez with a kind of triumph. He smiled.
"Of course! what else did you expect? Only the man should have worded his telegram differently, for I do not suppose he would accept the book with pleasure if he had to lay out his own cash upon it. "Accept money for publishing book with pleasure" should have been the true message of the wire. Well, what are you going to do?"
"I shall see about this at once"--I answered, feeling a thrill of satisfaction that at last the time of vengeance on certain of my enemies was approaching--"The book must be hurried through the press as quickly as possible,--and I shall take a particular pleasure in personally attending to all the details concerning it. For the rest of my plans,--"
"Leave them to me!" said Rimanez laying his finely shaped white hand with a masterful pressure on my shoulder; "Leave them to me!--and be sure that before very long I shall have set you aloft like the bear who has successfully reached the bun on the top of a greased pole,--a spectacle for the envy of men, and the wonder of angels!"
VII
The next three or four weeks flew by in a whirl of excitement, and by the time they were ended I found it hard to recognize myself in the indolent, listless, extravagant man of fashion I had so suddenly become.
Sometimes at stray and solitary moments the past turned back upon me like a revolving picture in a gla.s.s with a flash of unwelcome recollection, and I saw myself worn and hungry, and shabbily clothed, bending over my writing in my dreary lodging, wretched, yet amid all my wretchedness receiving curious comfort from my own thoughts which created beauty out of penury, and love out of loneliness. This creative faculty was now dormant in me,--I did very little, and thought less. But I felt certain that this intellectual apathy was but a pa.s.sing phase,--a mental holiday and desirable cessation from brain-work to which I was deservedly ent.i.tled after all my sufferings at the hands of poverty and disappointment. My book was nearly through the press,--and perhaps the chiefest pleasure of any I now enjoyed was the correction of the proofs as they pa.s.sed under my supervision. Yet even this, the satisfaction of authorship, had its drawback,--and my particular grievance was somewhat singular. I read my own work with gratification of course, for I was not behind my contemporaries in thinking well of myself in all I did,--but my complacent literary egoism was mixed with a good deal of disagreeable astonishment and incredulity, because my work, written with enthusiasm and feeling, propounded sentiments and inculcated theories which I personally did not believe in. Now, how had this happened, I asked myself? Why had I thus invited the public to accept me at a false valuation? I paused to consider,--and I found the suggestion puzzling.
How came I to write the book at all, seeing that it was utterly unlike me as I now knew myself? My pen, consciously or unconsciously, had written down things which my reasoning faculties entirely repudiated,--such as belief in a G.o.d,--trust in the eternal possibilities of man"s diviner progress,--I credited neither of these doctrines. When I imagined such transcendental and foolish dreams I was poor,--starving,--and without a friend in the world;--remembering all this, I promptly set down my so-called "inspiration" to the action of an ill-nourished brain. Yet there was something subtle in the teaching of the story, and one afternoon when I was revising some of the last proof sheets I caught myself thinking that the book was n.o.bler than its writer. This idea smote me with a sudden pang,--I pushed my papers aside, and walking to the window, looked out. It was raining hard, and the streets were black with mud and slush,--the foot-pa.s.sengers were drenched and miserable,--the whole prospect was dreary, and the fact that I was a rich man did not in the least lift from my mind the depression that had stolen on me unawares. I was quite alone, for I had my own suite of rooms now in the hotel, not far from those occupied by Prince Rimanez; I also had my own servant, a respectable, good sort of fellow whom I rather liked because he shared to the full the instinctive aversion I felt for the prince"s man, Amiel. Then I had my own carriage and horses with attendant coachman and groom,--so that the prince and I, though the most intimate friends in the world, were able to avoid that "familiarity which breeds contempt" by keeping up our own separate establishments. On this particular afternoon I was in a more miserable humour than ever my poverty had brought upon me, yet from a strictly reasonable point of view I had nothing to be miserable about. I was in full possession of my fortune,--I enjoyed excellent health, and I had everything I wanted, with the added consciousness that if my wants increased I could gratify them easily. The "paragraph wheel" under Lucio"s management had been worked with such good effect that I had seen myself mentioned in almost every paper in London and the provinces as the "famous millionaire,"--and for the benefit of the public, who are sadly uninstructed on these matters, I may here state as a very plain unvarnished truth, that for forty pounds,[1] a well-known "agency" will guarantee the insertion of _any_ paragraph, provided it is not libellous, in no less than four hundred newspapers. The art of "booming"
is thus easily explained, and level-headed people will be able to comprehend why it is that a few names of authors are constantly mentioned in the press, while others, perhaps more deserving, remain ignored. Merit counts as nothing in such circ.u.mstances,--money wins the day. And the persistent paragraphing of my name, together with a description of my personal appearance and my "marvellous literary gifts," combined with a deferential and almost awe-struck allusion to the "millions" which made me so interesting--(the paragraph was written out by Lucio and handed for circulation to the "agency" aforesaid with "money down")--all this I say brought upon me two inflictions,--first, any amount of invitations to social and artistic functions,--and secondly, a continuous stream of begging-letters. I was compelled to employ a secretary, who occupied a room near my suite, and who was kept hard at work all day. Needless to say I refused all appeals for money;--no one had helped _me_ in my distress, with the exception of my old chum "Boffles,"--no one save he had given me even so much as a word of sympathy,--I was resolved now to be as hard and as merciless as I had found my contemporaries. I had a certain grim pleasure in reading letters from two or three literary men, asking for work "as secretary or companion," or failing that, for the loan of a little cash to "tide over present difficulties." One of these applicants was a journalist on the staff of a well-known paper who had promised to find _me_ work, and who instead of doing so, had, as I afterwards learned, strongly dissuaded his editor from giving me any employment. He never imagined that Tempest the millionaire, and Tempest the literary hack, were one and the same person,--so little do the majority think that wealth can ever fall to the lot of authors! I wrote to him myself however and told him what I deemed it well he should know, adding my sarcastic thanks for his friendly a.s.sistance to me in time of need,--and herein I tasted something of the sharp delight of vengeance. I never heard from him again, and I am pretty sure my letter gave him material not only for astonishment but meditation.
Yet with all the advantages over both friends and enemies which I now possessed I could not honestly say I was happy. I knew I could have every possible enjoyment and amus.e.m.e.nt the world had to offer,--I knew I was one of the most envied among men, and yet,--as I stood looking out of the window at the persistently falling rain, I was conscious of a bitterness rather than a sweetness in the full cup of fortune. Many things that I had imagined would give me intense satisfaction had fallen curiously flat. For example, I had flooded the press with the most carefully worded and prominent advertis.e.m.e.nts of my forthcoming book, and when I was poor I had pictured to myself how I should revel in doing this,--now that it was done I cared nothing at all about it. I was simply weary of the sight of my own advertised name. I certainly did look forward with very genuine feeling and expectation to the publication of my work when that should be an accomplished fact,--but to-day even that idea had lost some of its attractiveness owing to this new and unpleasant impression on my mind that the contents of that book were as utterly the reverse of my own true thoughts as they could well be. A fog began to darken down over the streets in company with the rain,--and disgusted with the weather and with myself, I turned away from the window and settled into an arm-chair by the fire, poking the coal till it blazed, and wondering what I should do to rid my mind of the gloom that threatened to envelop it in as thick a canopy as that of the London fog. A tap came at the door, and in answer to my somewhat irritable "Come in!" Rimanez entered.
"What, all in the dark Tempest!" he exclaimed cheerfully--"Why don"t you light up?"
"The fire"s enough,"--I answered crossly--"Enough at any rate to think by."
"And have you been thinking?" he inquired laughing--"Don"t do it. It"s a bad habit. No one thinks now-a-days,--people can"t stand it--their heads are too frail. Once begin to think and down go the foundations of society,--besides thinking is always dull work."
"I have found it so," I said gloomily--"Lucio, there is something wrong about me somewhere."
His eyes flashed keen, half-amused inquiry into mine.
"Wrong? Oh no, surely not! What _can_ there be wrong about you, Tempest?
Are you not one of the richest men living?"
I let the satire pa.s.s.
"Listen, my friend," I said earnestly--"You know I have been busy for the last fortnight correcting the proofs of my book for the press,--do you not?"
He nodded with a smiling air.
"Well I have arrived almost at the end of my work and I have come to the conclusion that the book is not Me,--it is not a reflex of my feelings at all,--and I cannot understand how I came to write it."
"You find it stupid perhaps?" said Lucio sympathetically.
"No," I answered with a touch of indignation--"I do not find it stupid."
"Dull then?"
"No,--it is not dull."
"Melodramatic?"
"No,--not melodramatic."
"Well, my good fellow, if it is not dull or stupid or melodramatic, what is it!" he exclaimed merrily--"It must be something!"
"Yes,--it is this,--it is beyond me altogether." And I spoke with some bitterness. "Quite beyond me. I could not write it now,--I wonder I could write it then. Lucio, I daresay I am talking foolishly,--but it seems to me I must have been on some higher alt.i.tude of thought when I wrote the book,--a height from which I have since fallen."
"I"m sorry to hear this," he answered, with twinkling eyes--"From what you say it appears to me you have been guilty of literary sublimity. Oh bad, very bad! Nothing can be worse. To write sublimely is a grievous sin, and one which critics never forgive. I"m really grieved for you, my friend--I never thought your case was quite so desperate."
I laughed in spite of my depression.
"You are incorrigible, Lucio!" I said--"But your cheerfulness is very inspiriting. All I wanted to explain to you is this,--that my book expresses a certain tone of thought which purporting to be _mine_, is not _me_,--in short, I, in my present self have no sympathy with it. I must have changed very much since I wrote it."
"Changed? Why yes, I should think so!" and Lucio laughed heartily--"The possession of five millions is bound to change a man considerably for the better--or worse! But you seem to be worrying yourself most absurdly about nothing. Not one author in many centuries writes from his own heart or as he truly feels--when he does, he becomes well-nigh immortal.
This planet is too limited to hold more than one Homer, one Plato, one Shakespeare. Don"t distress yourself--you are neither of these three!
You belong to the age, Tempest,--it is a decadent ephemeral age, and most things connected with it are decadent and ephemeral. Any era that is dominated by the love of money only, has a rotten core within it and must perish. All history tells us so, but no one accepts the lesson of history. Observe the signs of the time,--Art is made subservient to the love of money--literature, politics and religion the same,--_you_ cannot escape from the general disease. The only thing to do is to make the best of it,--no one can reform it--least of all you, who have so much of the lucre given to your share."
He paused,--I was silent, watching the bright fire-glow and the dropping red cinders.