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 altitude 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 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 is not me. 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 changes a man considerably for the better – or worse! But you seem to be worrying yourself about nothing. Not one author in many centuries writes from his own heart or as he truly feels. When he does, he becomes 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. Observe the signs of the time. Art is subordinate 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[18]. No one can reform it.”
He paused. I was silent.
“What I am going to say now,” he proceeded, “will sound ridiculous. In order to write with intense feeling, you must first feel. When you wrote this book of yours, you were almost a human hedgehog in the way of feeling. The ‘change’ you complain of is this: you have nothing to feel about.”
I was irritated.
“Do you take me for a callous creature?” I exclaimed. “You are mistaken in me, Lucio. I feel most keenly…”
“What do you feel?” he inquired, fixing his eyes steadily upon me. “There are hundreds of starving wretches in this metropolis, men and women on the brink of suicide because they have no hope of anything in this world or the next – do you feel for them? Do their grieves affect you? You know they do not, you know you never think of them, why should you? One of the chief advantages of wealth is the ability to shut out other people’s miseries from our personal consideration.”
I said nothing. He was right.
“Yesterday,” he went on in the same quiet voice, “a child was run over here[19], just opposite this hotel. It was only a poor child. Its mother ran shrieking out of a back-street, just to see the little bleeding body. She struck wildly with both hands at the men who were trying to lead her away. And then with a cry she fell face forward in the mud – dead. She was only a poor woman. I simply tell you the ‘sad incident’ as it occurred, and I am sure you are not sorry for the fate of either the child or its mother who died in the agony. Now don’t say you are, because I know you’re not!”
“How can one feel sorry for people one does not know or has never seen…” I began.
“Exactly! How is it possible? How can one feel, when one’s self is thoroughly comfortable? Thus, my dear Geoffrey, you must be content to let your book appear as the reflex and record of your past when you were in the sensitive stage. Now you are encased in a pachydermatous covering of gold, which adequately protects you from such influences.”
“You should have been an orator,” I said, rising and pacing the room to and fro in vexation. “But to me your words are not consoling, and I do not think they are true. Fame is easily enough secured.”
“Pardon me,” said Lucio with a deprecatory gesture. “Notoriety is easily secured – very easily. A few critics who have dined with you, will give you notoriety. But fame is the voice of the whole civilized public of the world.”
“The public!” I echoed contemptuously. “The public only care for trash.”
“It is a pity you should appeal to it then,” he responded with a smile. “If you think so little of the public why give it anything of your brain? The public is the author’s best friend and truest critic. But if you prefer to despise, I tell you what to do. Print just twenty copies of your book and present these to the leading reviewers. When they write about you (as they will do – I’ll take care of that) let your publisher advertise ‘First and Second Large Editions’ of the new novel by Geoffrey Tempest, are bought, one hundred thousand copies having been sold in a week!”
I laughed.
“It is a plan of action of many modern publishers,” I said. “But I don’t like it. I’ll win my fame legitimately if I can.”
“You can’t!” declared Lucio with a serene smile. “It’s impossible. You are too rich. That is not legitimate in literature.”
I went over to my table, rolled up my corrected proofs and directed them to the printers.
The door opened and closed – Lucio was gone. I remained alone. We had now been together for nearly a month, and I was no closer to the secret of his actual nature than I had been at first. Yet I admired him more than ever.
8
Rimanez and I went to the theater. We had entered the Earl of Elton’s box between the first and second acts of the play, and the Earl himself, an unimpressive, bald-headed, red-faced old gentleman, with fuzzy white whiskers, had risen to welcome us. His daughter had not moved. A minute or two later when he addressed her sharply, saying “Sibyl! Prince Rimanez and his friend, Mr. Geoffrey Tempest,” she turned her head and honoured us both with the chill glance. Her exquisite beauty smote me dumb and foolish. Lucio spoke to her, and I listened.
“At last, Lady Sibyl,” he said, bending towards her deferentially. “At last I have the honour of meeting you. I have seen you often, as one sees a star, – at a distance.”
She smiled, – a smile so slight and cold that it scarcely lifted the corners of her lovely lips.
“I do not think I have ever seen you,” she replied. “But my father speak of you constantly. So his friends are always mine.”
He bowed.
“To merely speak to Lady Sibyl Elton is sufficient to make the man happy,” he said. “To be her friend is to discover the lost paradise.”
She flushed. Rimanez turned to me, and placed a chair just behind hers.
“Will you sit here Geoffrey?” he suggested. “I want to have a business chat with Lord Elton.”
She smiled encouragingly as I approached her.
“You are a great friend of Prince Rimanez?” she asked softly, as I sat down.
“Yes, we are very intimate,” I replied. “He is a delightful companion.”
The curtain rose and the play was resumed. A very questionable play, about the ‘woman with the past’. I felt disgusted at the performance and looked at my companions. There was no sign of disapproval on Lady Sibyl’s fair countenance. Her father was bending forward eagerly.
“England has progressed!” said Rimanez.
“But, these women you know,” exclaimed Lord Elton, “these poor souls with a past – are very interesting!”
“Very!” murmured his daughter. “In fact it seems that for women with no such ‘past’ there can be no future! Virtue and modesty are quite out of date.”
I