‘My lord,’ replied Lofty, ‘by this disinterested and noble counsel you have conferred on me an eternal obligation. I will follow up the hint you have given, and by so doing I hope to produce somewhat that the gracious public will not willingly let die.’
From that day Lord Lofty became an altered man. He was no longer the free, dashing, gallant young nobleman whose handsome exterior and high-bred manners endeared him to the fair sex, and whose superiority both mental and personal had entitled him to the rank of viceroy in the world of fashion, subject only to those two mighty monarchs, Douro and Ellrington. Seldom now was either ballroom, race ground, parliament house, rotunda, or ring honoured with his presence. Day and night he immersed himself in the solitude of his study and gave access to none but my brother, who urged him unrelentingly to the completion of the task which he had assigned him. Sometimes, indeed, the unhappy gull ventured forth to his old haunts, but so changed was he become in dress, language, and behaviour as scarcely to be recognised by his most intimate friends. A shabby black coat was generally wrapped round him; shoes trodden down at the heels garnished his feet; and the fair hair which formerly was his greatest pride, and which he usually wore arranged in clustering curls, now hung neglected in elf-locks round a countenance that for consumptive paleness and attenuation might have been envied by the veriest tea-taster in existence. His conversation was in unison with his appearance, whining, sickly, pedantic, and filled with that disgusting species of affectation peculiar to literary coxcombs. The consequence of this was that those who had been accustomed to consider his acquaintance as an honour and a matter of boasting now grew ashamed to be seen in company with him. When he entered a drawing-room the ladies turned aside their heads, and the gentlemen regarded him with a glance of undisguised contempt. Not a hand was stretched out to welcome him; not a voice repeated his name except in atone of derision. These things, however, he neither saw nor regarded. Fenced by a triple shield of self-conceit, the scorn of women and the disgust of men moved him no more than hailstones would a rock.
After some months of incessant labour he at length one evening announced to the marquis that his work was completed.
‘Wait till to-morrow, Fred,’ replied that faithful friend. ‘I will then accompany you to Sergeant Tree’s, and you shall taste the first sweets of authorship.’
That night and the first hours of morning seemed to Lofty an age. As soon as breakfast was over he stationed himself at the window and continued impatiently looking out for Arthur’s appearance. At length about eleven o’clock a.m. he perceived him advancing with his usual stately tread up the street. Flinging open the sash he jumped out and ran to meet him. As they walked towards the great bookseller’s the marquis mentioned that he had invited a few friends to meet him there that morning, as he wished them to be spectators of Lofty’s triumph. The latter bowed and expressed his gratitude for what he considered to be another instance of my brother’s attachment to him. They now entered the shop. Above a hundred men of the highest rank were assembled there, including Castlereagh, Molyneux, Aberford, Beauclerk, Sidney, Russell, Howard, Morpeth, etc., and by himself, leaning against a pillar, was Hamilton the architect, his pale face and his usually downcast eyes glowing with uncommon ardour behind the marble slab which, supported on Ionic columns, forms the counter. Sergeant Tree was seated in an elevated armchair. To him Lofty immediately advanced and, presenting his manuscript, said in a loud and pompous tone of voice:
‘Look at that, sir, and tell me what you will give me for it.’
Tree took out his spectacles, placed them with all imaginable tranquillity, and after reading the title-page and glancing over the body of the work returned it coolly to the washerwoman, saying in his quiet business-like manner: ‘This, my lord, is not in my way. You have probably mistaken me for Mrs. Bleachum, the washerwoman.’
A peal of laughter from the noble bystanders accompanied these words. Lofty stood motionless a moment as if transfixed, then turned to the marquis with a look of speechless agony. Instead of the cloud of sympathetic sorrow he had expected to see brooding on his friend’s brow his eyes fell on a countenance illumined by a smile of arch, cold, triumphant, deep and devilish meaning. It pierced at once the thick veil of infatuation that obscured his-mental vision, and suddenly the light of truth burst on him with almost annihilating splendour. While he stood more like a statue than a living man Arthur advanced and said in a low and soft voice, but so distinct as to be heard by all present:
‘Well, Frederic, don’t you think a rejected essay is almost as agreeable as a condemned tragedy?’
C. Brontë,