‘I should advise you,’ she said, ‘to cut London the day your book appears. You’ll be a lion, you know.’
‘Oh, but!’ he exclaimed, ‘you don’t quite recognise what sort of book it is. It’s not an exciting narrative—no bears, or Indians, or scalpings, you know. It’s—well, it’s a bit dry—scientific stuff, and so on.’
Sprats smiled the smile of the wise woman and shook her head.
‘It doesn’t matter what it is—dry or delicious, dull or enlivening,’ she remarked sagely, ‘the people who’ll lionise you won’t read it, though they’ll swear to your face that they sat up all night with it. You’ll see it lying about, with the pages all cut and a book-marker sticking out, but most of the people who’ll rave to your face about it wouldn’t be able to answer any question that you asked them concerning it. Lionising is an amusing feature of social life in England—if you don’t like the prospect of it, run away.’
‘I shall certainly run,’ he answered. ‘I will go soon. I think, perhaps, that you exaggerate my importance, but I don’t want to incur any risk—it isn’t pleasant to be stared at, and pointed out, and all that sort of—of——’
‘Of rot!’ she said. ‘No—it isn’t, to some people. To other people it seems quite a natural thing. It never seemed to bother Lucian Damerel, for example. You cannot realise the adulation which was showered upon him when he first flashed into the literary heavens. All the women were in love with him; all the girls love-sick because of his dark face and wondrous hair; he was stared at wherever he went; and he might have breakfasted, lunched, and dined at somebody else’s expense every day.’
‘And he liked—that?’ asked Saxonstowe.
‘It’s a bit difficult,’ answered Sprats, ‘to know what Lucian does like. He plays lion to perfection. Have you ever been to the Zoo and seen a real first-class, AI diamond-of-the-first-water sort of lion in his cage?—especially when he is filled with meat? Well, you’ll have noticed that he gazes with solemn eyes above your head—he never sees you at all—you aren’t worth it. If he should happen to look at you, he just wonders why the devil you stand there staring at him, and his eyes show a sort of cynical, idle contempt, and become solemn and ever-so-far-away again. Lucian plays lion in that way beautifully. He looks out of his cage with eyes that scorn the miserable wondering things gathered open-mouthed before him.’
‘Does he live in a cage?’ asked Saxonstowe.
‘We all live in cages,’ answered Sprats. ‘You had better hang up a curtain in front of yours if you don’t wish the crowd to stare at you. And now come—I will show you my children.’