“But you yourself,” protested the artist, “are you not one of these same people? I understand that you—”
Mr. Quincunx rose to his feet, his expressive nostrils quivering with anger. “I don’t allow anyone to say that of me!” he cried “I may have my faults, but I’m as different from all these rats, as a guillemot is different from a cormorant!”
He sat down again and his voice took almost a pleading tone. “You know I’m different. You must know I’m different! How could I see all these things as clearly as I do if it wasn’t so? I’ve undergone what that German calls ‘the Great Renunciation.’ I’ve escaped the will to live. I neither care to acquire myself this accursed power—or to revolt, in jealous envy, against those who possess it.”
He relapsed into silence and contemplated his garden and its enclosing hedge, with a look of profound melancholy. Dangelis had been considerably distracted during the latter part of this discourse by his artistic interest in the delicate lines of Lacrima’s figure and the wistful sadness of her expression. It was borne in upon him that he had somewhat neglected this shy cousin of his exuberant young friend. He promised himself to see more of the Italian, as occasion served. Perhaps—if only Gladys would agree to it—he might make use of her, also, in his Dionysian impressions.
“Surely,” he remarked, speaking with the surface of his intelligence, and pondering all the while upon the secret of Lacrima’s charm, “whatever this man may be, he’s not a hypocrite,—is he? From all I hear he’s pathetically in earnest.”
“Of course we know he’s in earnest,” answered Maurice. “What I maintain is, that it is his personal vindictiveness that creates his opinions. I believe he would derive genuine pleasure from seeing Nevilton House burnt to the ground, and every one of the people in it reduced to ashes!”
“That proves his sincerity,” answered the American, keeping his gaze fixed so intently upon Lacrima that the girl began to be embarrassed.
“He takes the view-point, no doubt, that if the present oligarchy in England were entirely destroyed, a new and happier epoch would begin at once.”
“I’m sure Mr. Wone is opposed to every kind of violence,” threw in Lacrima.
“Nonsense!” cried Mr. Quincunx abruptly. “He may not like violence because he’s afraid of it reacting on himself. But what he wants to do is to humiliate everyone above him, to disturb them, to prod them, to harass and distress them, and if possible to bring them down to his own level. He’s got his thumb on Lacrima’s friends over there,”—he waved his hand in the direction of Nevilton House,—“because they happen to be at the top of the tree at this moment. But if you or I were there, it would be just the same. It’s all jealousy. That’s what it is,—jealousy and envy! He wants to make every one who’s prosperous and eats meat, and drinks champagne, know what it is to live a dog’s life, as he has known it himself! I understand his feelings very well. We poor toads, who live in the mud, get extraordinary pleasure when any of you grand gentlemen slip by accident into our dirty pond. He sees such people enjoying themselves and being happy and he wants to stick a few pins into them!”