Rimânez gave me a quick observant glance.
“Why, what has happened to you since we parted?” he inquired, throwing off his overcoat and sitting down opposite to me—“You seem out of temper! Yet you ought to be a perfectly happy man—for your highest ambition is about to be gratified. You said you wished to make your book and yourself ‘the talk of London,’—well, within the next two or three weeks you will see yourself praised in a very large number of influential newspapers as the newest discovered ‘genius’ of the day, only a little way removed from Shakespeare himself (three of the big leading magazines are guaranteed to say that) and all this through the affability of Mr McWhing, and the trifling sum of five hundred pounds! And are you not satisfied? Really, my friend, you are becoming difficult!—I warned you that too much good fortune spoils a man.”
With a sudden movement I flung down Mavis Clare’s book before him.
“Look at this”—I said—“Does she pay five hundred pounds to David McWhing’s charity?”
He took up the volume and glanced at it.
[p 175]
“Certainly not. But then,—she gets slandered—not criticized!”
“What does that matter!” I retorted—“The man from whom I bought this book says that everybody is reading it.”
“Exactly!” and Rimânez surveyed me with a curious expression, half of pity, half of amusement—“But you know the old axiom, my dear Geoffrey?—‘you may lead a horse to the water but you cannot make him drink.’ Which statement, interpreted for the present occasion, means that though certain log-rollers, headed by our estimable friend McWhing, may drag the horse—i.e. the public, up to their own particularly prepared literary trough, they cannot force it to swallow the mixture. The horse frequently turns tail and runs away in search of its own provender,—it has done so in the case of Miss Clare. When the public choose an author for themselves, it is a dreadful thing of course for other authors,—but it really can’t be helped!”
“Why should they choose Mavis Clare?” I demanded gloomily.
“Ah, why indeed!” he echoed smiling—“McWhing would tell you they do it out of sheer idiotcy;—the public would answer that they choose her because she has genius.”