He raised his hat and stood uncovered in the moonlight, his dark beauty softened by a strangely wistful expression.
“I thank you!” he said simply—“You make me your debtor.”
And he passed on; we followed, somewhat subdued and silenced, though one of my lordling friends sniggered idiotically.
“You paid dearly for that blessing, Rimânez!” he said—“You gave her three sovereigns;—by Jove! I’d have had something more than a blessing if I had been you.”
“No doubt!” returned Rimânez—“You deserve more,—much more! I hope you will get it! A blessing would be of no advantage whatever to you;—it is, to me.”
How often I have thought of this incident since! I was too dense to attach either meaning or importance to it then,—self-absorbed as I was, I paid no attention to circumstances which seemed to have no connection with my own life and affairs. And in all my dissipations and so-called amusements, a perpetual restlessness consumed me,—I obtained no real satisfaction out of anything except my slow and somewhat tantalizing courtship of Lady Sibyl. She was a strange girl; she knew my intentions towards her well enough; yet she affected not to know. Each time I ventured to treat her with more than the usual deference, and to infuse something of the ardour of a lover into my looks or manner, she feigned surprise. I wonder why it is that some women are so fond of playing the hypocrite in love? Their own instinct teaches them when men are amorous; but unless they can run the fox to earth, or in other words, reduce their suitors to the lowest pitch of grovelling appeal, and force them to such abasement that the poor passion-driven fools are ready to fling away life, and even honour, dearer than life, for their sakes, their vanity is not sufficiently gratified. But who, or [p 181] what am I that I should judge of vanity,—I whose egregious and flagrant self-approbation was of such a character that it blinded me to the perception and comprehension of everything in which my own Ego was not represented! And yet,—with all the morbid interest I took in myself, my surroundings, my comfort, my social advancement, there was one thing which soon became a torture to me,—a veritable despair and loathing,—and this, strange to say, was the very triumph I had most looked forward to as the crown and summit of all my ambitious dreams. My book,—the book I had presumed to consider a work of genius,—when it was launched on the tide of publicity and criticism, resolved itself into a sort of literary monster that haunted my days and nights with its hateful presence; the thick, black-lettered, lying advertisements scattered broadcast by my publisher, flared at me with an offensive insistence in every paper I casually opened. And the praise of the reviewers! ... the exaggerated, preposterous, fraudulent ‘boom’! Good God!—how sickening it was!—how fulsome! Every epithet of flattery bestowed upon me filled me with disgust, and one day when I took up a leading magazine and saw a long article upon the ‘extraordinary brilliancy and promise’ of my book, comparing me to a new Æschylus and Shakespeare combined, with the signature of David McWhing appended to it, I could have thrashed that erudite and assuredly purchased Scot within an inch of his life. The chorus of eulogy was well-nigh universal; I was the ‘genius of the day’—the ‘hope of the future generation,’—I was the “Book of the Month,”—the greatest, the wittiest, most versatile, most brilliant scribbling pigmy that had ever honoured a pot of ink by using it! Of course I figured as McWhing’s ‘discovery,’—five hundred pounds bestowed on his mysterious ‘charity’ had so sharpened his eyesight that he had perceived me shining brightly on the literary horizon before anyone else had done so. The press followed his ‘lead’ obediently,—for though the press,—the English press at least,—is distinctly unbribable, the owners of newspapers are not insensible to the advantages of largely paying advertisements. Moreover, when [p 182] Mr McWhing announced me as his ‘find’ in the oracular style which distinguished him, some other literary gentlemen came forward and wrote effective articles about me, and sent me their compositions carefully marked. I took the hint,—wrote at once to thank them, and invited them to dinner. They came, and feasted royally with Rimânez and myself;—(one of them wrote an ‘Ode’ to me afterwards),—and at the conclusion of the revels, we sent two of the ‘oracles’ home, considerably overcome by champagne, in a carriage with Amiel to look after them, and help them out at their own doors. And my ‘boom’ expanded,—London ‘talked’ as I had said it should; the growling monster metropolis discussed me and my work in its own independent and peculiar fashion. The ‘upper ten’ subscribed to the circulating libraries, and these admirable institutions made a two or three hundred copies do for all demands, by the simple expedient of keeping subscribers waiting five or six weeks till they grew tired of asking for the book, and forgot all about it. Apart from the libraries, the public did not take me up. From the glowing criticisms that appeared in all the papers, it might have been supposed that ‘everybody who was anybody’ was reading my ‘wonderful’ production. Such however was not the case. People spoke of me as ‘the great millionaire,’ but they were indifferent to the bid I had made for literary fame. The remark they usually made to me wherever I went was—“You have written a novel, haven’t you? What an odd thing for you to do!”—this, with a laugh;—“I haven’t read it,—I’ve so little time—I must ask for it at the library.” Of course a great many never did ask, not deeming it worth their while; and I whose money, combined with the resistless influence of Rimânez, had started the favourable criticisms that flooded the press, found out that the majority of the public never read criticisms at all. Hence, my anonymous review of Mavis Clare’s book made no effect whatever on her popularity, though it appeared in the most prominent manner. It was a sheer waste of labour,—for everywhere this woman author was still looked upon as a creature of altogether finer clay than ordinary, and still her [p 183] book was eagerly devoured and questioned and admired; and still it sold by thousands, despite a lack of all favourable criticism or prominent advertisement. No one guessed that I had written what I am now perfectly willing to admit was a brutally wanton misrepresentation of her work,—no one, except Rimânez. The magazine in which it appeared was a notable one, circulating in every club and library, and he, taking it up casually one afternoon, turned to that article at once.
“You wrote this!” he said, fixing his eyes upon me,—“It must have been a great relief to your mind!”
I said nothing.
He read on in silence for a little; then laying down the magazine looked at me with a curiously scrutinizing expression.
“There are some human beings so constituted,” he said, “that if they had been with Noah in the ark according to the silly old legend, they would have shot the dove bearing the olive-leaf, directly it came in sight over the waste of waters. You are of that type Geoffrey.”