“Why?” I asked, astonished.
“Why? Because life hangs on a thread,—a society crush is the very acme of boredom and exhaustion,—and that we escape with our lives from a general guzzle and giggle is matter for thanksgiving,—that’s all! And God gets so few thanks as a rule that you may surely spare Him a brief one for to-day’s satisfactory ending.”
I laughed, seeing no meaning in his words beyond the usual satire he affected. I found Amiel, waiting for me in my bedroom, but I dismissed him abruptly, hating the look of his crafty and sullen face, and saying I needed no attendance. Thoroughly fatigued, I was soon in bed and asleep,—and the terrific agencies that had produced the splendours of the brilliant festival at which I had figured as host, were not revealed to me by so much as a warning dream!
[p 290]
XXV
A few days after the entertainment at Willowsmere, and before the society papers had done talking about the magnificence and luxury displayed on that occasion, I woke up one morning, like the great poet Byron, “to find myself famous.” Not for any intellectual achievement,—not for any unexpected deed of heroism,—not for any resolved or noble attitude in society or politics,—no!—I owed my fame merely to a quadruped;—‘Phosphor’ won the Derby. It was about a neck-and-neck contest between my racer and that of the Prime Minister, and for a second or so the result seemed doubtful,—but, as the two jockeys neared the goal, Amiel, whose thin wiry figure clad in the brightest of bright scarlet silk, stuck to his horse as though he were a part of it, put ‘Phosphor’ to a pace he had never yet exhibited, appearing to skim along the ground at literally flying speed, the upshot being that he scored a triumphant victory, reaching the winning-post a couple of yards or more ahead of his rival. Acclamations rent the air at the vigour displayed in the ‘finish’—and I became the hero of the day,—the darling of the populace. I was somewhat amused at the Premier’s discomfiture,—he took his beating rather badly. He did not know me, nor I him,—I was not of his politics, and I did not care a jot for his feelings one way or the other, but I was gratified, in a certain satirical sense, to find myself suddenly acknowledged as a greater man than he, because I was the owner of the Derby-winner! Before I well knew where I [p 291] was, I found myself being presented to the Prince of Wales, who shook hands with me and congratulated me;—all the biggest aristocrats in England were willing and eager to be introduced to me;—and inwardly I laughed at this exhibition of taste and culture on the part of ‘the gentlemen of England that live at home at ease.’ They crowded round ‘Phosphor,’ whose wild eye warned strangers against taking liberties with him, but who seemed not a whit the worse for his exertions, and who apparently was quite ready to run the race over again with equal pleasure and success. Amiel’s dark sly face and cruel ferret eyes were evidently not attractive to the majority of the gentlemen of the turf, though his answers to all the queries put to him, were admirably ready, respectful and not without wit. But to me the whole sum and substance of the occasion was the fact that I, Geoffrey Tempest, once struggling author, now millionaire, was simply by virtue of my ownership of the Derby-winner, ‘famous’ at last!—or what society considers famous,—that fame that secures for a man the attention of ‘the nobility and gentry,’ to quote from tradesmen’s advertisements,—and also obtains the persistent adulation and shameless pursuit of all the demi-mondaines who want jewels and horses and yachts presented to them in exchange for a few tainted kisses from their carmined lips. Under the shower of compliments I received, I stood, apparently delighted,—smiling, affable and courteous,—entering into the spirit of the occasion, and shaking hands with my Lord That, and Sir Something Nobody, and His Serene Highness the Grand Duke So-and-So of Beer-Land, and His other Serene Lowness of Small-Principality,—but in my secret soul I scorned these people with their social humbug and hypocrisy,—scorned them with such a deadly scorn as almost amazed myself. When presently I walked off the course with Lucio, who as usual seemed to know and to be friends with everybody, he spoke in accents that were far more grave and gentle than I had ever heard him use before.
“With all your egotism, Geoffrey, there is something forcible and noble in your nature,—something which rises [p 292] up in bold revolt against falsehood and sham. Why, in Heaven’s name do you not give it way?”
I looked at him amazed, and laughed.
“Give it way? What do you mean? Would you have me tell humbugs that I know them as such?,—and liars that I discern their lies? My dear fellow, society would become too hot to hold me!”
“It could not be hotter—or colder—than hell, if you believed in hell, which you do not,”—he rejoined, in the same quiet voice—“But I did not assume that you should say these things straight out and bluntly, to give offence. An affronting candour is not nobleness,—it is merely coarse. To act nobly is better than to speak.”