“You can’t!” declared Lucio with a serene smile—“It’s impossible. You are too rich. That of itself is not legitimate in Literature, which great art generally elects to wear poverty in its button-hole as a flower of grace. The fight cannot be equal in such circumstances. The fact that you are a millionaire must weigh the balance apparently in your favour for a time. The world cannot resist money. If I, for example, became an author, I should probably with my wealth and influence, burn up every one else’s laurels. Suppose that a desperately poor man comes out with a book at the same time as you do, he will have scarcely the ghost of a chance against you. He will not be able to advertise
in your lavish style,—nor will he see his way to dine the critics as you can. And if he should happen to have more genius than you, and you succeed, your success will not be legitimate. But after all, that does not matter much—in Art, if in nothing else, things always right themselves.”
I made no immediate reply, but went over to my table, rolled up my corrected proofs and directed them to the printers,—then ringing the bell I gave the packet to my man, Morris, bidding him post it at once. This done, I turned again towards Lucio and saw that he still sat by the fire, but that his attitude was now one of brooding melancholy, and that he had covered his eyes with one hand on which the glow from the flames shone red. I regretted the momentary irritation I had felt against him for telling me unwelcome truths,—and I touched him lightly on the shoulder.
“Are you in the dumps now Lucio?” I said—“I’m afraid my depression has proved infectious.”
He moved his hand and looked up,—his eyes were large and lustrous as the eyes of a beautiful woman.
“I was thinking,” he said, with a slight sigh—“of the last words I uttered just now,—things always right themselves. Curiously enough in art they always do,—no charlatanism [p 81] or sham lasts with the gods of Parnassus. But in other matters it is different. For instance I shall never right myself! Life is hateful to me at times, as it is to everybody.”
“Perhaps you are in love?” I said with a smile.
He started up.
“In love! By all the heavens and all the earths too, that suggestion wakes me with a vengeance! In love! What woman alive do you think could impress me with the notion that she was anything more than a frivolous doll of pink and white, with long hair frequently not her own? And as for the tom-boy tennis-players and giantesses of the era, I do not consider them women at all,—they are merely the unnatural and strutting embryos of a new sex which will be neither male nor female. My dear Tempest, I hate women. So would you if you knew as much about them as I do. They have made me what I am, and they keep me so.”
“They are to be much complimented then,”—I observed—“You do them credit!”