Marie Corelli
The Sorrows of Satan

© ООО «Издательство АСТ», 2024

I

Do you know what it is to be poor? Not poor with the arrogant poverty complained of by certain people who have five or six thousand a year to live upon, and who yet swear they can hardly manage to make both ends meet, but really poor,—downright, cruelly, hideously poor, with a poverty that is graceless, sordid and miserable? Poverty that compels you to dress in your one suit of clothes till it is worn threadbare,—that denies you clean linen on account of the ruinous charges of washerwomen,—that robs you of your own self-respect, and causes you to slink along the streets vaguely abashed, instead of walking erect among your fellow-men in independent ease,—this is the sort of poverty I mean. This is the grinding curse that keeps down noble aspiration under a load of ignoble care; this is the moral cancer that eats into the heart of an otherwise well-intentioned human creature and makes him envious and malignant, and inclined to the use of dynamite. When he sees the fat idle woman of society passing by in her luxurious carriage, lolling back lazily, her face mottled with the purple and red signs of superfluous eating,—when he observes the brainless and sensual man of fashion smoking and dawdling away the hours in the Park, as if all the world and its millions of honest hard workers were created solely for the casual diversion of the so-called ‘upper’ classes,—then the good blood in him turns to gall, and his suffering spirit rises in fierce rebellion, crying out—“Why in God’s name, should this injustice be? Why should a worthless lounger have his pockets full of gold by mere chance and heritage, while I, toiling wearily from morn till midnight, can scarce afford myself a satisfying meal?”

Why indeed! Why should the wicked flourish like a green bay-tree? I have often thought about it. Now however I believe I could help to solve the problem out of my own personal experience. But … such an experience! Who will credit it? Who will believe that anything so strange and terrific ever chanced to the lot of a mortal man? No one. Yet it is true;—truer than much so-called truth. Moreover I know that many men are living through many such incidents as have occurred to me, under precisely the same influence, conscious perhaps at times, that they are in the tangles of sin, but too weak of will to break the net in which they have become voluntarily imprisoned. Will they be taught, I wonder, the lesson I have learned? In the same bitter school, under the same formidable taskmaster? Will they realize as I have been forced to do,—aye, to the very fibres of my intellectual perception,—the vast, individual, active Mind, which behind all matter, works unceasingly, though silently, a very eternal and positive God? If so, then dark problems will become clear to them, and what seems injustice in the world will prove pure equity! But I do not write with any hope of either persuading or enlightening my fellow-men. I know their obstinacy too well;—I can gauge it by my own. My proud belief in myself was, at one time, not to be outdone by any human unit on the face of the globe. And I am aware that others are in similar case. I merely intend to relate the various incidents of my career in due order exactly as they happened,—leaving to more confident heads the business of propounding and answering the riddles of human existence as best they may.

During a certain bitter winter, long remembered for its arctic severity, when a great wave of intense cold spread freezing influences not alone over the happy isles of Britain, but throughout all Europe, I, Geoffrey Tempest, was alone in London and well-nigh starving. Now a starving man seldom gets the sympathy he merits,—so few can be persuaded to believe in him. Worthy folks who have just fed to repletion are the most incredulous, some of them being even moved to smile when told of existing hungry people, much as if these were occasional jests invented for after-dinner amusement. Or, with that irritating vagueness of attention which characterizes fashionable folk to such an extent that when asking a question they neither wait for the answer nor understand it when given, the well-dined groups, hearing of some one starved to death, will idly murmur ‘How dreadful!’ and at once turn to the discussion of the latest ‘fad’ for killing time, ere it takes to killing them with sheer ennui. The pronounced fact of being hungry sounds coarse and common, and is not a topic for polite society, which always eats more than sufficient for its needs. At the period I am speaking of however, I, who have since been one of the most envied of men, knew the cruel meaning of the word hunger, too well,—the gnawing pain, the sick faintness, the deadly stupor, the insatiable animal craving for mere food, all of which sensations are frightful enough to those who are, unhappily, daily inured to them, but which when they afflict one who has been tenderly reared and brought up to consider himself a ‘gentleman,’—God save the mark! are perhaps still more painful to bear. And I felt that I had not deserved to suffer the wretchedness in which I found myself. I had worked hard. From the time my father died, leaving me to discover that every penny of the fortune I imagined he possessed was due to swarming creditors, and that nothing of all our house and estate was left to me except a jewelled miniature of my mother who had lost her own life in giving me birth,—from that time I say, I had put my shoulder to the wheel and toiled late and early. I had turned my University education to the only use for which it or I seemed fitted,—literature. I had sought for employment on almost every journal in London,—refused by many, taken on trial by some, but getting steady pay from none. Whoever seeks to live by brain and pen alone is, at the beginning of such a career, treated as a sort of social pariah. Nobody wants him,—everybody despises him. His efforts are derided, his manuscripts are flung back to him unread, and he is less cared for than the condemned murderer in gaol. The murderer is at least fed and clothed,—a worthy clergyman visits him, and his gaoler will occasionally condescend to play cards with him. But a man gifted with original thoughts and the power of expressing them, appears to be regarded by everyone in authority as much worse than the worst criminal, and all the ‘jacks-in-office’ unite to kick him to death if they can. I took both kicks and blows in sullen silence and lived on,—not for the love of life, but simply because I scorned the cowardice of self-destruction. I was young enough not to part with hope too easily;—the vague idea I had that my turn would come,—that the ever-circling wheel of Fortune would perchance lift me up some day as it now crushed me down, kept me just wearily capable of continuing existence,—though it was merely a continuance and no more. For about six months I got some reviewing work on a well-known literary journal. Thirty novels a week were sent to me to ‘criticise,’—I made a habit of glancing hastily at about eight or ten of them, and writing one column of rattling abuse concerning these thus casually selected,—the remainder were never noticed at all. I found that this mode of action was considered ‘smart,’ and I managed for a time to please my editor who paid me the munificent sum of fifteen shillings for my weekly labour. But on one fatal occasion I happened to change my tactics and warmly praised a work which my own conscience told me was both original and excellent. The author of it happened to be an old enemy of the proprietor of the journal on which I was employed;—my eulogistic review of the hated individual, unfortunately for me, appeared, with the result that private spite outweighed public justice, and I was immediately dismissed.

After this I dragged on in a sufficiently miserable way, doing ‘hack work’ for the dailies, and living on promises that never became realities, till, as I have said, in the early January of the bitter winter alluded to, I found myself literally penniless and face to face with starvation, owing a month’s rent besides for the poor lodging I occupied in a back street not far from the British Museum. I had been out all day trudging from one newspaper office to another, seeking for work and finding none. Every available post was filled. I had also tried, unsuccessfully, to dispose of a manuscript of my own,—a work of fiction which I knew had some merit, but which all the ‘readers’ in the publishing offices appeared to find exceptionally worthless. These ‘readers’ I learned, were most of them novelists themselves, who read other people’s productions in their spare moments and passed judgment on them. I have always failed to see the justice of this arrangement; to me it seems merely the way to foster mediocrities and suppress originality. Common sense points out the fact that the novelist ‘reader’ who has a place to maintain for himself in literature would naturally rather encourage work that is likely to prove ephemeral, than that which might possibly take a higher footing than his own. Be this as it may, and however good or bad the system, it was entirely prejudicial to me and my literary offspring. The last publisher I tried was a kindly man who looked at my shabby clothes and gaunt face with some commiseration.

“I’m sorry,” said he, “very sorry, but my readers are quite unanimous. From what I can learn, it seems to me you have been too earnest. And also, rather sarcastic in certain strictures against society. My dear fellow, that won’t do. Never blame society,—it buys books! Now if you could write a smart love-story, slightly risqué,—even a little more than risqué for that matter; that is the sort of thing that suits the present age.”

“Pardon me,” I interposed somewhat wearily—“but are you sure you judge the public taste correctly?”

He smiled a bland smile of indulgent amusement at what he no doubt considered my ignorance in putting such a query. “Of course I am sure,”—he replied—“It is my business to know the public taste as thoroughly as I know my own pocket. Understand me,—I don’t suggest that you should write a book on any positively indecent subject,—that can be safely left to the ‘New’ woman,”—and he laughed,—“but I assure you high-class fiction doesn’t sell. The critics don’t like it, to begin with. What goes down with them and with the public is a bit of sensational realism told in terse newspaper English. Literary English,—Addisonian English,—is a mistake.”

“And I am also a mistake I think,” I said with a forced smile—“At any rate if what you say be true, I must lay down the pen and try another trade. I am old-fashioned enough to consider Literature as the highest of all professions, and I would rather not join in with those who voluntarily degrade it.”

He gave me a quick side-glance of mingled incredulity and depreciation.

“Well, well!” he finally observed—“you are a little quixotic. That will wear off. Will you come on to my club and dine with me?”

I refused this invitation promptly. I knew the man saw and recognised my wretched plight,—and pride—false pride if you will—rose up to my rescue. I bade him a hurried good-day, and started back to my lodging, carrying my rejected manuscript with me. Arrived there, my landlady met me as I was about to ascend the stairs, and asked me whether I would ‘kindly settle accounts’ the next day. She spoke civilly enough, poor soul, and not without a certain compassionate hesitation in her manner. Her evident pity for me galled my spirit as much as the publisher’s offer of a dinner had wounded my pride,—and with a perfectly audacious air of certainty I at once promised her the money at the time she herself appointed, though I had not the least idea where or how I should get the required sum. Once past her, and shut in my own room, I flung my useless manuscript on the floor and myself into a chair, and—swore. It refreshed me to swear, and it seemed natural,—for though temporarily weakened by lack of food, I was not yet so weak as to shed tears,—and a fierce formidable oath was to me the same sort of physical relief which I imagine a fit of weeping may be to an excitable woman. Just as I could not shed tears, so was I incapable of apostrophizing God in my despair. To speak frankly, I did not believe in any God—then. I was to myself an all-sufficing mortal, scorning the time-worn superstitions of so-called religion. Of course I had been brought up in the Christian faith; but that creed had become worse than useless to me since I had intellectually realized the utter inefficiency of Christian ministers to deal with difficult life-problems. Spiritually I was adrift in chaos,—mentally I was hindered both in thought and achievement,—bodily, I was reduced to want. My case was desperate,—I myself was desperate. It was a moment when if ever good and evil angels play a game of chance for a man’s soul, they were surely throwing the dice on the last wager for mine. And yet, with it all, I felt I had done my best. I was driven into a corner by my fellow-men who grudged me space to live in, but I had fought against it. I had worked honestly and patiently;—all to no purpose. I knew of rogues who gained plenty of money; and of knaves who were amassing large fortunes. Their prosperity appeared to prove that honesty after all was not the best policy. What should I do then? How should I begin the jesuitical business of committing evil that good, personal good, might come of it? So I thought, dully, if such stray half-stupefied fancies as I was capable of, deserved the name of thought.

The night was bitter cold. My hands were numbed, and I tried to warm them at the oil-lamp my landlady was good enough to still allow me the use of, in spite of delayed cash-payments. As I did so, I noticed three letters on the table,—one in a long blue envelope suggestive of either a summons or a returned manuscript,—one bearing the Melbourne postmark, and the third a thick square missive coroneted in red and gold at the back. I turned over all three indifferently, and selecting the one from Australia, balanced it in my hand a moment before opening it. I knew from whom it came, and idly wondered what news it brought me. Some months previously I had written a detailed account of my increasing debts and difficulties to an old college chum, who finding England too narrow for his ambition had gone out to the wider New world on a speculative quest of gold mining. He was getting on well, so I understood, and had secured a fairly substantial position; and I had therefore ventured to ask him point-blank for the loan of fifty pounds. Here, no doubt, was his reply, and I hesitated before breaking the seal.

“Of course it will be a refusal,” I said half-aloud,—“However kindly a friend may otherwise be, he soon turns crusty if asked to lend money. He will express many regrets, accuse trade and the general bad times and hope I will soon ‘tide over.’ I know the sort of thing. Well,—after all, why should I expect him to be different to other men? I’ve no claim on him beyond the memory of a few sentimental arm-in-arm days at Oxford.”

A sigh escaped me in spite of myself, and a mist blurred my sight for the moment. Again I saw the grey towers of peaceful Magdalen, and the fair green trees shading the walks in and around the dear old University town where we,—I and the man whose letter I now held in my hand,—strolled about together as happy youths, fancying that we were young geniuses born to regenerate the world. We were both fond of classics,—we were brimful of Homer and the thoughts and maxims of all the immortal Greeks and Latins,—and I verily believe, in those imaginative days, we thought we had in us such stuff as heroes are made of. But our entrance into the social arena soon robbed us of our sublime conceit,—we were common working units, no more,—the grind and prose of daily life put Homer into the background, and we soon discovered that society was more interested in the latest unsavoury scandal than in the tragedies of Sophocles or the wisdom of Plato. Well! it was no doubt extremely foolish of us to dream that we might help to regenerate a world in which both Plato and Christ appear to have failed,—yet the most hardened cynic will scarcely deny that it is pleasant to look back to the days of his youth if he can think that at least then, if only once in his life, he had noble impulses.

The lamp burned badly, and I had to re-trim it before I could settle down to read my friend’s letter. Next door some-one was playing a violin, and playing it well. Tenderly and yet with a certain amount of brio the notes came dancing from the bow, and I listened, vaguely pleased. Being faint with hunger I was somewhat in a listless state bordering on stupor,—and the penetrating sweetness of the music appealing to the sensuous and æsthetic part of me, drowned for the moment mere animal craving.

“There you go!” I murmured, apostrophizing the unseen musician,—“practising away on that friendly fiddle of yours,—no doubt for a mere pittance which barely keeps you alive. Possibly you are some poor wretch in a cheap orchestra,—or you might even be a street-player and be able to live in this neighbourhood of the élite starving,—you can have no hope whatever of being the ‘fashion’ and making your bow before Royalty,—or if you have that hope, it is wildly misplaced. Play on, my friend, play on!—the sounds you make are very agreeable, and seem to imply that you are happy. I wonder if you are?—or if, like me, you are going rapidly to the devil!”

The music grew softer and more plaintive, and was now accompanied by the rattle of hailstones against the window-panes. A gusty wind whistled under the door and roared down the chimney,—a wind cold as the grasp of death and searching as a probing knife. I shivered,—and bending close over the smoky lamp, prepared to read my Australian news. As I opened the envelope, a bill for fifty pounds, payable to me at a well-known London banker’s, fell out upon the table. My heart gave a quick bound of mingled relief and gratitude.

“Why Jack, old fellow, I wronged you!” I exclaimed,—“Your heart is in the right place after all.”

And profoundly touched by my friend’s ready generosity, I eagerly perused his letter. It was not very long, and had evidently been written off in haste.

Dear Geoff,

I’m sorry to hear you are down on your luck; it shows what a crop of fools are still flourishing in London, when a man of your capability cannot gain his proper place in the world of letters, and be fittingly acknowledged. I believe it’s all a question of wire-pulling, and money is the only thing that will pull the wires. Here’s the fifty you ask for and welcome,—don’t hurry about paying it back. I am doing you a good turn this year by sending you a friend,—a real friend, mind you!—no sham. He brings you a letter of introduction from me, and between ourselves, old man, you cannot do better than put yourself and your literary affairs entirely in his hands. He knows everybody, and is up to all the dodges of editorial management and newspaper cliques. He is a great philanthropist besides,—and seems particularly fond of the society of the clergy. Rather a queer taste you will say, but his reason for such preference is, as he has explained to me quite frankly, that he is so enormously wealthy that he does not quite know what to do with his money, and the reverend gentlemen of the church are generally ready to show him how to spend some of it. He is always glad to know of some quarter where his money and influence (he is very influential) may be useful to others. He has helped me out of a very serious hobble, and I owe him a big debt of gratitude. I’ve told him all about you,—what a smart fellow you are, and what a lot dear old Alma Mater thought of you, and he has promised to give you a lift up. He can do anything he likes; very naturally, seeing that the whole world of morals, civilization and the rest is subservient to the power of money,—and his stock of cash appears to be limitless. Use him; he is willing and ready to be used,—and write and let me know how you get on. Don’t bother about the fifty till you feel you have tided over the storm.

Ever yours

"Boffles".

I laughed as I read the absurd signature, though my eyes were dim with something like tears. ‘Boffles’ was the nickname given to my friend by several of our college companions, and neither he nor I knew how it first arose. But no one except the dons ever addressed him by his proper name, which was John Carrington,—he was simply ‘Boffles,’ and Boffles he remained even now for all those who had been his intimates. I refolded and put by his letter and the draft for the fifty pounds, and with a passing vague wonder as to what manner of man the ‘philanthropist’ might be who had more money than he knew what to do with, I turned to the consideration of my other two correspondents, relieved to feel that now, whatever happened, I could settle up arrears with my landlady the next day as I had promised. Moreover I could order some supper, and have a fire lit to cheer my chilly room. Before attending to these creature comforts however, I opened the long blue envelope that looked so like a threat of legal proceedings, and unfolding the paper within, stared at it amazedly. What was it all about? The written characters danced before my eyes,—puzzled and bewildered, I found myself reading the thing over and over again without any clear comprehension of it. Presently a glimmer of meaning flashed upon me, startling my senses like an electric shock, … no—no—!—impossible! Fortune never could be so mad as this!—never so wildly capricious and grotesque of humour! It was some senseless hoax that was being practised upon me, … and yet, … if it were a joke, it was a very elaborate and remarkable one! Weighted with the majesty of the law too! … Upon my word and by all the fantastical freakish destinies that govern human affairs, the news seemed actually positive and genuine!

II

Steadying my thoughts with an effort, I read every word of the document over again deliberately, and the stupefaction of my wonder increased. Was I going mad, or sickening for a fever? Or could this startling, this stupendous piece of information be really true? Because,—if indeed it were true, … good heavens!—I turned giddy to think of it,—and it was only by sheer force of will that I kept myself from swooning with the agitation of such sudden surprise and ecstasy. If it were true—why then the world was mine!—I was king instead of beggar;—I was everything I chose to be! The letter,—the amazing letter, bore the printed name of a noted firm of London solicitors, and stated in measured and precise terms that a distant relative of my father’s, of whom I had scarcely heard, except remotely now and then during my boyhood, had died suddenly in South America, leaving me his sole heir.

“The real and personal estate now amounting to something over Five Millions of Pounds Sterling, we should esteem it a favour if you could make it convenient to call upon us any day this week in order that we may go through the necessary formalities together. The larger bulk of the cash is lodged in the Bank of England, and a considerable amount is placed in French government securities. We should prefer going into further details with you personally rather than by letter. Trusting you will call on us without delay, we are, Sir, yours obediently…”

Five Millions! I, the starving literary hack,—the friendless, hopeless, almost reckless haunter of low newspaper dens,—I, the possessor of “over Five Millions of Pounds Sterling”! I tried to grasp the astounding fact,—for fact it evidently was,—but could not. It seemed to me a wild delusion, born of the dizzy vagueness which lack of food engendered in my brain. I stared round the room;—the mean miserable furniture,—the fireless grate,—the dirty lamp,—the low truckle bedstead,—the evidences of penury and want on every side;—and then,—then the overwhelming contrast between the poverty that environed me and the news I had just received, struck me as the wildest, most ridiculous incongruity I had ever heard of or imagined,—and I gave vent to a shout of laughter.

“Was there ever such a caprice of mad Fortune!” I cried aloud—“Who would have imagined it! Good God! I! I, of all men in the world to be suddenly chosen out for this luck! By Heaven!—If it is all true, I’ll make society spin round like a top on my hand before I am many months older!”

And I laughed loudly again; laughed just as I had previously sworn, simply by way of relief to my feelings. Some one laughed in answer,—a laugh that seemed to echo mine. I checked myself abruptly, somewhat startled, and listened. Rain poured outside, and the wind shrieked like a petulant shrew,—the violinist next door was practising a brilliant roulade up and down his instrument,—but there were no other sounds than these. Yet I could have sworn I heard a man’s deep-chested laughter close behind me where I stood.

“It must have been my fancy;” I murmured, turning the flame of the lamp up higher in order to obtain more light in the room—“I am nervous I suppose,—no wonder! Poor Boffles!—good old chap!” I continued, remembering my friend’s draft for fifty pounds, which had seemed such a godsend a few minutes since—“What a surprise is in store for you! You shall have your loan back as promptly as you sent it, with an extra fifty added by way of interest for your generosity. And as for the new Mæcenas you are sending to help me over my difficulties,—well, he may be a very excellent old gentleman, but he will find himself quite out of his element this time. I want neither assistance nor advice nor patronage,—I can buy them all! Titles, honours, possessions,—they are all purchaseable,—love, friendship, position,—they are all for sale in this admirably commercial age and go to the highest bidder! By my soul!—The wealthy ‘philanthropist’ will find it difficult to match me in power! He will scarcely have more than five millions to waste, I warrant! And now for supper,—I shall have to live on credit till I get some ready cash,—and there is no reason why I should not leave this wretched hole at once, and go to one of the best hotels and swagger it!”

I was about to leave the room on the swift impulse of excitement and joy, when a fresh and violent gust of wind roared down the chimney, bringing with it a shower of soot which fell in a black heap on my rejected manuscript where it lay forgotten on the floor, as I had despairingly thrown it. I hastily picked it up and shook it free from the noisome dirt, wondering as I did so, what would be its fate now?—now, when I could afford to publish it myself, and not only publish it but advertise it, and not only advertise it, but ‘push’ it, in all the crafty and cautious ways known to the inner circles of ‘booming’! I smiled as I thought of the vengeance I would take on all those who had scorned and slighted me and my labour,—how they should cower before me!—how they should fawn at my feet like whipt curs, and whine their fulsome adulation! Every stiff and stubborn neck should bend before me;—this I resolved upon; for though money does not always conquer everything, it only fails when it is money apart from brains. Brains and money together can move the world,—brains can very frequently do this alone without money, of which serious and proved fact those who have no brains should beware! Full of ambitious thought, I now and then caught wild sounds from the violin that was being played next door,—notes like sobbing cries of pain, and anon rippling runs like a careless woman’s laughter,—and all at once I remembered I had not yet opened the third letter addressed to me,—the one coroneted in scarlet and gold, which had remained where it was on the table almost unnoticed till now. I took it up and turned it over with an odd sense of reluctance in my fingers, which were slow at the work of tearing the thick envelope asunder. Drawing out an equally thick small sheet of notepaper also coroneted, I read the following lines written in an admirably legible, small and picturesque hand.

Dear Sir.

I am the bearer of a letter of introduction to you from your former college companion Mr John Carrington, now of Melbourne, who has been good enough to thus give me the means of making the acquaintance of one, who, I understand, is more than exceptionally endowed with the gift of literary genius. I shall call upon you this evening between eight and nine o’clock, trusting to find you at home and disengaged. I enclose my card, and present address, and beg to remain,

Very faithfully yours

Lucio Rimânez.

The card mentioned dropped on the table as I finished reading the note. It bore a small, exquisitely engraved coronet and the words

Prince Lucio Rimânez.

while, scribbled lightly in pencil underneath was the address ‘Grand Hotel.’

I read the brief letter through again,—it was simple enough,—expressed with clearness and civility. There was nothing remarkable about it,—nothing whatever; yet it seemed to me surcharged with meaning. Why, I could not imagine. A curious fascination kept my eyes fastened on the characteristic bold handwriting, and made me fancy I should like the man who penned it. How the wind roared!—and how that violin next door wailed like the restless spirit of some forgotten musician in torment! My brain swam and my heart ached heavily,—the drip drip of the rain outside sounded like the stealthy footfall of some secret spy upon my movements. I grew irritable and nervous,—a foreboding of evil somehow darkened the bright consciousness of my sudden good fortune. Then an impulse of shame possessed me,—shame that this foreign prince, if such he were, with limitless wealth at his back, should be coming to visit me,—me, now a millionaire,—in my present wretched lodging. Already, before I had touched my riches, I was tainted by the miserable vulgarity of seeking to pretend I had never been really poor, but only embarrassed by a little temporary difficulty! If I had had a sixpence about me, (which I had not) I should have sent a telegram to my approaching visitor to put him off.

“But in any case,” I said aloud, addressing myself to the empty room and the storm-echoes—“I will not meet him to-night. I’ll go out and leave no message,—and if he comes he will think I have not yet had his letter. I can make an appointment to see him when I am better lodged, and dressed more in keeping with my present position,—in the meantime, nothing is easier than to keep out of this would-be benefactor’s way.”

As I spoke, the flickering lamp gave a dismal crackle and went out, leaving me in pitch darkness. With an exclamation more strong than reverent, I groped about the room for matches, or failing them, for my hat and coat,—and I was still engaged in a fruitless and annoying search, when I caught a sound of galloping horses’ hoofs coming to an abrupt stop in the street below. Surrounded by black gloom, I paused and listened. There was a slight commotion in the basement,—I heard my landlady’s accents attuned to nervous civility, mingling with the mellow tones of a deep masculine voice,—then steps, firm and even, ascended the stairs to my landing.

“The devil is in it!” I muttered vexedly—“Just like my wayward luck!—here comes the very man I meant to avoid!”

III

The door opened,—and from the dense obscurity enshrouding me I could just perceive a tall shadowy figure standing on the threshold. I remember well the curious impression the mere outline of this scarcely discerned Form made upon me even then,—suggesting at the first glance such a stately majesty of height and bearing as at once riveted my attention,—so much so indeed that I scarcely heard my landlady’s introductory words “A gentleman to see you sir,”—words that were quickly interrupted by a murmur of dismay at finding the room in total darkness. “Well to be sure! The lamp must have gone out!” she exclaimed,—then addressing the personage she had ushered thus far, she added—“I’m afraid Mr Tempest isn’t in after all, sir, though I certainly saw him about half-an-hour ago. If you don’t mind waiting here a minute I’ll fetch a light and see if he has left any message on his table.”

She hurried away, and though I knew that of course I ought to speak, a singular and quite inexplicable perversity of humour kept me silent and unwilling to declare my presence. Meanwhile the tall stranger advanced a pace or two, and a rich voice with a ring of ironical amusement in it called me by my name—

“Geoffrey Tempest, are you there?”

Why could I not answer? The strangest and most unnatural obstinacy stiffened my tongue,—and, concealed in the gloom of my forlorn literary den I still held my peace. The majestic figure drew nearer, till in height and breadth it seemed to suddenly overshadow me; and once again the voice called—

“Geoffrey Tempest, are you there?”

For very shame’s sake I could hold out no longer,—and with a determined effort I broke the extraordinary dumb spell that had held me like a coward in silent hiding, and came forward boldly to confront my visitor.

“Yes I am here,” I said—“And being here I am ashamed to give you such a welcome as this. You are Prince Rimânez of course;—I have just read your note which prepared me for your visit, but I was hoping that my landlady, finding the room in darkness, would conclude I was out, and show you downstairs again. You see I am perfectly frank!”

“You are indeed!” returned the stranger, his deep tones still vibrating with the silvery clang of veiled satire—“So frank that I cannot fail to understand you. Briefly, and without courtesy, you resent my visit this evening and wish I had not come!”

This open declaration of my mood sounded so brusque that I made haste to deny it, though I knew it to be true. Truth, even in trifles, always seems unpleasant!

“Pray do not think me so churlish,”—I said—“The fact is, I only opened your letter a few minutes ago, and before I could make any arrangements to receive you, the lamp went out, with the awkward result that I am forced to greet you in this unsociable darkness, which is almost too dense to shake hands in.”

“Shall we try?” my visitor enquired, with a sudden softening of accent that gave his words a singular charm; “Here is my hand,—if yours has any friendly instinct in it the twain will meet,—quite blindly and without guidance!”

I at once extended my hand, and it was instantly clasped in a warm and somewhat masterful manner. At that moment a light flashed on the scene,—my landlady entered, bearing what she called ‘her best lamp’ alit, and set it on the table. I believe she uttered some exclamation of surprise at seeing me,—she may have said anything or nothing,—I did not hear or heed, so entirely was I amazed and fascinated by the appearance of the man whose long slender hand still held mine. I am myself an average good height, but he was fully half a head taller than I, if not more than that,—and as I looked straightly at him, I thought I had never seen so much beauty and intellectuality combined in the outward personality of any human being. The finely shaped head denoted both power and wisdom, and was nobly poised on such shoulders as might have befitted a Hercules,—the countenance was a pure oval, and singularly pale, this complexion intensifying the almost fiery brilliancy of the full dark eyes, which had in them a curious and wonderfully attractive look of mingled mirth and misery. The mouth was perhaps the most telling feature in this remarkable face,—set in the perfect curve of beauty, it was yet firm, determined, and not too small, thus escaping effeminacy,—and I noted that in repose it expressed bitterness, disdain and even cruelty. But with the light of a smile upon it, it signified, or seemed to signify, something more subtle than any passion to which we can give a name, and already with the rapidity of a lightning flash, I caught myself wondering what that mystic undeclared something might be. At a glance I comprehended these primary details of my new acquaintance’s eminently prepossessing appearance, and when my hand dropped from his close grasp I felt as if I had known him all my life! And now face to face with him in the bright lamp-light, I remembered my actual surroundings,—the bare cold room, the lack of fire, the black soot that sprinkled the nearly carpetless floor,—my own shabby clothes and deplorable aspect, as compared with this regal-looking individual, who carried the visible evidence of wealth upon him in the superb Russian sables that lined and bordered his long overcoat which he now partially unfastened and threw open with a carelessly imperial air, the while he regarded me, smiling.

“I know I have come at an awkward moment,” he said—“I always do! It is my peculiar misfortune. Well-bred people never intrude where they are not wanted,—and in this particular I’m afraid my manners leave much to be desired. Try to forgive me if you can, for the sake of this,”—and he held out a letter addressed to me in my friend Carrington’s familiar handwriting. “And permit me to sit down while you read my credentials.”

He took a chair and seated himself. I observed his handsome face and easy attitude with renewed admiration.

“No credentials are necessary,” I said with all the cordiality I now really felt—“I have already had a letter from Carrington in which he speaks of you in the highest and most grateful terms. But the fact is–well!—really, prince, you must excuse me if I seem confused or astonished … I had expected to see quite an old man …”

And I broke off, somewhat embarrassed by the keen glance of the brilliant eyes that met mine so fixedly.

“No one is old, my dear sir, nowadays!” he declared lightly—“even the grandmothers and grandfathers are friskier at fifty than they were at fifteen. One does not talk of age at all now in polite society,—it is ill-bred, even coarse. Indecent things are unmentionable—age has become an indecent thing. It is therefore avoided in conversation. You expected to see an old man you say? Well, you are not disappointed—I am old. In fact you have no idea how very old I am!”

I laughed at this piece of absurdity.

“Why, you are younger than I,”—I said—“or if not, you look it.”

“Ah, my looks belie me!” he returned gaily—“I am like several of the most noted fashionable beauties,—much riper than I seem. But come, read the introductory missive I have brought you,—I shall not be satisfied till you do.”

Thus requested, and wishing to prove myself as courteous as I had hitherto been brusque, I at once opened my friend’s note and read as follows,—

Dear Geoffrey.

The bearer of this, Prince Rimânez, is a very distinguished scholar and gentleman, allied by descent to one of the oldest families in Europe, or for that matter, in the world. You, as a student and lover of ancient history, will be interested to know that his ancestors were originally princes of Chaldea, who afterwards settled in Tyre,—from thence they went to Etruria and there continued through many centuries, the last scion of the house being the very gifted and genial personage who, as my good friend, I have the pleasure of commending to your kindest regard. Certain troublous and overpowering circumstances have forced him into exile from his native province, and deprived him of a great part of his possessions, so that he is, to a considerable extent a wanderer on the face of the earth, and has travelled far and seen much, and has a wide experience of men and things. He is a poet and musician of great skill, and though he occupies himself with the arts solely for his own amusement, I think you will find his practical knowledge of literary matters eminently useful to you in your difficult career. I must not forget to add that in all matters scientific he is an absolute master. Wishing you both a cordial friendship, I am, dear Geoffrey,

Yours sincerely

John Carrington.

The signature of ‘Boffles’ had evidently been deemed out of place this time and somehow I was foolishly vexed at its omission. There seemed to be something formal and stiff in the letter, almost as if it had been written to dictation, and under pressure. What gave me this idea I know not. I glanced furtively at my silent companion,—he caught my stray look and returned it with a curiously grave fixity. Fearing lest my momentary vague distrust of him had been reflected in my eyes I made haste to speak—

“This letter, prince, adds to my shame and regret that I should have greeted you in so churlish a manner this evening. No apology can condone my rudeness,—but you cannot imagine how mortified I felt and still feel, to be compelled to receive you in this miserable den,—it is not at all the sort of place in which I should have liked to welcome you…” And I broke off with a renewed sense of irritation, remembering how actually rich I now was, and that in spite of this, I was obliged to seem poor. Meanwhile the prince waived aside my remarks with a light gesture of his hand.

“Why be mortified?” he demanded. “Rather be proud that you can dispense with the vulgar appurtenances of luxury. Genius thrives in a garret and dies in a palace,—is not that the generally accepted theory?”

“Rather a worn-out and mistaken one I consider,”—I replied; “Genius might like to try the effect of a palace for once,—it usually dies of starvation.”

“True!—but in thus dying, think how many fools it afterwards fattens! There is an all-wise Providence in this, my dear sir! Schubert perished of want,—but see what large profits all the music-publishers have made since out of his compositions! It is a most beautiful dispensation of nature,—that honest folk should be sacrificed in order to provide for the sustenance of knaves!”

He laughed, and I looked at him in a little surprise. His remark touched so near my own opinions that I wondered whether he were in jest or earnest.

“You speak sarcastically of course?” I said—“You do not really believe what you say?”

“Oh, do I not!” he returned, with a flash of his fine eyes that was almost lightning-like in its intensity—“If I could not believe the teaching of my own experience, what would be left to me? I always realize the ‘needs must’ of things—how does the old maxim go—‘needs must when the devil drives.’ There is really no possible contradiction to offer to the accuracy of that statement. The devil drives the world, whip in hand,—and oddly enough, (considering that some belated folk still fancy there is a God somewhere) succeeds in managing his team with extraordinary ease!” His brow clouded and the bitter lines about his mouth deepened and hardened,—anon he laughed again lightly and continued—“But let us not moralize,—morals sicken the soul both in church and out of it,—every sensible man hates to be told what he could be and what he won’t be. I am here to make friends with you if you permit,—and to put an end to ceremony, will you accompany me back to my hotel where I have ordered supper?”

By this time I had become indescribably fascinated by his easy manner, handsome presence and mellifluous voice,—the satirical turn of his humour suited mine,—I felt we should get on well together,—and my first annoyance at being discovered by him in such poverty-stricken circumstances somewhat abated.

“With pleasure!” I replied—“But first of all, you must allow me to explain matters a little. You have heard a good deal about my affairs from my friend John Carrington, and I know from his private letter to me that you have come here out of pure kindness and goodwill. For that generous intention I thank you! I know you expected to find a poor wretch of a literary man struggling with the direst circumstances of disappointment and poverty,—and a couple of hours ago you would have amply fulfilled that expectation. But now, things have changed,—I have received news which completely alters my position,—in fact I have had a very great and remarkable surprise this evening…”

“An agreeable one I trust?” interposed my companion suavely.

I smiled.

“Judge for yourself!” And I handed him the lawyer’s letter which informed me of my suddenly acquired fortune.

He glanced it through rapidly,—then folded and returned it to me with a courteous bow.

“I suppose I should congratulate you,”—he said—“And I do. Though of course this wealth which seems to content you, to me appears a mere trifle. It can be quite conveniently run through and exhausted in about eight years or less, therefore it does not provide absolute immunity from care. To be rich, really rich, in my sense of the word, one should have about a million a year. Then one might reasonably hope to escape the workhouse!”

He laughed,—and I stared at him stupidly, not knowing how to take his words, whether as truth or idle boasting. Five millions of money a mere trifle! He went on without apparently noticing my amazement—

“The inexhaustible greed of a man, my dear sir, can never be satisfied. If he is not consumed by desire for one thing, he is for another, and his tastes are generally expensive. A few pretty and unscrupulous women for example, would soon relieve you of your five millions in the purchase of jewels alone. Horse-racing would do it still more quickly. No, no,—you are not rich,—you are still poor,—only your needs are no longer so pressing as they were. And in this I confess myself somewhat disappointed,—for I came to you hoping to do a good turn to some one for once in my life, and to play the foster-father to a rising genius—and here I am—forestalled,—as usual! It is a singular thing, do you know, but nevertheless a fact, that whenever I have had any particular intentions towards a man I am always forestalled! It is really rather hard upon me!” He broke off and raised his head in a listening attitude.

“What is that?” he asked.

It was the violinist next door playing a well-known “Ave Maria.” I told him so.

“Dismal,—very dismal!” he said with a contemptuous shrug. “I hate all that kind of mawkish devotional stuff. Well!—millionaire as you are, and acknowledged lion of society as you shortly will be, there is no objection I hope, to the proposed supper? And perhaps a music-hall afterwards if you feel inclined,—what do you say?”

He clapped me on the shoulder cordially and looked straight into my face,—those wonderful eyes of his, suggestive of both tears and fire, fixed me with a clear masterful gaze that completely dominated me. I made no attempt to resist the singular attraction which now possessed me for this man whom I had but just met,—the sensation was too strong and too pleasant to be combated. Only for one moment more I hesitated, looking down at my shabby attire.

“I am not fit to accompany you, prince,” I said—“I look more like a tramp than a millionaire.”

He glanced at me and smiled.

“Upon my life, so you do!” he averred.—“But be satisfied!—you are in this respect very like many another Crœsus. It is only the poor and proud who take the trouble to dress well,—they and the dear ‘naughty’ ladies, generally monopolize tasteful and becoming attire. An ill-fitting coat often adorns the back of a Prime Minister,—and if you see a woman clad in clothes vilely cut and coloured, you may be sure she is eminently virtuous, renowned for good works, and probably a duchess!” He rose, drawing his sables about him.

“What matter the coat if the purse be full!” he continued gaily.—“Let it once be properly paragraphed in the papers that you are a millionaire, and doubtless some enterprising tailor will invent a ‘Tempest’ ulster coloured softly like your present garb, an artistic mildewy green! And now come along,—your solicitor’s communication should have given you a good appetite, or it is not so valuable as it seems,—and I want you to do justice to my supper. I have my own chef with me, and he is not without skill. I hope, by the way, you will at least do me this much service,—that pending legal discussion and settlement of your affairs, you will let me be your banker?”

This offer was made with such an air of courteous delicacy and friendship, that I could do no more than accept it gratefully, as it relieved me from all temporary embarrassment. I hastily wrote a few lines to my landlady, telling her she would receive the money owing to her by post next day,—then, thrusting my rejected manuscript, my only worldly possession, into my coat-pocket, I extinguished the lamp, and with the new friend I had so suddenly gained, I left my dismal lodgings and all its miserable associations for ever. I little thought the time would come when I should look back to the time spent in that small mean room as the best period of my life,—when I should regard the bitter poverty I then endured, as the stern but holy angel meant to guide me to the highest and noblest attainment,—when I should pray desperately with wild tears to be as I was then, rather than as I am now! Is it well or ill for us I wonder, that the future is hidden from our knowledge? Should we steer our ways clearer from evil if we knew its result? It is a doubtful question,—at anyrate my ignorance for the moment was indeed bliss. I went joyfully out of the dreary house where I had lived so long among disappointments and difficulties, turning my back upon it with such a sense of relief as could never be expressed in words,—and the last thing I heard as I passed into the street with my companion, was a plaintive long-drawn wail of minor melody, which seemed to be sent after me like a parting cry, by the unknown and invisible player of the violin.

IV

Outside, the prince’s carriage waited, drawn by two spirited black horses caparisoned in silver; magnificent thoroughbreds, which pawed the ground and champed their bits impatient of delay,—at sight of his master the smart footman in attendance threw the door open, touching his hat respectfully. We stepped in, I preceding my companion at his expressed desire; and as I sank back among the easy cushions, I felt the complacent consciousness of luxury and power to such an extent that it seemed as if I had left my days of adversity already a long way behind me. Hunger and happiness disputed my sensations between them, and I was in that vague light-headed condition common to long fasting, in which nothing seems absolutely tangible or real. I knew I should not properly grasp the solid truth of my wonderful good luck till my physical needs were satisfied and I was, so to speak, once more in a naturally balanced bodily condition. At present my brain was in a whirl,—my thoughts were all dim and disconnected,—and I appeared to myself to be in some whimsical dream from which I should wake up directly. The carriage rolled on rubber-tyred wheels and made no noise as it went,—one could only hear the even rapid trot of the horses. By-and-by I saw in the semi-darkness my new friend’s brilliant dark eyes fixed upon me with a curiously intent expression.

“Do you not feel the world already at your feet?” he queried half playfully, half ironically—“Like a football, waiting to be kicked? It is such an absurd world, you know—so easily moved. Wise men in all ages have done their best to make it less ridiculous,—with no result, inasmuch as it continues to prefer folly to wisdom. A football, or let us say a shuttlecock among worlds, ready to be tossed up anyhow and anywhere, provided the battledore be of gold!”

“You speak a trifle bitterly, prince”—I said—“But no doubt you have had a wide experience among men?”

“I have,” he returned with emphasis—“My kingdom is a vast one.”

“You are a ruling power then?” I exclaimed with some astonishment—“Yours is not a title of honour only?”

“Oh, as your rules of aristocracy go, it is a mere title of honour”—he replied quickly—“When I say that my kingdom is a vast one, I mean that I rule wherever men obey the influence of wealth. From this point of view, am I wrong in calling my kingdom vast?—is it not almost boundless?”

“I perceive you are a cynic,”—I said—“Yet surely you believe that there are some things wealth cannot buy,—honour and virtue for example?”

He surveyed me with a whimsical smile.

“I suppose honour and virtue do exist—” he answered—“And when they are existent of course they cannot be bought. But my experience has taught me that I can always buy everything. The sentiments called honour and virtue by the majority of men are the most shifty things imaginable,—set sufficient cash down, and they become bribery and corruption in the twinkling of an eye! Curious—very curious. I confess I found a case of unpurchaseable integrity once, but only once. I may find it again, though I consider the chance a very doubtful one. Now to revert to myself, pray do not imagine I am playing the humbug with you or passing myself off under a bogus title. I am a bona-fide prince, believe me, and of such descent as none of your oldest families can boast,—but my dominions are long since broken up and my former subjects dispersed among all nations,—anarchy, nihilism, disruption and political troubles generally, compel me to be rather reticent concerning my affairs. Money I fortunately have in plenty,—and with that I pave my way. Some day when we are better acquainted, you shall know more of my private history. I have various other names and titles besides that on my card—but I keep to the simplest of them, because most people are such bunglers at the pronunciation of foreign names. My intimate friends generally drop my title, and call me Lucio simply.”

“That is your christian name—?” I began.

“Not at all—I have no ‘christian’ name,”—he interrupted swiftly and with anger—“There is no such thing as ‘christian’ in my composition!”

He spoke with such impatience that for a moment I was at a loss for a reply. At last—

“Indeed!” I murmured vaguely.

He burst out laughing.

“‘Indeed!’ That is all you can find to say! Indeed and again indeed the word ‘christian’ vexes me. There is no such creature alive. You are not a Christian,—no one is really,—people pretend to be,—and in so damnable an act of feigning are more blasphemous than any fallen fiend! Now I make no pretences of the kind,—I have only one faith—”

“And that is?”—

“A profound and awful one!” he said in thrilling tones—“And the worst of it is that it is true,—as true as the workings of the Universe. But of that hereafter,—it will do to talk of when we feel low-spirited and wish to converse of things grim and ghastly,—at present here we are at our destination, and the chief consideration of our lives, (it is the chief consideration of most men’s lives) must be the excellence or non-excellence of our food.”

The carriage stopped and we descended. At first sight of the black horses and silver trappings, the porter of the hotel and two or three other servants rushed out to attend upon us; but the prince passed into the hall without noticing any of them and addressed himself to a sober-looking individual in black, his own private valet, who came forward to meet him with a profound salutation. I murmured something about wishing to engage a room for myself in the hotel.

“Oh, my man will see to that for you”—he said lightly—“The house is not full,—at anyrate all the best rooms are not taken; and of course you want one of the best.”

A staring waiter, who up to that moment, had been noting my shabby clothes with that peculiar air of contempt commonly displayed by insolent menials to those whom they imagine are poor, overheard these words, and suddenly changing the derisive expression of his foxy face, bowed obsequiously as I passed. A thrill of disgust ran through me, mingled with a certain angry triumph,—the hypocritical reflex of this low fellow’s countenance, was, I knew, a true epitome of what I should find similarly reflected in the manner and attitude of all ‘polite’ society. For there the estimate of worth is no higher than a common servant’s estimate, and is taken solely from the money standard;—if you are poor and dress shabbily you are thrust aside and ignored,—but if you are rich, you may wear shabby clothes as much as you like, you are still courted and flattered, and invited everywhere, though you may be the greatest fool alive or the worst blackguard unhung. With vague thoughts such as these flitting over my mind, I followed my host to his rooms. He occupied nearly a whole wing of the hotel, having a large drawing-room, dining-room and study en suite, fitted up in the most luxurious manner, besides bedroom, bathroom, and dressing-room, with other rooms adjoining, for his valet and two extra personal attendants. The table was laid for supper, and glittered with the costliest glass, silver and china, being furthermore adorned by baskets of the most exquisite fruit and flowers, and in a few moments we were seated. The prince’s valet acted as head-waiter, and I noticed that now this man’s face, seen in the full light of the electric lamps, seemed very dark and unpleasant, even sinister in expression,—but in the performance of his duties he was unexceptionable, being quick, attentive, and deferential, so much so that I inwardly reproached myself for taking an instinctive dislike to him. His name was Amiel, and I found myself involuntarily watching his movements, they were so noiseless,—his very step suggesting the stealthy gliding of a cat or a tiger. He was assisted in his work by the two other attendants who served as his subordinates, and who were equally active and well-trained,—and presently I found myself enjoying the choicest meal I had tasted for many and many a long day, flavoured with such wine as connoisseurs might be apt to dream of, but never succeed in finding. I began to feel perfectly at my ease, and talked with freedom and confidence, the strong attraction I had for my new friend deepening with every moment I passed in his company.

“Will you continue your literary career now you have this little fortune left you?” he inquired, when at the close of supper Amiel set the choicest cognac and cigars before us, and respectfully withdrew—“Do you think you will care to go on with it?”

“Certainly I shall”—I replied—“if only for the fun of the thing. You see, with money I can force my name into notice whether the public like it or not. No newspaper refuses paying advertisements.”

“True!—but may not inspiration refuse to flow from a full purse and an empty head?”

This remark provoked me not a little.

“Do you consider me empty-headed?” I asked with some vexation.

“Not at present. My dear Tempest, do not let either the Tokay we have been drinking, or the cognac we are going to drink, speak for you in such haste! I assure you I do not think you empty-headed,—on the contrary, your head, I believe from what I have heard, has been and is full of ideas,—excellent ideas, original ideas, which the world of conventional criticism does not want. But whether these ideas will continue to germinate in your brain, or whether, with the full purse, they will cease, is now the question. Great originality and inspiration, strange to say, seldom endow the millionaire. Inspiration is supposed to come from above,—money from below! In your case however both originality and inspiration may continue to flourish and bring forth fruit,—I trust they may. It often happens, nevertheless that when bags of money fall to the lot of aspiring genius, God departs and the devil walks in. Have you never heard that?”

“Never!” I answered smiling.

“Well, of course the saying is foolish, and sounds doubly ridiculous in this age when people believe in neither God nor devil. It implies however that one must choose an up or a down,—genius is the Up, money is the Down. You cannot fly and grovel at the same instant.”

“The possession of money is not likely to cause a man to grovel”—I said—“It is the one thing necessary to strengthen his soaring powers and lift him to the greatest heights.”

“You think so?” and my host lit his cigar with a grave and pre-occupied air—“Then I’m afraid, you don’t know much about what I shall call natural psychics. What belongs to the earth tends earthwards,—surely you realize that? Gold most strictly belongs to the earth,—you dig it out of the ground,—you handle it and dispose of it in solid wedges or bars—it is a substantial metal enough. Genius belongs to nobody knows where,—you cannot dig it up or pass it on, or do anything with it except stand and marvel—it is a rare visitant and capricious as the wind, and generally makes sad havoc among the conventionalities of men. It is as I said an ‘upper’ thing, beyond earthly smells and savours,—and those who have it always live in unknown high latitudes. But money is a perfectly level commodity,—level with the ground;—when you have much of it, you come down solidly on your flat soles and down you stay!” I laughed.

“Upon my word you preach very eloquently against wealth!” I said—“You yourself are unusually rich,—are you sorry for it?”

“No, I am not sorry, because being sorry would be no use”—he returned—“And I never waste my time. But I am telling you the truth—Genius and great riches hardly ever pull together. Now I, for example,—you cannot imagine what great capabilities I had once!—a long time ago—before I became my own master!”

“And you have them still I am sure”—I averred, looking expressively at his noble head and fine eyes.

The strange subtle smile I had noticed once or twice before lightened his face. “Ah, you mean to compliment me!” he said—“You like my looks,—many people do. Yet after all there is nothing so deceptive as one’s outward appearance. The reason of this is that as soon as childhood is past, we are always pretending to be what we are not,—and thus, with constant practice from our youth up, we manage to make our physical frames complete disguises for our actual selves. It is really wise and clever of us,—for hence each individual is so much flesh-wall through which neither friend nor enemy can spy. Every man is a solitary soul imprisoned in a self-made den,—when he is quite alone he knows and frequently hates himself,—sometimes he even gets afraid of the gaunt and murderous monster he keeps hidden behind his outwardly pleasant body-mask, and hastens to forget its frightful existence in drink and debauchery. That is what I do occasionally,—you would not think it of me, would you?”

“Never!” I replied quickly, for something in his voice and aspect moved me strangely—“You belie yourself, and wrong your own nature.”

He laughed softly.

“Perhaps I do!” he said carelessly—“This much you may believe of me—that I am no worse than most men! Now to return to the subject of your literary career,—you have written a book, you say,—well, publish it and see the result—if you only make one ‘hit’ that is something. And there are ways of arranging that the ‘hit’ shall be made. What is your story about? I hope it is improper?”

“It certainly is not;”—I replied warmly—“It is a romance dealing with the noblest forms of life and highest ambitions;—I wrote it with the intention of elevating and purifying the thoughts of my readers, and wished if I could, to comfort those who had suffered loss or sorrow—”

Rimânez smiled compassionately.

“Ah, it won’t do!” he interrupted—“I assure you it won’t;—it doesn’t fit the age. It might go down, possibly, if you could give a ‘first-night’ of it as it were to the critics, like one of my most intimate friends, Henry Irving,—a ‘first-night’ combined with an excellent supper and any amount of good drinks going. Otherwise it’s no use. If it is to succeed by itself, it must not attempt to be literature,—it must simply be indecent. As indecent as you can make it without offending advanced women,—that is giving you a good wide margin. Put in as much as you can about sexual matters and the bearing of children,—in brief, discourse of men and women simply as cattle who exist merely for breeding purposes, and your success will be enormous. There’s not a critic living who won’t applaud you,—there’s not a school-girl of fifteen who will not gloat over your pages in the silence of her virginal bedroom!”

Such a flash of withering derision darted from his eyes as startled me,—I could find no words to answer him for the moment, and he went on—

“What put it into your head, my dear Tempest, to write a book dealing with, as you say, ‘the noblest forms of life’? There are no noble forms of life left on this planet,—it is all low and commercial,—man is a pigmy, and his aims are pigmy like himself. For noble forms of life seek other worlds!—there are others. Then again, people don’t want their thoughts raised or purified in the novels they read for amusement—they go to church for that, and get very bored during the process. And why should you wish to comfort folks who, out of their own sheer stupidity generally, get into trouble? They wouldn’t comfort you,—they would not give you sixpence to save you from starvation. My good fellow, leave your quixotism behind you with your poverty. Live your life to yourself,—if you do anything for others they will only treat you with the blackest ingratitude,—so take my advice, and don’t sacrifice your own personal interests for any consideration whatever.”

He rose from the table as he spoke and stood with his back to the bright fire, smoking his cigar tranquilly,—and I gazed at his handsome figure and face with just the faintest thrill of pained doubt darkening my admiration.

“If you were not so good-looking I should call you heartless”—I said at last—“But your features are a direct contradiction to your words. You have not really that indifference to human nature which you strive to assume,—your whole aspect betokens a generosity of spirit which you cannot conquer if you would. Besides, are you not always trying to do good?”

He smiled.

“Always! That is, I am always at work endeavouring to gratify every man’s desire. Whether that is good of me, or bad, remains to be proved. Men’s wants are almost illimitable,—the only thing none of them ever seem to wish, so far as I am concerned, is to cut my acquaintance!”

“Why, of course not! After once meeting you, how could they!” I said, laughing at the absurdity of the suggestion.

He gave me a whimsical side-look.

“Their desires are not always virtuous,” he remarked, turning to flick off the ash of his cigar into the grate.

“But of course you do not gratify them in their vices!” I rejoined, still laughing—“That would be playing the part of a benefactor somewhat too thoroughly!”

“Ah now I see we shall flounder in the quicksands of theory if we go any further”—he said—“You forget, my dear fellow, that nobody can decide as to what is vice, or what is virtue. These things are chameleon-like, and take different colours in different countries. Abraham had two or three wives and several concubines, and he was the very soul of virtue according to sacred lore,—whereas my Lord Tom-Noddy in London to-day has one wife and several concubines, and is really very much like Abraham in other particulars, yet he is considered a very dreadful person. ‘Who shall decide when doctors disagree!’ Let’s drop the subject, as we shall never settle it. What shall we do with the rest of the evening? There is a stout-limbed, shrewd wench at the Tivoli, dancing her way into the affections of a ricketty little Duke,—shall we go and watch the admirable contortions with which she is wriggling into a fixed position among the English aristocracy? Or are you tired, and would you prefer a long night’s rest?”

To tell the truth I was thoroughly fatigued, and mentally as well as physically worn out with the excitements of the day,—my head too was heavy with the wine to which I had so long been unaccustomed.

“Upon my word I think I would rather go to bed than anything—” I confessed—“But what about my room?”

“Oh, Amiel will have attended to that for you,—we’ll ask him.” And he touched the bell. His valet instantly appeared.

“Have you got a room for Mr Tempest?”

“Yes, your Excellency. An apartment in this corridor almost facing your Excellency’s suite. It is not as well furnished as it might be, but I have made it as comfortable as I can for the night.”

“Thanks very much!” I said—“I am greatly obliged to you.”

Amiel bowed deferentially.

“Thank you, sir.”

He retired, and I moved to bid my host good-night. He took my proffered hand, and held it in his, looking at me curiously the while.

“I like you, Geoffrey Tempest;” he said—“And because I like you, and because I think there are the makings of something higher than mere earthy brute in you, I am going to make you what you may perhaps consider rather a singular proposition. It is this,—that if you don’t like me, say so at once, and we will part now, before we have time to know anything more of each other, and I will endeavour not to cross your path again unless you seek me out. But if on the contrary, you do like me,—if you find something in my humour or turn of mind congenial to your own disposition, give me your promise that you will be my friend and comrade for a while, say for a few months at any rate. I can take you into the best society, and introduce you to the prettiest women in Europe as well as the most brilliant men. I know them all, and I believe I can be useful to you. But if there is the smallest aversion to me lurking in the depths of your nature”—here he paused,—then resumed with extraordinary solemnity—“in God’s name give it full way and let me go,—because I swear to you in all sober earnest that I am not what I seem!”

Strongly impressed by his strange look and stranger manner, I hesitated one moment,—and on that moment, had I but known it, hung my future. It was true,—I had felt a passing shadow of distrust and repulsion for this fascinating yet cynical man, and he seemed to have guessed it. But now every suspicion of him vanished from my mind, and I clasped his hand with renewed heartiness.

“My dear fellow, your warning comes too late!” I said mirthfully—“Whatever you are, or whatever you choose to think you are, I find you most sympathetic to my disposition, and I consider myself most fortunate in knowing you. My old friend Carrington has indeed done me a good turn in bringing us together, and I assure you I shall be proud of your companionship. You seem to take a perverse delight in running yourself down!—but you know the old adage, ‘the devil is not so black as he is painted’?”

“And that is true!” he murmured dreamily—“Poor devil! His faults are no doubt much exaggerated by the clergy! And so we are to be friends?”

“I hope so! I shall not be the first to break the compact!”

His dark eyes rested upon me thoughtfully, yet there seemed to be a lurking smile in them as well.

“Compact is a good word”—he said—“So,—a compact we will consider it. I meant to improve your material fortunes,—you can dispense with that aid now; but I think I can still be of service in pushing you on in society. And love—of course you will fall in love if you have not already done so,—have you?”

“Not I!” I answered quickly, and with truth—“I have seen no woman yet who perfectly fulfils my notions of beauty.”

He burst out laughing violently.

“Upon my word you are not wanting in audacity!” he said—“Nothing but perfect beauty will suit you, eh? But consider, my friend, you, though a good-looking well-built man, are not yourself quite a Phœbus Apollo!”

“That has nothing to do with the matter”—I rejoined—“A man should choose a wife with a careful eye to his own personal gratification, in the same way that he chooses horses or wine,—perfection or nothing.”

“And the woman?”—Rimânez demanded, his eyes twinkling.

“The woman has really no right of choice”—I responded,—for this was my pet argument and I took pleasure in setting it forth—“She must mate wherever she has the chance of being properly maintained. A man is always a man,—a woman is only a man’s appendage, and without beauty she cannot put forth any just claim to his admiration or his support.”

“Right!—very right, and logically argued!”—he exclaimed, becoming preternaturally serious in a moment—“I myself have no sympathy with the new ideas that are in vogue concerning the intellectuality of woman. She is simply the female of man,—she has no real soul save that which is a reflex of his, and being destitute of logic, she is incapable of forming a correct opinion on any subject. All the imposture of religion is kept up by this unmathematical hysterical creature,—and it is curious, considering how inferior a being she is, what mischief she has contrived to make in the world, upsetting the plans of the wisest kings and counsellors, who as mere men, should undoubtedly have mastered her! And in the present age she is becoming more than ever unmanageable.”

“It is only a passing phase”—I returned carelessly—“A fad got up by a few unloved and unlovable types of the feminine sex. I care very little for women—I doubt whether I shall ever marry.”

“Well you have plenty of time to consider, and amuse yourself with the fair ones, en passant”—he said watching me narrowly—“And in the meantime I can take you round the different marriage-markets of the world if you choose, though the largest one of them all is of course this very metropolis. Splendid bargains to be had, my dear friend!—wonderful blonde and brunette specimens going really very cheap. We’ll examine them at our leisure. I’m glad you have yourself decided that we are to be comrades,—for I am proud;—I may say damnably proud;—and never stay in any man’s company when he expresses the slightest wish to be rid of me. Good-night!”

“Good-night!” I responded. We clasped hands again and they were still interlocked, when a sudden flash of lightning blazed vividly across the room, followed instantaneously by a terrific clap of thunder. The electric lights went out, and only the glow of the fire illumined our faces. I was a little startled and confused,—the prince stood still, quite unconcerned, his eyes shining like those of a cat in the darkness.

“What a storm!” he remarked lightly—“Such thunder in winter is rather unusual. Amiel!”

The valet entered, his sinister countenance resembling a white mask made visible in the gloom.

“These lamps have gone out,”—said his master—“It’s very odd that civilized humanity has not yet learned the complete management of the electric light. Can you put them in order, Amiel?” “Yes, your excellency.” And in a few moments, by some dexterous manipulation which I did not understand and could not see, the crystal-cased jets shone forth again with renewed brilliancy. Another peal of thunder crashed overhead, followed by a downpour of rain.

“Really remarkable weather for January,”—said Rimânez, again giving me his hand—“Good-night my friend! Sleep well.”

“If the anger of the elements will permit!” I returned, smiling.

“Oh, never mind the elements. Man has nearly mastered them or soon will do so, now that he is getting gradually convinced there is no Deity to interfere in his business. Amiel, show Mr Tempest to his room.”

Amiel obeyed, and crossing the corridor, ushered me into a large, luxurious apartment, richly furnished, and lit up by the blaze of a bright fire. The comforting warmth shone welcome upon me as I entered, and I who had not experienced such personal luxury since my boyhood’s days, felt more than ever overpowered by the jubilant sense of my sudden extraordinary good fortune. Amiel waited respectfully, now and then furtively glancing at me with an expression which to my fancy had something derisive in it.

“Is there anything I can do for you sir?” he inquired.

“No thank you,”—I answered, endeavouring to throw an accent of careless condescension into my voice—for somehow I felt this man must be kept strictly in his place—“you have been very attentive,—I shall not forget it.”

A slight smile flickered over his features.

“Much obliged to you, sir. Good-night.”

And he retired, leaving me alone. I paced the room up and down more dreamily than consciously, trying to think,—trying to set in order the amazing events of the day, but my brain was still dazed and confused, and the only image of actual prominence in my mind was the striking and remarkable personality of my new friend Rimânez. His extraordinary good looks, his attractive manner, his curious cynicism which was so oddly mixed with some deeper sentiment to which I could not give a name, all the trifling yet uncommon peculiarities of his bearing and humour haunted me and became indissolubly mingled as it were with myself and all the circumstances concerning me. I undressed before the fire, listening drowsily to the rain, and the thunder which was now dying off into sullen echoes.

“Geoffrey Tempest, the world is before you—” I said, apostrophizing myself indolently—“you are a young man,—you have health, a good appearance, and brains,—added to these you now have five millions of money, and a wealthy prince for your friend. What more do you want of Fate or Fortune? Nothing,—except fame! And that you will get easily, for now-a-days even fame is purchaseable—like love. Your star is in the ascendant,—no more literary drudgery for you my boy!—pleasure and profit and ease are yours to enjoy for the rest of your life. You are a lucky dog!—at last you have your day!”

I flung myself upon the soft bed, and settled myself to sleep,—and as I dozed off, I still heard the rumble of heavy thunder in the distance. Once I fancied I heard the prince’s voice calling “Amiel! Amiel!” with a wildness resembling the shriek of an angry wind,—and at another moment I started violently from a profound slumber under the impression that someone had approached and was looking fixedly at me. I sat up in bed, peering into the darkness, for the fire had gone out;—then I turned on a small electric night-lamp at my side which fully illumined the room,—there was no one there. Yet my imagination played me such tricks before I could rest again that I thought I heard a hissing whisper near me that said—

“Peace! Trouble him not. Let the fool in his folly sleep!”

V

The next morning on rising I learned that ‘his excellency’ as Prince Rimânez was called by his own servants and the employés of the ‘Grand,’ had gone out riding in the Park, leaving me to breakfast alone. I therefore took that meal in the public room of the hotel, where I was waited upon with the utmost obsequiousness, in spite of my shabby clothes, which I was of course still compelled to wear, having no change. When would I be pleased to lunch? At what hour would I dine? Should my present apartment be retained?—or was it not satisfactory? Would I prefer a ‘suite’ similar to that occupied by his excellency? All these deferential questions first astonished and then amused me,—some mysterious agency had evidently conveyed the rumour of my wealth among those best fitted to receive it, and here was the first result. In reply I said my movements were uncertain,—I should be able to give definite instructions in the course of a few hours, and that in the meantime I retained my room. The breakfast over I sallied forth to go to my lawyers, and was just about to order a hansom when I saw my new friend coming back from his ride. He bestrode a magnificent chestnut mare, whose wild eyes and strained quivering limbs showed she was fresh from a hard gallop and was scarcely yet satisfied to be under close control. She curveted and danced among the carts and cabs in a somewhat risky fashion, but she had her master in Rimânez, who if he had looked handsome by night looked still more so by day, with a slight colour warming the natural pallor of his complexion and his eyes sparkling with all the zest of exercise and enjoyment. I waited for his approach, as did also Amiel, who as usual timed his appearance in the hotel corridor in exact accordance with the moment of his master’s arrival. Rimânez smiled as he caught sight of me, touching his hat with the handle of his whip by way of salutation.

“You slept late, Tempest”—he said, as he dismounted and threw the reins to a groom who had cantered up after him,—“To-morrow you must come with me and join what they call in fashionable slang parlance the Liver Brigade. Once upon a time it was considered the height of indelicacy and low breeding to mention the ‘liver’ or any other portion of one’s internal machinery,—but we have done with all that now, and we find a peculiar satisfaction in discoursing of disease and unsavoury medical matters generally. And in the Liver Brigade you see at a glance all those interesting fellows who have sold themselves to the devil for the sake of the flesh-pots of Egypt,—men who eat till they are well-nigh bursting, and then prance up and down on good horses,—much too respectable beasts by the way to bear such bestial burdens—in the hope of getting out of their poisoned blood the evil they have themselves put in. They think me one of them, but I am not.”

He patted his mare and the groom led her away, the foam of her hard ride still flecking her glossy chest and forelegs.

“Why do you join the procession then?” I asked him, laughing and glancing at him with undisguised approval as I spoke, for he seemed more admirably built than ever in his well-fitting riding gear—“You are a fraud!”

“I am!” he responded lightly—“And do you know I am not the only one in London! Where are you off to?”

“To those lawyers who wrote to me last night;—Bentham and Ellis is the name of the firm. The sooner I interview them the better,—don’t you think so?”

“Yes—but see here,”—and he drew me aside—“You must have some ready cash. It doesn’t look well to apply at once for advances,—and there is really no necessity to explain to these legal men that you were on the verge of starvation when their letter arrived. Take this pocket-book,—remember you promised to let me be your banker,—and on your way you might go to some well-reputed tailor and get properly rigged out. Ta-ta!”

He moved off at a rapid pace,—I hurried after him, touched to the quick by his kindness.

“But wait—I say—Lucio!” And I called him thus by his familiar name for the first time. He stopped at once and stood quite still.

“Well?” he said, regarding me with an attentive smile.

“You don’t give me time to speak”—I answered in a low voice, for we were standing in one of the public corridors of the hotel—“The fact is I have some money, or rather I can get it directly,—Carrington sent me a draft for fifty pounds in his letter—I forgot to tell you about it. It was very good of him to lend it to me,—you had better have it as security for this pocket-book,—by-the-bye how much is there inside it?”

“Five hundred, in bank notes of tens and twenties,”—he responded with business-like brevity.

“Five hundred! My dear fellow, I don’t want all that. It’s too much!”

“Better have too much than too little nowadays,”—he retorted with a laugh—“My dear Tempest, don’t make such a business of it. Five hundred pounds is really nothing. You can spend it all on a dressing-case for example. Better send back John Carrington’s draft,—I don’t think much of his generosity considering that he came into a mine worth a hundred thousand pounds sterling, a few days before I left Australia.”

I heard this with great surprise, and, I must admit with a slight feeling of resentment too. The frank and generous character of my old chum ‘Boffles’ seemed to darken suddenly in my eyes,—why could he not have told me of his good fortune in his letter? Was he afraid I might trouble him for further loans? I suppose my looks expressed my thoughts, for Rimânez, who had observed me intently, presently added—

“Did he not tell you of his luck? That was not very friendly of him—but as I remarked last night, money often spoils a man.”

“Oh I daresay he meant no slight by the omission,” I said hurriedly, forcing a smile—“No doubt he will make it the subject of his next letter. Now as to this five hundred”—

“Keep it, man, keep it”—he interposed impatiently—“What do you talk about security for? Haven’t I got you as security?”

I laughed. “Well, I am fairly reliable now”—I said—“And I’m not going to run away.”

“From me?” he queried, with a half cold half kind glance; “No,—I fancy not!”

He waved his hand lightly and left me, and I, putting the leather case of notes in my inner breast-pocket, hailed a hansom and was driven off rapidly to Basinghall Street where my solicitors awaited me.

Arrived at my destination, I sent up my name, and was received at once with the utmost respect by two small chips of men in rusty black who represented ‘the firm.’ At my request they sent down their clerk to pay and dismiss my cab, while I, opening Lucio’s pocket book, asked them to change me a ten-pound note into gold and silver which they did with ready good-will. Then we went into business together. My deceased relative, whom I had never seen as far as I myself remembered, but who had seen me as a motherless baby in my nurse’s arms, had left me everything he possessed unconditionally, including several rare collections of pictures, jewels and curios. His will was so concisely and clearly worded that there were no possibilities of any legal hair-splitting over it,—and I was informed that in a week or ten days at the utmost everything would be in order and at my sole disposition.

“You are a very fortunate man Mr Tempest;”—said the senior partner Mr Bentham, as he folded up the last of the papers we had been looking through and put it by—“At your age this princely inheritance may be either a great boon to you or a great curse,—one never knows. The possession of such enormous wealth involves great responsibilities.”

I was amused at what I considered the impertinence of this mere servant of the law in presuming to moralize on my luck.

“Many people would be glad to accept such responsibilities and change places with me”—I said with a flippant air—“You yourself, for example?”

I knew this remark was not in good taste, but I made it wilfully, feeling that he had no business to preach to me as it were on the responsibilities of wealth. He took no offence however,—he merely gave me an observant side-glance like that of some meditative crow.

“No Mr Tempest, no”—he said drily—“I do not think I should at all be disposed to change places with you. I feel very well satisfied as I am. My brain is my bank, and brings me in quite sufficient interest to live upon, which is all that I desire. To be comfortable, and pay one’s way honestly is enough for me. I have never envied the wealthy.”

“Mr Bentham is a philosopher,”—interposed his partner, Mr Ellis smiling—“In our profession Mr Tempest, we see so many ups and downs of life, that in watching the variable fortunes of our clients, we ourselves learn the lesson of content.”

“Ah, it is a lesson that I have never mastered till now!” I responded merrily—“But at the present moment I confess myself satisfied.”

They each gave me a formal little bow, and Mr Bentham shook hands.

“Business being concluded, allow me to congratulate you,” he said politely—“Of course, if you should wish at any time to entrust your legal affairs to other hands, my partner and myself are perfectly willing to withdraw. Your deceased relative had the highest confidence in us…”

“As I have also, I assure you,”—I interrupted quickly—“Pray do me the favour to continue managing things for me as you did for my relative, and be assured of my gratitude in advance.”

Both little men bowed again, and this time Mr Ellis shook hands.

“We shall do our best for you, Mr Tempest, shall we not Bentham?” Bentham nodded gravely. “And now what do you say—shall we mention it Bentham?—or shall we not mention it?”

“Perhaps,” responded Bentham sententiously—“it would be as well to mention it.”

I glanced from one to the other, not understanding what they meant. Mr Ellis rubbed his hands and smiled deprecatingly.

“The fact is Mr Tempest, your deceased relative had one very curious idea—he was a shrewd man and a clever one, but he certainly had one very curious idea—and perhaps if he had followed it up to any extent, it might—yes, it might have landed him in a lunatic asylum and prevented his disposing of his extensive fortune in the—er—the very just and reasonable manner he has done. Happily for himself and—er—for you, he did not follow it up, and to the last he retained his admirable business qualities and high sense of rectitude. But I do not think he ever quite dispossessed himself of the idea itself, did he Bentham?”

Bentham gazed meditatively at the round black mark of the gas-burner where it darkened the ceiling.

“I think not,—no, I think not,” he answered—“I believe he was perfectly convinced of it.”

“And what was it?” I asked, getting impatient—“Did he want to bring out some patent?—a new notion for a flying-machine, and get rid of his money in that way?”

“No, no, no!” and Mr Ellis laughed a soft pleasant little laugh over my suggestion—“No, my dear sir—nothing of a purely mechanical or commercial turn captivated his imagination. He was too,—er—yes, I think I may say too profoundly opposed to what is called ‘progress’ in the world to aid it by any new invention or other means whatever. You see it is a little awkward for me to explain to you what really seems to be the most absurd and fantastic notion,—but—to begin with, we never really knew how he made his money, did we Bentham?”

Bentham shook his head and pursed his lips closely together.

“We had to take charge of large sums, and advise as to investments and other matters,—but it was not our business to inquire where the cash came from in the first place, was it, Bentham?”

Again Bentham shook his head solemnly.

“We were entrusted with it;”—went on his partner, pressing the tips of his fingers together caressingly as he spoke—“and we did our best to fulfil that trust—with—er—with discretion and fidelity. And it was only after we had been for many years connected in business that our client mentioned—er—his idea;—a most erratic and extraordinary one, which was briefly this,—that he had sold himself to the devil, and that his large fortune was one result of the bargain!”

I burst out laughing heartily.

“What a ridiculous notion!” I exclaimed—“Poor man!—a weak spot in his brain somewhere evidently,—or perhaps he used the expression as a mere figure of speech?”

“I think not;”—responded Mr Ellis half interrogatively, still caressing his fingers—“I think our client did not use the phrase ‘sold to the devil’ as a figure of speech merely, Mr Bentham?”

“I am positive he did not,”—said Bentham seriously—“He spoke of the ‘bargain’ as an actual and accomplished fact.”

I laughed again with a trifle less boisterousness.

“Well, people have all sorts of fancies now-a-days”—I said; “What with Blavatskyism, Besantism and hypnotism, it is no wonder if some folks still have a faint credence in the silly old superstition of a devil’s existence. But for a thoroughly sensible man…” “Yes—er, yes;”—interrupted Mr Ellis—“Your relative, Mr Tempest, was a thoroughly sensible man, and this—er—this idea was the only fancy that ever appeared to have taken root in his eminently practical mind. Being only an idea, it seemed hardly worth mentioning—but perhaps it is well—Mr Bentham agreeing with me—that we have mentioned it.”

“It is a satisfaction and relief to ourselves,”—said Mr Bentham, “to have had it mentioned.”

I smiled, and thanking them, rose to go. They bowed to me once more, simultaneously, looking almost like twin brothers, so identically had their united practice of the law impressed itself upon their features.

“Good-day Mr Tempest,”—said Mr Bentham—“I need scarcely say that we shall serve you as we served our late client, to the best of our ability. And in matters where advice may be pleasant or profitable, we may possibly be of use to you. May we ask whether you require any cash advances immediately?”

“No, thank you,”—I answered, feeling grateful to my friend Rimânez for having placed me in a perfectly independent position to confront these solicitors—“I am amply provided.”

They seemed, I fancied, a trifle surprised at this, but were too discreet to offer any remark. They wrote down my address at the Grand Hotel, and sent their clerk to show me to the door. I gave this man half-a-sovereign to drink my health which he very cheerfully promised to do,—then I walked round by the Law Courts, trying to realize that I was not in a dizzy dream, but that I was actually and solidly, five times a millionaire. As luck would have it, in turning a corner I jostled up against a man coming the other way, the very publisher who had returned me my rejected manuscript the day before.

“Hullo!” he exclaimed stopping short.

“Hullo!” I rejoined.

“Where are you off to?” he went on—“Going to try and place that unlucky novel? My dear boy, believe me it will never do as it is…”

“It will do, it shall do;”—I said calmly—“I am going to publish it myself.”

He started. “Publish it yourself! Good heavens!—it will cost you—ah!—sixty or seventy, perhaps a hundred pounds.”

“I don’t care if it costs me a thousand!”

A red flush came into his face, and his eyes opened in astonishment.

“I thought … excuse me …” he stammered awkwardly; “I thought money was scarce with you–”

“It was,” I answered drily—“It isn’t now.”

Then, his utterly bewildered look, together with the whole topsy-turviness of things in my altered position, struck me so forcibly that I burst out laughing, wildly, and with a prolonged noise and violence that apparently alarmed him, for he began looking nervously about him in all directions as if meditating flight. I caught him by the arm.

“Look here man,” I said, trying to conquer my almost hysterical mirth—“I’m not mad—don’t you think it,—I’m only a—millionaire!” And I began laughing again; the situation seemed to me so sublimely ridiculous. But the worthy publisher did not see it at all—and his features expressed so much genuine alarm that I made a further effort to control myself and succeeded. “I assure you on my word of honour I’m not joking—it’s a fact. Last night I wanted a dinner, and you, like a good fellow, offered to give me one,—to-day I possess five millions of money! Don’t stare so! don’t have a fit of apoplexy! And as I have told you, I shall publish my book myself at my own expense, and it shall succeed! Oh I’m in earnest, grim earnest, grim as death!—I’ve more than enough in my pocketbook to pay for its publication now!”

I loosed my hold of him, and he fell back stupefied and confused.

“God bless my soul!” he muttered feebly—“It’s like a dream!—I was never more astonished in my life!”

“Nor I!” I said, another temptation to laughter threatening my composure,—“But strange things happen in life, as in fiction. And that book which the builders—I mean the readers—rejected, shall be the headstone of the corner—or—the success of the season! What will you take to bring it out?”

“Take? I? I bring it out!”

“Yes, you—why not? If I offer you a chance to turn an honest penny shall your paid pack of ‘readers’ prevent your accepting it? Fie! you are not a slave,—this is a free country. I know the kind of people who ‘read’ for you,—the gaunt unlovable spinster of fifty,—the dyspeptic book-worm who is a ‘literary failure’ and can find nothing else to do but scrawl growling comments on the manuscript of promising work,—why in heaven’s name should you rely on such incompetent opinion? I’ll pay you for the publication of my book at as stiff a price as you choose and something over for good-will. And I guarantee you another thing—it shall not only make my name as an author, but yours as a publisher. I’ll advertise royally, and I’ll work the press. Everything in this world can be done for money …”

“Stop, stop,”—he interrupted.—“This is so sudden! You must let me think of it—you must give me time to consider–”

“Take a day for your meditations then,” I said—“But no longer. For if you don’t say yes, I’ll get another man, and he’ll have the big pickings instead of you! Be wise in time, my friend!—good-day!”

He ran after me.

“Stay,—look here! You’re so strange, so wild—so erratic you know! Your head seems quite turned!”

“It is! The right way round this time!”

“Dear dear me,” and he smiled benevolently—“Why, you don’t give me a chance to congratulate you. I really do, you know—I congratulate you sincerely!” And he shook me by the hand quite fervently. “And as regards the book I believe there was really no fault found with it in the matter of literary style or quality,—it was simply too—too transcendental, and unlikely therefore to suit the public taste. The Domestic-Iniquity line is what we find pays best at present. But I will think about it—where will a letter find you?”

“Grand Hotel,” I responded, inwardly amused at his puzzled and anxious expression—I knew he was already mentally calculating how much he could make out of me in the pursuit of my literary whim—“Come there, and lunch or dine with me tomorrow if you like—only send me a word beforehand. Remember, I give you just a day’s grace to decide,—it must be yes or no, in twenty-four hours!”

And with this I left him, staring vaguely after me like a man who has seen some nameless wonder drop out of the sky at his feet. I went on, laughing to myself inaudibly, till I saw one or two passers-by looking at me so surprisedly that I came to the conclusion that I must put a disguise on my thoughts if I would not be taken for a madman. I walked briskly, and presently my excitement cooled down. I resumed the normal condition of the phlegmatic Englishman who considers it the height of bad form to display any personal emotion whatever, and I occupied the rest of the morning in purchasing some ready-made apparel which by unusual good luck happened to fit me, and also in giving an extensive, not to say extravagant order to a fashionable tailor in Sackville Street who promised me everything with punctuality and despatch. I next sent off the rent I owed to the landlady of my former lodgings, adding five pounds extra by way of recognition of the poor woman’s long patience in giving me credit, and general kindness towards me during my stay in her dismal house,—and this done I returned to the Grand in high spirits, looking and feeling very much the better for my ready-made outfit. A waiter met me in the corridor and with the most obsequious deference, informed me that ‘his excellency the prince’ was waiting luncheon for me in his own apartments. Thither I repaired at once, and found my new friend alone in his sumptuous drawing-room, standing near the full light of the largest window and holding in his hand an oblong crystal case through which he was looking with an almost affectionate solicitude.

“Ah, Geoffrey! Here you are!” he exclaimed—“I imagined you would get through your business by lunch time, so I waited.”

“Very good of you!” I said, pleased at the friendly familiarity he displayed in thus calling me by my Christian name—“What have you got there?”

“A pet of mine,”—he answered, smiling slightly—“Did you ever see anything like it before?”

VI

I approached and examined the box he held. It was perforated with finely drilled holes for the admission of air, and within it lay a brilliant winged insect coloured with all the tints and half-tints of the rainbow.

“Is it alive?” I asked.

“It is alive, and has a sufficient share of intelligence,”—replied Rimânez. “I feed it and it knows me,—that is the utmost you can say of the most civilized human beings; they know what feeds them. It is quite tame and friendly as you perceive,”—and opening the case he gently advanced his forefinger. The glittering beetle’s body palpitated with the hues of an opal; its radiant wings expanded, and it rose at once to its protector’s hand and clung there. He lifted it out and held it aloft, then shaking it to and fro lightly, he exclaimed—

“Off, Sprite! Fly, and return to me!”

The creature soared away through the room and round and round the ceiling, looking like a beautiful iridescent jewel, the whirr of its wings making a faint buzzing sound as it flew. I watched it fascinated, till after a few graceful movements hither and thither, it returned to its owner’s still outstretched hand, and again settled there making no further attempt to fly.

“There is a well-worn platitude which declares that ‘in the midst of life we are in death’”—said the prince then softly, bending his dark deep eyes on the insect’s quivering wings—“But as a matter of fact that maxim is wrong as so many trite human maxims are. It should be ‘in the midst of death we are in life.’ This creature is a rare and curious production of death, but not I believe the only one of its kind. Others have been found under precisely similar circumstances. I took possession of this one myself in rather a weird fashion,—will the story bore you?”

“On the contrary”—I rejoined eagerly, my eyes fixed on the radiant bat-shaped thing that glittered in the light as though its veins were phosphorescent.

He paused a moment, watching me.

“Well,—it happened simply thus,—I was present at the uncasing of an Egyptian female mummy;—her talismans described her as a princess of a famous royal house. Several curious jewels were tied round her neck, and on her chest was a piece of beaten gold quarter of an inch thick. Underneath this gold plate, her body was swathed round and round in an unusual number of scented wrappings; and when these were removed it was discovered that the mummified flesh between her breasts had decayed away, and in the hollow or nest thus formed by the process of decomposition, this insect I hold was found alive, as brilliant in colour as it is now!”

I could not repress a slight nervous shudder.

“Horrible!” I said—“I confess, if I were you, I should not care to make a pet of such an uncanny object. I should kill it, I think.”

He kept his bright intent gaze upon me.

“Why?” he asked. “I’m afraid, my dear Geoffrey, you are not disposed to study science. To kill the poor thing who managed to find life in the very bosom of death, is a cruel suggestion, is it not? To me, this unclassified insect is a valuable proof (if I needed one) of the indestructibility of the germs of conscious existence; it has eyes, and the senses of taste, smell, touch and hearing,—and it gained these together with its intelligence, out of the dead flesh of a woman who lived, and no doubt loved and sinned and suffered more than four thousand years ago!” He broke off,—then suddenly added—“All the same I frankly admit to you that I believe it to be an evil creature. I do indeed! But I like it none the less for that. In fact I have rather a fantastic notion about it myself. I am much inclined to accept the idea of the transmigration of souls, and so I please my humour sometimes by thinking that perhaps the princess of that Royal Egyptian house had a wicked, brilliant, vampire soul,—and that … here it is!”

A cold thrill ran through me from head to foot at these words, and as I looked at the speaker standing opposite me in the wintry light, dark and tall, with the ‘wicked, brilliant, vampire soul’ clinging to his hand, there seemed to me to be a sudden hideousness declared in his excessive personal beauty. I was conscious of a vague terror, but I attributed it to the gruesome nature of the story, and, determining to combat my sensations, I examined the weird insect more closely. As I did so, its bright beady eyes sparkled, I thought, vindictively, and I stepped back, vexed with myself at the foolish fear of the thing which overpowered me.

“It is certainly remarkable,”—I murmured—“No wonder you value it,—as a curiosity. Its eyes are quite distinct, almost intelligent in fact.”

“No doubt she had beautiful eyes,”—said Rimânez smiling.

“She? Whom do you mean?”

“The princess, of course!” he answered, evidently amused; “The dear dead lady,—some of whose personality must be in this creature, seeing that it had nothing but her body to nourish itself upon.”

And here he replaced the creature in its crystal habitation with the utmost care.

“I suppose”—I said slowly, “you, in your pursuit of science, would infer from this that nothing actually perishes completely?”

“Exactly!” returned Rimânez emphatically. “There, my dear Tempest, is the mischief,—or the deity,—of things. Nothing can be entirely annihilated;—not even a thought.”

I was silent, watching him while he put the glass case with its uncanny occupant away out of sight.

“And now for luncheon,” he said gaily, passing his arm through mine—“You look twenty per cent. better than when you went out this morning, Geoffrey, so I conclude your legal matters are disposed of satisfactorily. And what else have you done with yourself?”

Seated at table with the dark-faced Amiel in attendance, I related my morning’s adventures, dwelling at length on my chance meeting with the publisher who had on the previous day refused my manuscript, and who now, I felt sure, would be only too glad to close with the offer I had made him. Rimânez listened attentively, smiling now and then.

“Of course!” he said, when I had concluded. “There is nothing in the least surprising in the conduct of the worthy man. In fact I think he showed remarkable discretion and decency in not at once jumping at your proposition,—his pleasant hypocrisy in retiring to think it over, shows him to be a person of tact and foresight. Did you ever imagine that a human being or a human conscience existed that could not be bought? My good fellow, you can buy a king if you only give a long price enough; and the Pope will sell you a specially reserved seat in his heaven if you will only hand him the cash down while he is on earth! Nothing is given free in this world save the air and the sunshine,—everything else must be bought,—with blood, tears and groans occasionally,—but oftenest with money.”

I fancied that Amiel, behind his master’s chair, smiled darkly at this,—and my instinctive dislike of the fellow kept me more or less reticent concerning my affairs till the luncheon was over. I could not formulate to myself any substantial reason for my aversion to this confidential servant of the prince’s,—but do what I would the aversion remained, and increased each time I saw his sullen, and as I thought, sneering features. Yet he was perfectly respectful and deferential; I could find no actual fault with him,—nevertheless when at last he placed the coffee, cognac, and cigars on the table and noiselessly withdrew, I was conscious of a great relief, and breathed more freely. As soon as we were alone, Rimânez lit a cigar and settled himself for a smoke, looking over at me with a personal interest and kindness which made his handsome face more than ever attractive.

“Now let us talk,”—he said—“I believe I am at present the best friend you have, and I certainly know the world better than you do. What do you propose to make of your life? Or in other words how do you mean to begin spending your money?”

I laughed. “Well, I shan’t provide funds for the building of a church, or the endowment of a hospital,”—I said—“I shall not even start a Free Library, for these institutions, besides becoming centres for infectious diseases, generally get presided over by a committee of local grocers who presume to consider themselves judges of literature. My dear Prince Rimânez, I mean to spend my money on my own pleasure, and I daresay I shall find plenty of ways to do it.”

Rimânez fanned away the smoke of his cigar with one hand, and his dark eyes shone with a peculiarly vivid light through the pale grey floating haze.

“With your fortune, you could make hundreds of miserable people happy;”—he suggested.

“Thanks, I would rather be happy myself first”—I answered gaily—“I daresay I seem to you selfish,—you are philanthropic I know; I am not.”

He still regarded me steadily.

“You might help your fellow-workers in literature…”

I interrupted him with a decided gesture.

“That I will never do, my friend, though the heavens should crack! My fellow-workers in literature have kicked me down at every opportunity, and done their best to keep me from earning a bare livelihood,—it is my turn at kicking now, and I will show them as little mercy, as little help, as little sympathy as they have shown me!”

“Revenge is sweet!” he quoted sententiously—“I should recommend your starting a high-class half-crown magazine.”

“Why?”

“Can you ask? Just think of the ferocious satisfaction it would give you to receive the manuscripts of your literary enemies, and reject them! To throw their letters into the waste-paper basket, and send back their poems, stories, political articles and what not, with ‘Returned with thanks’ or ‘Not up to our mark’ type-written on the backs thereof! To dig knives into your rivals through the medium of anonymous criticism! The howling joy of a savage with twenty scalps at his belt would be tame in comparison to it! I was an editor once myself, and I know!”

I laughed at his whimsical earnestness.

“I daresay you are right,”—I said—“I can grasp the vengeful position thoroughly! But the management of a magazine would be too much trouble to me,—too much of a tie.”

“Don’t manage it! Follow the example of all the big editors, and live out of the business altogether,—but take the profits! You never see the real editor of a leading daily newspaper you know,—you can only interview the sub. The real man is, according to the seasons of the year, at Ascot, in Scotland, at Newmarket, or wintering in Egypt,—he is supposed to be responsible for everything in his journal, but he is generally the last person who knows anything about it. He relies on his ‘staff’—a very bad crutch at times,—and when his ‘staff’ are in a difficulty, they get out of it by saying they are unable to decide without the editor. Meanwhile the editor is miles away, comfortably free from worry. You could bamboozle the public in that way if you liked.”

“I could, but I shouldn’t care to do so,” I answered—“If I had a business I would not neglect it. I believe in doing things thoroughly.”

“So do I!” responded Rimânez promptly. “I am a very thorough-going fellow myself, and whatever my hand findeth to do, I do it with my might!—excuse me for quoting Scripture!” He smiled, a little ironically I thought, then resumed—“Well, in what, at present does your idea of enjoying your heritage consist?”

“In publishing my book,” I answered. “That very book I could get no one to accept,—I tell you, I will make it the talk of London!”

“Possibly you will”—he said, looking at me through half-closed eyes and a cloud of smoke,—“London easily talks. Particularly on unsavoury and questionable subjects. Therefore,—as I have already hinted,—if your book were a judicious mixture of Zola, Huysmans and Baudelaire, or had for its heroine a ‘modest’ maid who considered honourable marriage a ‘degradation,’ it would be quite sure of success in these days of new Sodom and Gomorrah.” Here he suddenly sprang up, and flinging away his cigar, confronted me. “Why do not the heavens rain fire on this accursed city! It is ripe for punishment,—full of abhorrent creatures not worth the torturing in hell to which it is said liars and hypocrites are condemned! Tempest, if there is one human being more than another that I utterly abhor, it is the type of man so common to the present time, the man who huddles his own loathly vices under a cloak of assumed broad-mindedness and virtue. Such an one will even deify the loss of chastity in woman by the name of ‘purity,’—because he knows that it is by her moral and physical ruin alone that he can gratify his brutal lusts. Rather than be such a sanctimonious coward I would openly proclaim myself vile!”

“That is because yours is a noble nature”—I said—“You are an exception to the rule.”

“An exception? I?”—and he laughed bitterly—“Yes, you are right; I am an exception among men perhaps,—but I am one with the beasts in honesty! The lion does not assume the manners of the dove,—he loudly announces his own ferocity. The very cobra, stealthy though its movements be, evinces its meaning by a warning hiss or rattle. The hungry wolf’s bay is heard far down the wind, intimidating the hurrying traveller among the wastes of snow. But man gives no clue to his intent—more malignant than the lion, more treacherous than the snake, more greedy than the wolf, he takes his fellow-man’s hand in pretended friendship, and an hour later defames his character behind his back,—with a smiling face he hides a false and selfish heart,—flinging his pigmy mockery at the riddle of the Universe, he stands gibing at God, feebly a-straddle on his own earth-grave—Heavens!”—here he stopped short with a passionate gesture—“What should the Eternities do with such a thankless, blind worm as he!”

His voice rang out with singular emphasis,—his eyes glowed with a fiery ardour; startled by his impressive manner I let my cigar die out and stared at him in mute amazement. What an inspired countenance!—what an imposing figure!—how sovereignly supreme and almost god-like in his looks he seemed at the moment;—and yet there was something terrifying in his attitude of protest and defiance. He caught my wondering glance,—the glow of passion faded from his face,—he laughed and shrugged his shoulders.

“I think I was born to be an actor”—he said carelessly—“Now and then the love of declamation masters me. Then I speak—as Prime Ministers and men in Parliament speak—to suit the humour of the hour, and without meaning a single word I say!”

“I cannot accept that statement”—I answered him, smiling a little—“You do mean what you say,—though I fancy you are rather a creature of impulse.”

“Do you really!” he exclaimed—“How wise of you!—good Geoffrey Tempest, how very wise of you! But you are wrong. There never was a being created who was less impulsive, or more charged with set purpose than I. Believe me or not as you like,—belief is a sentiment that cannot be forced. If I told you that I am a dangerous companion,—that I like evil things better than good,—that I am not a safe guide for any man, what would you think?”

“I should think you were whimsically fond of under-estimating your own qualities”—I said, re-lighting my cigar, and feeling somewhat amused by his earnestness—“And I should like you just as well as I do now,—perhaps better,—though that would be difficult.”

At these words, he seated himself, bending his steadfast dark eyes full upon me.

“Tempest, you follow the fashion of the prettiest women about town,—they always like the greatest scoundrels!”

“But you are not a scoundrel;”—I rejoined, smoking peacefully.

“No,—I’m not a scoundrel, but there’s a good deal of the devil in me.”

“All the better!” I said, stretching myself out in my chair with lazy comfort—“I hope there’s something of him in me too.”

“Do you believe in him?” asked Rimânez smiling.

“The devil? of course not!”

“He is a very fascinating legendary personage;”—continued the prince, lighting another cigar and beginning to puff at it slowly—“And he is the subject of many a fine story. Picture his fall from heaven!—‘Lucifer Son of the Morning’—what a title, and what a birthright! To be born of the morning implies to be a creature formed of translucent light undefiled, with all the warm rose of a million orbs of day colouring his bright essence, and all the lustre of fiery planets flaming in his eyes. Splendid and supreme, at the right hand of Deity itself he stood, this majestic Arch-angel, and before his unwearied vision rolled the grandest creative splendours of God’s thoughts and dreams. All at once he perceived in the vista of embryonic things a new small world, and on it a being forming itself slowly as it were into the Angelic likeness,—a being weak yet strong, sublime yet foolish,—a strange paradox, destined to work its way through all the phases of life, till imbibing the very breath and soul of the Creator it should touch Conscious Immortality,—Eternal Joy. Then Lucifer, full of wrath, turned on the Master of the Spheres, and flung forth his reckless defiance, crying aloud—‘Wilt thou make of this slight poor creature an Angel even as I? I do protest against thee and condemn! Lo, if thou makest Man in Our image I will destroy him utterly, as unfit to share with me the splendours of Thy Wisdom,—the glory of Thy love!’ And the Voice Supreme in accents terrible and beautiful replied; ‘Lucifer, Son of the Morning, full well dost thou know that never can an idle or wasted word be spoken before Me. For Free-will is the gift of the Immortals; therefore what thou sayest, thou must needs do! Fall, proud Spirit from thy high estate!—thou and thy companions with thee!—and return no more till Man himself redeem thee! Each human soul that yields unto thy tempting shall be a new barrier set between thee and heaven; each one that of its own choice doth repel and overcome thee, shall lift thee nearer thy lost home! When the world rejects thee, I will pardon and again receive thee,—but not till then.’”

“I never heard exactly that version of the legend before,”—I said,—“The idea that Man should redeem the devil is quite new to me.”

“Is it?” and he looked at me fixedly—“Well—it is one form of the story, and by no means the most unpoetical. Poor Lucifer! His punishment is of course eternal, and the distance between himself and Heaven must be rapidly increasing every day,—for Man will never assist him to retrieve his error. Man will reject God fast enough and gladly enough—but never the devil. Judge then, how, under the peculiar circumstances of his doom, this ‘Lucifer, Son of the Morning,’ Satan, or whatever else he is called, must hate Humanity!”

I smiled. “Well he has one remedy left to him”—I observed—“He need not tempt anybody.”

“You forget!—he is bound to keep his word, according to the legend”—said Rimânez—“He swore before God that he would destroy Man utterly,—he must therefore fulfil that oath, if he can. Angels, it would seem, may not swear before the Eternal without endeavouring at least to fulfil their vows,—men swear in the name of God every day without the slightest intention of carrying out their promises.”

“But it’s all the veriest nonsense,”—I said somewhat impatiently—“All these old legends are rubbish. You tell the story well, and almost as if you believed in it,—that is because you have the gift of speaking with eloquence. Nowadays no one believes in either devils or angels;—I, for example, do not even believe in the soul.”

“I know you do not”—he answered suavely—“And your scepticism is very comfortable because it relieves you of all personal responsibility. I envy you! For—I regret to say, I am compelled to believe in the soul.”

“Compelled!” I echoed—“That is absurd—no one can compel you to accept a mere theory.”

He looked at me with a flitting smile that darkened rather than lightened his face.

“True! very true! There is no compelling force in the whole Universe,—Man is the supreme and independent creature,—master of all he surveys and owning no other dominion save his personal desire. True—I forgot! Let us avoid theology, please, and psychology also,—let us talk about the only subject that has any sense or interest in it—namely, Money. I perceive your present plans are definite,—you wish to publish a book that shall create a stir and make you famous. It seems a modest enough campaign! Have you no wider ambitions? There are several ways, you know, of getting talked about. Shall I enumerate them for your consideration?”

I laughed. “If you like!”

“Well, in the first place I should suggest your getting yourself properly paragraphed. It must be known to the press that you are an exceedingly rich man. There is an Agency for the circulation of paragraphs,—I daresay they’ll do it sufficiently well for about ten or twenty guineas.”

I opened my eyes a little at this.

“Oh, is that the way these things are done?”

“My dear fellow, how else should they be done?” he demanded somewhat impatiently—“Do you think anything in the world is done without money? Are the poor, hard-working journalists your brothers or your bosom friends that they should lift you into public notice without getting something for their trouble? If you do not manage them properly in this way, they’ll abuse you quite heartily and free of cost,—that I can promise you! I know a ‘literary agent,’ a very worthy man too, who for a hundred guineas down, will so ply the paragraph wheel that in a few weeks it shall seem to the outside public that Geoffrey Tempest, the millionaire, is the only person worth talking about, and the one desirable creature whom to shake hands with is next in honour to meeting Royalty itself.”

“Secure him!” I said indolently—“And pay him two hundred guineas! So shall all the world hear of me!”

“When you have been paragraphed thoroughly,” went on Rimânez—“the next move will be a dash into what is called ‘swagger’ society. This must be done cautiously and by degrees. You must be presented at the first Levée of the season, and later on, I will get you an invitation to some great lady’s house, where you will meet the Prince of Wales privately at dinner. If you can oblige or please His Royal Highness in any way so much the better for you,—he is at least the most popular royalty in Europe, so it should not be difficult to you to make yourself agreeable. Following upon this event, you must purchase a fine country seat, and have that fact ‘paragraphed’—then you can rest and look round,—Society will have taken you up, and you will find yourself in the swim!”

I laughed heartily,—well entertained by his fluent discourse.

“I should not,” he resumed—“propose your putting yourself to the trouble of getting into Parliament. That is no longer necessary to the career of a gentleman. But I should strongly recommend your winning the Derby.”

“I daresay you would!” I answered mirthfully—“It’s an admirable suggestion,—but not very easy to follow!”

“If you wish to win the Derby,” he rejoined quietly—“you shall win it. I’ll guarantee both horse and jockey!”

Something in his decisive tone impressed me, and I leaned forward to study his features more closely.

“Are you a worker of miracles?” I asked him jestingly—“Do you mean it?”

“Try me!” he responded—“Shall I enter a horse for you?”

“You can’t; it’s too late,” I said. “You would need to be the devil himself to do it. Besides I don’t care about racing.”

“You will have to amend your taste then,”—he replied—“That is, if you want to make yourself agreeable to the English aristocracy, for they are interested in little else. No really great lady is without her betting book, though she may be deficient in her knowledge of spelling. You may make the biggest literary furore of the season, and that will count as nothing among ‘swagger’ people, but if you win the Derby you will be a really famous man. Personally speaking I have a great deal to do with racing,—in fact I am devoted to it. I am always present at every great race,—I never miss one; I always bet, and I never lose! And now let me proceed with your social plan of action. After winning the Derby you will enter for a yacht race at Cowes, and allow the Prince of Wales to beat you just narrowly. Then you will give a grand dinner, arranged by a perfect chef,—and you will entertain His Royal Highness to the strains of ‘Britannia rules the waves,’ which will serve as a pretty compliment. You will allude to the same well-worn song in a graceful speech,—and the probable result of all this will be one, or perhaps two Royal invitations. So far, so good. With the heats of summer you will go to Homburg to drink the waters there whether you require them or not,—and in the autumn you will assemble a shooting-party at the country seat before-mentioned which you will have purchased, and invite Royalty to join you in killing the poor little partridges. Then your name in society may be considered as made, and you can marry whatever fair lady happens to be in the market!”

“Thanks!—much obliged!” and I gave way to hearty laughter—“Upon my word Lucio, your programme is perfect! It lacks nothing!”

“It is the orthodox round of social success,” said Lucio with admirable gravity—“Intellect and originality have nothing whatever to do with it,—only money is needed to perform it all.”

“You forget my book”—I interposed—“I know there is some intellect in that, and some originality too. Surely that will give me an extra lift up the heights of fashionable light and leading.”

“I doubt it!” he answered—“I very much doubt it. It will be received with a certain amount of favour of course, as a production of a rich man amusing himself with literature as a sort of whim. But, as I told you before, genius seldom develops itself under the influence of wealth. Then again ‘swagger’ folks can never get it out of their fuddled heads that Literature belongs to Grub Street. Great poets, great philosophers, great romancists are always vaguely alluded to by ‘swagger’ society as ‘those sort of people.’ Those sort of people are so ‘interesting’ say the blue-blooded noodles deprecatingly, excusing themselves as it were for knowing any members of the class literary. You can fancy a ‘swagger’ lady of Elizabeth’s time asking a friend—‘O do you mind, my dear, if I bring one Master William Shakespeare to see you? He writes plays, and does something or other at the Globe theatre,—in fact I’m afraid he acts a little—he’s not very well off poor man,—but these sort of people are always so amusing!’ Now you, my dear Tempest, are not a Shakespeare, but your millions will give you a better chance than he ever had in his life-time, as you will not have to sue for patronage, or practise a reverence for ‘my lord’ or ‘my lady,’—these exalted personages will be only too delighted to borrow money of you if you will lend it.”

“I shall not lend,”—I said.

“Nor give?”

“Nor give.”

His keen eyes flashed approval.

“I am very glad,” he observed, “that you are determined not to ‘go about doing good’ as the canting humbugs say, with your money. You are wise. Spend on yourself,—because your very act of spending cannot but benefit others through various channels. Now I pursue a different course. I always help charities, and put my name on subscription-lists,—and I never fail to assist a certain portion of clergy.”

“I rather wonder at that—” I remarked—“Especially as you tell me you are not a Christian.”

“Yes,—it does seem strange,—doesn’t it?”—he said with an extraordinary accent of what might be termed apologetic derision—“But perhaps you don’t look at it in the proper light. Many of the clergy are doing their utmost best to destroy religion,—by cant, by hypocrisy, by sensuality, by shams of every description,—and when they seek my help in this noble work, I give it,—freely!”

I laughed “You must have your joke evidently”—I said, throwing the end of my finished cigar into the fire—“And I see you are fond of satirizing your own good actions. Hullo, what’s this?”

For at that moment Amiel entered, bearing a telegram for me on a silver salver. I opened it,—it was from my friend the publisher, and ran as follows—

“Accept book with pleasure. Send manuscript immediately.”

I showed this to Rimânez with a kind of triumph. He smiled.

“Of course! what else did you expect? Only the man should have worded his telegram differently, for I do not suppose he would accept the book with pleasure if he had to lay out his own cash upon it. ‘Accept money for publishing book with pleasure’ should have been the true message of the wire. Well, what are you going to do?”

“I shall see about this at once”—I answered, feeling a thrill of satisfaction that at last the time of vengeance on certain of my enemies was approaching—“The book must be hurried through the press as quickly as possible,—and I shall take a particular pleasure in personally attending to all the details concerning it. For the rest of my plans,—”

“Leave them to me!” said Rimânez laying his finely shaped white hand with a masterful pressure on my shoulder; “Leave them to me!—and be sure that before very long I shall have set you aloft like the bear who has successfully reached the bun on the top of a greased pole,—a spectacle for the envy of men, and the wonder of angels!”

VII

The next three or four weeks flew by in a whirl of excitement, and by the time they were ended I found it hard to recognize myself in the indolent, listless, extravagant man of fashion I had so suddenly become. Sometimes at stray and solitary moments the past turned back upon me like a revolving picture in a glass with a flash of unwelcome recollection, and I saw myself worn and hungry, and shabbily clothed, bending over my writing in my dreary lodging, wretched, yet amid all my wretchedness receiving curious comfort from my own thoughts which created beauty out of penury, and love out of loneliness. This creative faculty was now dormant in me,—I did very little, and thought less. But I felt certain that this intellectual apathy was but a passing phase,—a mental holiday and desirable cessation from brain-work to which I was deservedly entitled after all my sufferings at the hands of poverty and disappointment. My book was nearly through the press,—and perhaps the chiefest pleasure of any I now enjoyed was the correction of the proofs as they passed under my supervision. Yet even this, the satisfaction of authorship, had its drawback,—and my particular grievance was somewhat singular. I read my own work with gratification of course, for I was not behind my contemporaries in thinking well of myself in all I did,—but my complacent literary egoism was mixed with a good deal of disagreeable astonishment and incredulity, because my work, written with enthusiasm and feeling, propounded sentiments and inculcated theories which I personally did not believe in. Now, how had this happened, I asked myself? Why had I thus invited the public to accept me at a false valuation? I paused to consider,—and I found the suggestion puzzling. How came I to write the book at all, seeing that it was utterly unlike me as I now knew myself? My pen, consciously or unconsciously, had written down things which my reasoning faculties entirely repudiated,—such as belief in a God,—trust in the eternal possibilities of man’s diviner progress,—I credited neither of these doctrines. When I imagined such transcendental and foolish dreams I was poor,—starving,—and without a friend in the world;—remembering all this, I promptly set down my so-called ‘inspiration’ to the action of an ill-nourished brain. Yet there was something subtle in the teaching of the story, and one afternoon when I was revising some of the last proof sheets I caught myself thinking that the book was nobler than its writer. This idea smote me with a sudden pang,—I pushed my papers aside, and walking to the window, looked out. It was raining hard, and the streets were black with mud and slush,—the foot-passengers were drenched and miserable,—the whole prospect was dreary, and the fact that I was a rich man did not in the least lift from my mind the depression that had stolen on me unawares. I was quite alone, for I had my own suite of rooms now in the hotel, not far from those occupied by Prince Rimânez; I also had my own servant, a respectable, good sort of fellow whom I rather liked because he shared to the full the instinctive aversion I felt for the prince’s man, Amiel. Then I had my own carriage and horses with attendant coachman and groom,—so that the prince and I, though the most intimate friends in the world, were able to avoid that ‘familiarity which breeds contempt’ by keeping up our own separate establishments. On this particular afternoon I was in a more miserable humour than ever my poverty had brought upon me, yet from a strictly reasonable point of view I had nothing to be miserable about. I was in full possession of my fortune,—I enjoyed excellent health, and I had everything I wanted, with the added consciousness that if my wants increased I could gratify them easily. The ‘paragraph wheel’ under Lucio’s management had been worked with such good effect that I had seen myself mentioned in almost every paper in London and the provinces as the ‘famous millionaire,’—and for the benefit of the public, who are sadly uninstructed on these matters, I may here state as a very plain unvarnished truth, that for forty pounds[1],a well-known ‘agency’ will guarantee the insertion of any paragraph, provided it is not libellous, in no less than four hundred newspapers. The art of ‘booming’ is thus easily explained, and level-headed people will be able to comprehend why it is that a few names of authors are constantly mentioned in the press, while others, perhaps more deserving, remain ignored. Merit counts as nothing in such circumstances,—money wins the day. And the persistent paragraphing of my name, together with a description of my personal appearance and my ‘marvellous literary gifts,’ combined with a deferential and almost awe-struck allusion to the ‘millions’ which made me so interesting—(the paragraph was written out by Lucio and handed for circulation to the ‘agency’ aforesaid with ‘money down’)—all this I say brought upon me two inflictions,—first, any amount of invitations to social and artistic functions,—and secondly, a continuous stream of begging-letters. I was compelled to employ a secretary, who occupied a room near my suite, and who was kept hard at work all day. Needless to say I refused all appeals for money;—no one had helped me in my distress, with the exception of my old chum ‘Boffles,’—no one save he had given me even so much as a word of sympathy,—I was resolved now to be as hard and as merciless as I had found my contemporaries. I had a certain grim pleasure in reading letters from two or three literary men, asking for work ‘as secretary or companion,’ or failing that, for the loan of a little cash to ‘tide over present difficulties.’ One of these applicants was a journalist on the staff of a well-known paper who had promised to find me work, and who instead of doing so, had, as I afterwards learned, strongly dissuaded his editor from giving me any employment. He never imagined that Tempest the millionaire, and Tempest the literary hack, were one and the same person,—so little do the majority think that wealth can ever fall to the lot of authors! I wrote to him myself however and told him what I deemed it well he should know, adding my sarcastic thanks for his friendly assistance to me in time of need,—and herein I tasted something of the sharp delight of vengeance. I never heard from him again, and I am pretty sure my letter gave him material not only for astonishment but meditation.

Yet with all the advantages over both friends and enemies which I now possessed I could not honestly say I was happy. I knew I could have every possible enjoyment and amusement the world had to offer,—I knew I was one of the most envied among men, and yet,—as I stood looking out of the window at the persistently falling rain, I was conscious of a bitterness rather than a sweetness in the full cup of fortune. Many things that I had imagined would give me intense satisfaction had fallen curiously flat. For example, I had flooded the press with the most carefully worded and prominent advertisements of my forthcoming book, and when I was poor I had pictured to myself how I should revel in doing this,—now that it was done I cared nothing at all about it. I was simply weary of the sight of my own advertised name. I certainly did look forward with very genuine feeling and expectation to the publication of my work when that should be an accomplished fact,—but to-day even that idea had lost some of its attractiveness owing to this new and unpleasant impression on my mind that the contents of that book were as utterly the reverse of my own true thoughts as they could well be. A fog began to darken down over the streets in company with the rain,—and disgusted with the weather and with myself, I turned away from the window and settled into an arm-chair by the fire, poking the coal till it blazed, and wondering what I should do to rid my mind of the gloom that threatened to envelop it in as thick a canopy as that of the London fog. A tap came at the door, and in answer to my somewhat irritable “Come in!” Rimânez entered.

“What, all in the dark Tempest!” he exclaimed cheerfully—“Why don’t you light up?”

“The fire’s enough,”—I answered crossly—“Enough at any rate to think by.”

“And have you been thinking?” he inquired laughing—“Don’t do it. It’s a bad habit. No one thinks now-a-days,—people can’t stand it—their heads are too frail. Once begin to think and down go the foundations of society,—besides thinking is always dull work.”

“I have found it so,” I said gloomily—“Lucio, there is something wrong about me somewhere.”

His eyes flashed keen, half-amused inquiry into mine.

“Wrong? Oh no, surely not! What can there be wrong about you, Tempest? Are you not one of the richest men living?”

I let the satire pass.

“Listen, my friend,” I said earnestly—“You know I have been busy for the last fortnight correcting the proofs of my book for the press,—do you not?”

He nodded with a smiling air.

“Well I have arrived almost at the end of my work and I have come to the conclusion that the book is not Me,—it is not a reflex of my feelings at all,—and I cannot understand how I came to write it.”

“You find it stupid perhaps?” said Lucio sympathetically.

“No,” I answered with a touch of indignation—“I do not find it stupid.”

“Dull then?”

“No,—it is not dull.”

“Melodramatic?”

“No,—not melodramatic.”

“Well, my good fellow, if it is not dull or stupid or melodramatic, what is it!” he exclaimed merrily—“It must be something!”

“Yes,—it is this,—it is beyond me altogether.” And I spoke with some bitterness. “Quite beyond me. I could not write it now,—I wonder I could write it then. Lucio, I daresay I am talking foolishly,—but it seems to me I must have been on some higher altitude of thought when I wrote the book,—a height from which I have since fallen.”

“I’m sorry to hear this,” he answered, with twinkling eyes—“From what you say it appears to me you have been guilty of literary sublimity. Oh bad, very bad! Nothing can be worse. To write sublimely is a grievous sin, and one which critics never forgive. I’m really grieved for you, my friend—I never thought your case was quite so desperate.”

I laughed in spite of my depression.

“You are incorrigible, Lucio!” I said—“But your cheerfulness is very inspiriting. All I wanted to explain to you is this,—that my book expresses a certain tone of thought which purporting to be mine, is not me,—in short, I, in my present self have no sympathy with it. I must have changed very much since I wrote it.”

“Changed? Why yes, I should think so!” and Lucio laughed heartily—“The possession of five millions is bound to change a man considerably for the better—or worse! But you seem to be worrying yourself most absurdly about nothing. Not one author in many centuries writes from his own heart or as he truly feels—when he does, he becomes well-nigh immortal. This planet is too limited to hold more than one Homer, one Plato, one Shakespeare. Don’t distress yourself—you are neither of these three! You belong to the age, Tempest,—it is a decadent ephemeral age, and most things connected with it are decadent and ephemeral. Any era that is dominated by the love of money only, has a rotten core within it and must perish. All history tells us so, but no one accepts the lesson of history. Observe the signs of the time,—Art is made subservient to the love of money—literature, politics and religion the same,—you cannot escape from the general disease. The only thing to do is to make the best of it,—no one can reform it—least of all you, who have so much of the lucre given to your share.”

He paused,—I was silent, watching the bright fire-glow and the dropping red cinders.

“What I am going to say now,” he proceeded in soft, almost melancholy accents—“will sound ridiculously trite,—still it has the perverse prosiness of truth about it. It is this—in order to write with intense feeling, you must first feel. Very likely when you wrote this book of yours, you were almost a human hedge-hog in the way of feeling. Every prickly point of you was erect and responsive to the touch of all influences, pleasant or the reverse, imaginative or realistic. This is a condition which some people envy and others would rather dispense with. Now that you, as a hedge-hog, have no further need for either alarm, indignation or self-defence, your prickles are soothed into an agreeable passiveness, and you partially cease to feel. That is all. The ‘change’ you complain of is thus accounted for;—you have nothing to feel about,—hence you cannot comprehend how it was that you ever felt.”

I was conscious of irritation at the calm conviction of his tone.

“Do you take me for such a callous creature as all that?” I exclaimed—“You are mistaken in me, Lucio. I feel most  keenly–”

“What do you feel?” he inquired, fixing his eyes steadily upon me—“There are hundreds of starving wretches in this metropolis,—men and women on the brink of suicide because they have no hope of anything in this world or the next, and no sympathy from their kind—do you feel for them? Do their griefs affect you? You know they do not,—you know you never think of them,—why should you? One of the chief advantages of wealth is the ability it gives us to shut out other people’s miseries from our personal consideration.”

I said nothing,—for the first time my spirit chafed at the truth of his words, principally because they were true. Alas, Lucio!—if I had only known then what I know now!

“Yesterday,” he went on in the same quiet voice—“a child was run over here, just opposite this hotel. It was only a poor child,—mark that ‘only.’ Its mother ran shrieking out of some back-street hard by, in time to see the little bleeding body carted up in a mangled heap. She struck wildly with both hands at the men who were trying to lead her away, and with a cry like that of some hurt savage animal fell face forward in the mud—dead. She was only a poor woman,—another ‘only.’ There were three lines in the paper about it headed ‘Sad Incident.’ The hotel-porter here witnessed the scene from the door with as composed a demeanor as that of a fop at the play, never relaxing the serene majesty of his attitude,—but about ten minutes after the dead body of the woman had been carried out of sight, he, the imperial, gold-buttoned being, became almost crook-backed in his servile haste to run and open the door of your brougham, my dear Geoffrey, as you drove up to the entrance. This is a little epitome of life as it is lived now-a-days,—and yet the canting clerics swear we are all equal in the sight of heaven! We may be, though it does not look much like it,—and if we are, it does not matter, as we have ceased to care how heaven regards us. I don’t want to point a moral,—I simply tell you the ‘sad incident’ as it occurred,—and I am sure you are not the least sorry for the fate of either the child who was run over, or its mother who died in the sharp agony of a suddenly broken heart. Now don’t say you are, because I know you’re not!”

“How can one feel sorry for people one does not know or has never seen,—” I began.

“Exactly!—How is it possible? And there we have it—how can one feel, when one’s self is so thoroughly comfortable as to be without any other feeling save that of material ease? Thus, my dear Geoffrey, you must be content to let your book appear as the reflex and record of your past when you were in the prickly or sensitive stage,—now you are encased in a pachydermatous covering of gold, which adequately protects you from such influences as might have made you start and writhe, perhaps even roar with indignation, and in the access of fierce torture, stretch out your hands and grasp—quite unconsciously—the winged thing called Fame!”

“You should have been an orator,”—I said, rising and pacing the room to and fro in vexation,—“But to me your words are not consoling, and I do not think they are true. Fame is easily enough secured.”

“Pardon me if I am obstinate;”—said Lucio with a deprecatory gesture—“Notoriety is easily secured—very easily. A few critics who have dined with you and had their fill of wine, will give you notoriety. But fame is the voice of the whole civilized public of the world.”

“The public!” I echoed contemptuously—“The public only care for trash.”

“It is a pity you should appeal to it then;”—he responded with a smile—“If you think so little of the public why give it anything of your brain? It is not worthy of so rare a boon! Come, come Tempest,—do not join in the snarl of unsuccessful authors who take refuge, when marked unsaleable, in pouring out abuse on the public. The public is the author’s best friend and truest critic. But if you prefer to despise it, in company with all the very little literature-mongers who form a mutual admiration society, I tell you what to do,—print just twenty copies of your book and present these to the leading reviewers, and when they have written you up (as they will do—I’ll take care of that) let your publisher advertise to the effect that the ‘First and Second Large Editions’ of the new novel by Geoffrey Tempest, are exhausted, one hundred thousand copies having been sold in a week! If that does not waken up the world in general, I shall be much surprised!”

I laughed,—I was gradually getting into a better humour.

“It would be quite as fair a plan of action as is adopted by many modern publishers,” I said—“The loud hawking of literary wares now-a-days reminds me of the rival shouting of costermongers in a low neighbourhood. But I will not go quite so far,—I’ll win my fame legitimately if I can.”

“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 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!”

“I do!” he answered slowly—“In more ways than one!” A faint smile was on his face, and his eyes brightened with that curious jewel-like gleam I had noticed several times before. “Believe me, I shall never contest with you such a slight gift as woman’s love, Geoffrey. It is not worth fighting for. And apropos of women, that reminds me,—I have promised to take you to the Earl of Elton’s box at the Haymarket to-night,—he is a poor peer, very gouty and somewhat heavily flavoured with port-wine, but his daughter, Lady Sibyl, is one of the belles of England. She was presented last season and created quite a furore. Will you come?”

“I am quite at your disposition”—I said, glad of any excuse to escape the dullness of my own company and to be in that of Lucio, whose talk, even if its satire galled me occasionally, always fascinated my mind and remained in my memory—“What time shall we meet?”

“Go and dress now, and join me at dinner,”—he answered; “And we’ll drive together to the theatre afterwards. The play is on the usual theme which has lately become popular with stage-managers,—the glorification of a ‘fallen’ lady, and the exhibition of her as an example of something superlatively pure and good, to the astonished eyes of the innocent. As a play it is not worth seeing,—but perhaps Lady Sibyl is.”

He smiled again as he stood facing me,—the light flames of the fire had died down to a dull uniform coppery red,—we were almost in darkness, and I pressed the small button near the mantelpiece that flooded the room with electric light. His extraordinary beauty then struck me afresh as something altogether singular and half unearthly.

“Don’t you find that people look at you very often as you pass, Lucio?” I asked him suddenly and impulsively.

He laughed. “Not at all. Why should they? Every man is so intent on his own aims, and thinks so much of his own personality that he would scarcely forget his ego if the very devil himself were behind him. Women look at me sometimes, with the affected coy and kitten-like interest usually exhibited by the frail sex for a personable man.”

“I cannot blame them!” I answered, my gaze still resting on his stately figure and fine head with as much admiration as I might have felt for a noble picture or statue—“What of this Lady Sibyl we are to meet to-night,—how does she regard you?”

“Lady Sibyl has never seen me,”—he replied—“And I have only seen her at a distance. It is chiefly for the purpose of an introduction to her that the Earl has asked us to his box this evening.”

“Ha ha! Matrimony in view!” I exclaimed jestingly.

“Yes—I believe Lady Sibyl is for sale,”—he answered with the callous coldness that occasionally distinguished him and made his handsome features look like an impenetrable mask of scorn—“But up to the present the bids have not been sufficiently high. And I shall not purchase. I have told you already, Tempest, I hate women.”

“Seriously?”

“Most seriously. Women have always done me harm,—they have wantonly hindered me in my progress. And why I specially abominate them is, that they have been gifted with an enormous power for doing good, and that they let this power run to waste and will not use it. Their deliberate enjoyment and choice of the repulsive, vulgar and common-place side of life disgusts me. They are much less sensitive than men, and infinitely more heartless. They are the mothers of the human race, and the faults of the race are chiefly due to them. That is another reason for my hatred.”

“Do you want the human race to be perfect?” I asked astonished—“Because, if you do, you will find that impossible.”

He stood for a moment apparently lost in thought.

“Everything in the Universe is perfect,”—he said, “except that curious piece of work—Man. Have you never thought out any reason why he should be the one flaw,—the one incomplete creature in a matchless Creation?”

“No, I have not,”—I replied—“I take things as I find them.”

“So do I,”—and he turned away, “And as I find them, so they find me! Au revoir! Dinner in an hour’s time remember!”

The door opened and closed—he was gone. I remained alone for a little, thinking what a strange disposition was his,—what a curious mixture of philosophy, worldliness, sentiment and satire seemed to run like the veins of a leaf through the variable temperament of this brilliant, semi-mysterious personage who had by mere chance become my greatest friend. We had now been more or less together for nearly a month, and I was no closer to the secret of his actual nature than I had been at first. Yet I admired him more than ever,—without his society I felt life would be deprived of half its charm. For though, attracted as human moths will be by the glare of my glittering millions, numbers of so-called ‘friends’ now surrounded me, there was not one among them who so dominated my every mood and with whom I had so much close sympathy as this man,—this masterful, half cruel, half kind companion of my days, who at times seemed to accept all life as the veriest bagatelle, and myself as a part of the trivial game.

VIII

No man, I think, ever forgets the first time he is brought face to face with perfect beauty in woman. He may have caught fleeting glimpses of loveliness on many fair faces often,—bright eyes may have flashed on him like star-beams,—the hues of a dazzling complexion may now and then have charmed him, or the seductive outlines of a graceful figure;—all these are as mere peeps into the infinite. But when such vague and passing impressions are suddenly drawn together in one focus,—when all his dreamy fancies of form and colour take visible and complete manifestation in one living creature who looks down upon him as it were from an empyrean of untouched maiden pride and purity, it is more to his honour than his shame, if his senses swoon at the ravishing vision, and he, despite his rough masculinity and brute strength, becomes nothing but the merest slave to passion. In this way was I overwhelmed and conquered without any chance of deliverance when Sibyl Elton’s violet eyes, lifted slowly from the shadow of their dark lashes, rested upon me with that indefinable expression of mingled interest and indifference which is supposed to indicate high breeding, but which more frequently intimidates and repulses the frank and sensitive soul. The Lady Sibyl’s glance repelled, but I was none the less attracted. Rimânez and I had entered the Earl of Elton’s box at the Haymarket between the first and second acts of the play, and the Earl himself, an unimpressive, bald-headed, red-faced old gentleman, with fuzzy white whiskers, had risen to welcome us, seizing the prince’s hand and shaking it with particular effusiveness. (I learned afterwards that Lucio had lent him a thousand pounds on easy terms, a fact which partly accounted for the friendly fervour of his greeting.) His daughter had not moved; but a minute or two later when he addressed her somewhat sharply, saying “Sibyl! Prince Rimânez and his friend, Mr Geoffrey Tempest,” she turned her head and honoured us both with the chill glance I have endeavoured to describe, and the very faintest possible bow as an acknowledgment of our presence. Her exquisite beauty smote me dumb and foolish,—I could find nothing to say, and stood silent and confused, with a strange sensation of bewilderment upon me. The old Earl made some remark about the play, which I scarcely heard though I answered vaguely and at hap-hazard,—the orchestra was playing abominably as is usual in theatres, and its brazen din sounded like the noise of the sea in my ears,—I had not much real consciousness of anything save the wondrous loveliness of the girl who faced me, clad in pure white, with a few diamonds shining about her like stray dewdrops on a rose. Lucio spoke to her, and I listened.

“At last, Lady Sibyl,” he said, bending towards her deferentially. “At last I have the honour of meeting you. I have seen you often, as one sees a star,—at a distance.”

She smiled,—a smile so slight and cold that it scarcely lifted the corners of her lovely lips.

“I do not think I have ever seen you,” she replied. “And yet there is something oddly familiar in your face. I have heard my father speak of you constantly,—I need scarcely say his friends are always mine.”

He bowed.

“To merely speak to Lady Sibyl Elton is counted sufficient to make the man so privileged happy,” he said. “To be her friend is to discover the lost paradise.”

She flushed,—then grew suddenly very pale, and shivering, she drew her cloak towards her. Rimânez wrapped its perfumed silken folds carefully round her beautiful shoulders,—how I grudged him the dainty task! He then turned to me, and placed a chair just behind hers.

“Will you sit here Geoffrey?” he suggested—“I want to have a moment’s business chat with Lord Elton.”

Recovering my self-possession a little, I hastened to take the chance he thus generously gave me to ingratiate myself in the young lady’s favour, and my heart gave a foolish bound of joy because she smiled encouragingly as I approached her.

“You are a great friend of Prince Rimânez?” she asked softly, as I sat down.

“Yes, we are very intimate,” I replied—“He is a delightful companion.”

“So I should imagine!” and she looked over at him where he sat next to her father talking earnestly in low tones—“He is singularly handsome.”

I made no reply. Of course Lucio’s extraordinary personal attractiveness was undeniable,—but I rather grudged her praise bestowed on him just then. Her remarks seemed to me as tactless as when a man with one pretty woman beside him loudly admires another in her hearing. I did not myself assume to be actually handsome, but I knew I was better looking than the ordinary run of men. So out of sudden pique I remained silent, and presently the curtain rose and the play was resumed. A very questionable scene was enacted, the ‘woman with the past’ being well to the front of it. I felt disgusted at the performance and looked at my companions to see if they too were similarly moved. There was no sign of disapproval on Lady Sibyl’s fair countenance,—her father was bending forward eagerly, apparently gloating over every detail,—Rimânez wore that inscrutable expression of his in which no feeling whatever could be discerned. The ‘woman with the past’ went on with her hysterical sham-heroics, and the mealy-mouthed fool of a hero declared her to be a ‘pure angel wronged,’ and the curtain fell amid loud applause. One energetic hiss came from the gallery, affecting the occupants of the stalls to scandalized amazement.

“England has progressed!” said Rimânez in soft half-bantering tones—“Once upon a time this play would have been hooted off the stage as likely to corrupt the social community. But now the only voice of protest comes from the ‘lower’ classes.”

“Are you a democrat, prince?” inquired Lady Sibyl, waving her fan indolently to and fro.

“Not I! I always insist on the pride and supremacy of worth,—I do not mean money value, but intellect. And in this way I foresee a new aristocracy. When the High grows corrupt, it falls and becomes the Low;—when the Low educates itself and aspires, it becomes the High. This is simply the course of nature.”

“But, God bless my soul!” exclaimed Lord Elton—“you don’t call this play low or immoral do you? It’s a realistic study of modern social life—that’s what it is. These women you know,—these poor souls with a past—are very interesting!”

“Very!” murmured his daughter.—“In fact it would seem that for women with no such ‘past’ there can be no future! Virtue and modesty are quite out of date, and have no chance whatever.”

I leaned towards her, half whispering,

“Lady Sibyl, I am glad to see this wretched play offends you.”

She turned her deep eyes on me in mingled surprise and amusement.

“Oh no, it doesn’t,” she declared—“I have seen so many like it. And I have read so many novels on just the same theme! I assure you, I am quite convinced that the so-called ‘bad’ woman is the only popular type of our sex with men,—she gets all the enjoyment possible out of life,—she frequently makes an excellent marriage, and has, as the Americans say ‘a good time all round.’ It’s the same thing with our convicted criminals,—in prison they are much better fed than the honest working-man. I believe it is quite a mistake for women to be respectable,—they are only considered dull.”

“Ah, now you are only joking!” I said with an indulgent smile. “You know that in your heart you think very differently!”

She made no answer, as just then the curtain went up again, disclosing the unclean ‘lady’ of the piece, “having a good time all round” on board a luxurious yacht. During the unnatural and stilted dialogue which followed, I withdrew a little back into the shadow of the box, and all that self-esteem and assurance of which I had been suddenly deprived by a glance at Lady Sibyl’s beauty, came back to me, and a perfectly stolid coolness and composure succeeded to the first feverish excitement of my mind. I recalled Lucio’s words—“I believe Lady Sibyl is for sale”—and I thought triumphantly of my millions. I glanced at the old earl, abjectly pulling at his white whiskers while he listened anxiously to what were evidently money schemes propounded by Lucio. Then my gaze came back appraisingly to the lovely curves of Lady Sibyl’s milk-white throat, her beautiful arms and bosom, her rich brown hair of the shade of a ripe chestnut, her delicate haughty face, languid eyes and brilliant complexion,—and I murmured inwardly—“All this loveliness is purchaseable, and I will purchase it!” At that very instant she turned to me and said—

“You are the famous Mr Tempest, are you not?”

“Famous?” I echoed with a deep sense of gratification—“Well,—I am scarcely that,—yet! My book is not published …”

Her eyebrows arched themselves surprisedly.

“Your book? I did not know you had written one?”

My flattered vanity sank to zero.

“It has been extensively advertised,” I began impressively,—but she interrupted me with a laugh.

“Oh I never read advertisements,—it’s too much trouble. When I asked if you were the famous Mr Tempest, I meant to say were you the great millionaire who has been so much talked of lately?”

I bowed a somewhat chill assent. She looked at me inquisitively over the lace edge of her fan.

“How delightful it must be for you to have so much money!” she said—“And you are young too, and good-looking.”

Pleasure took the place of vexed amour-propre and I smiled.

“You are very kind, Lady Sibyl!”

“Why?” she asked laughing,—such a delicious little low laugh—“Because I tell you the truth? You are young and you are good-looking! Millionaires are generally such appalling creatures. Fortune, while giving them money, frequently deprives them of both brains and personal attractiveness. And now do tell me about your book!”

She seemed to have suddenly dispensed with her former reserve, and during the last act of the play, we conversed freely, in whispers which assisted us to become almost confidential. Her manner to me now was full of grace and charm, and the fascination she exerted over my senses became complete. The performance over, we all left the box together, and as Lucio was still apparently engrossed with Lord Elton I had the satisfaction of escorting Lady Sibyl to her carriage. When her father joined her, Lucio and I both stood together looking in at the window of the brougham, and the Earl, getting hold of my hand shook it up and down with boisterous friendliness.

“Come and dine,—come and dine!” he spluttered excitedly; “Come—let me see,—this is Tuesday—come on Thursday. Short notice and no ceremony! My wife is paralysed I’m sorry to say,—she can’t receive,—she can only see a few people now and then when she is in the humour,—her sister keeps house and does the honours,—Aunt Charlotte, eh Sibyl?—ha-ha-ha! The Deceased Wife’s Sister’s Bill would never be any use to me, for if my wife were to die I shouldn’t be anxious to marry Miss Charlotte Fitzroy! Ha ha ha! A perfectly unapproachable woman sir!—a model,—ha ha! Come and dine with us, Mr  Tempest,—Lucio, you bring him along with you, eh? We’ve got a young lady staying with us,—an American, dollars, accent and all,—and by Jove I believe she wants to marry me ha ha ha! and is waiting for Lady Elton to go to a better world first, ha ha! Come along—come and see the little American, eh? Thursday shall it be?”

Over the fair features of Lady Sibyl there passed a faint shadow of annoyance at her father’s allusion to the “little American,” but she said nothing. Only her looks appeared to question our intentions as well as to persuade our wills, and she seemed satisfied when we both accepted the invitation given. Another apoplectic chuckle from the Earl and a couple of handshakes,—a slight graceful bow from her lovely ladyship, as we raised our hats in farewell, and the Elton equipage rolled away, leaving us to enter our own vehicle, which amid the officious roarings of street-boys and policemen had just managed to draw up in front of the theatre. As we drove off, Lucio peered inquisitively at me—I could see the steely glitter of his fine eyes in the semi-darkness of the brougham,—and said—

“Well?”

I was silent.

“Don’t you admire her?” he went on—“I must confess she is cold,—a very chilly vestal indeed,—but snow often covers volcanoes! She has good features, and a naturally clear complexion.”

Despite my intention to be reticent, I could not endure this tame description.

“She is perfectly beautiful,”—I said emphatically. “The dullest eyes must see that. There is not a fault to be found with her. And she is wise to be reserved and cold—were she too lavish of her smiles and too seductive in manner, she might drive many men not only into folly, but madness.”

I felt rather than saw the cat-like glance he flashed upon me.

“Positively, Geoffrey, I believe that notwithstanding the fact that we are only in February, the wind blows upon you due south, bringing with it odours of rose and orange-blossom! I fancy Lady Sibyl has powerfully impressed you?”

“Did you wish me to be impressed?” I asked.

“I? My dear fellow, I wish nothing that you yourself do not wish. I accommodate my ways to my friends’ humours. If asked for my opinion I should say it is rather a pity if you are really smitten with the young lady, as there are no obstacles to be encountered. A love-affair, to be conducted with spirit and enterprise should always bristle with opposition and difficulty, real or invented. A little secrecy and a good deal of wrong-doing, such as sly assignations and the telling of any amount of lies—such things add to the agreeableness of love-making on this planet—”

I interrupted him.

“See here, Lucio, you are very fond of alluding to ‘this’ planet as if you knew anything about other planets”—I said impatiently. “This planet, as you somewhat contemptuously call it, is the only one we have any business with.”

He bent his piercing looks so ardently upon me that for the moment I was startled.

“If that is so,” he answered, “why in Heaven’s name do you not let the other planets alone? Why do you strive to fathom their mysteries and movements? If men, as you say, have no business with any planet save this one why are they ever on the alert to discover the secret of mightier worlds,—a secret which haply it may some day terrify them to know!”

The solemnity of his voice and the inspired expression of his face awed me. I had no reply ready, and he went on—

“Do not let us talk, my friend, of planets, not even of this particular pin’s point among them known as Earth. Let us return to a better subject—the Lady Sibyl. As I have already said, there are no obstacles in the way of your wooing and winning her, if such is your desire. Geoffrey Tempest, as mere author of books would indeed be insolent to aspire to the hand of an earl’s daughter, but Geoffrey Tempest, millionaire, will be a welcome suitor. Poor Lord Elton’s affairs are in a bad way—he is almost out-at-elbows;—the American woman who is boarding with him–”

“Boarding with him!” I exclaimed—“Surely he does not keep a boarding-house?”

Lucio laughed heartily.

“No, no!—you must not put it so coarsely, Geoffrey. It is simply this, that the Earl and Countess of Elton give the prestige of their home and protection to Miss Diana Chesney (the American aforesaid) for the trifling sum of two thousand guineas per annum. The Countess being paralyzed, is obliged to hand over her duties of chaperonage to her sister Miss Charlotte Fitzroy,—but the halo of the coronet still hovers over Miss Chesney’s brow. She has her own suite of rooms in the house, and goes wherever it is proper for her to go, under Miss Fitzroy’s care. Lady Sibyl does not like the arrangement, and is therefore never seen anywhere except with her father. She will not join in companionship with Miss Chesney, and has said so pretty plainly.”

“I admire her for it!” I said warmly—“I really am surprised that Lord Elton should condescend–”

“Condescend to what?” inquired Lucio—“Condescend to take two thousand guineas a year? Good heavens man, there are no end of lords and ladies who will readily agree to perform such an act of condescension. ‘Blue’ blood is getting thin and poor, and only money can thicken it. Diana Chesney is worth over a million dollars and if Lady Elton were to die conveniently soon, I should not be surprised to see that ‘little American’ step triumphantly into her vacant place.”

“What a state of topsy-turveydom!” I said, half angrily.

“Geoffrey, my friend, you are really amazingly inconsistent! Is there a more flagrant example of topsy-turveydom than yourself for instance? Six weeks ago, what were you? A mere scribbler, with flutterings of the wings of genius in your soul, but many uncertainties as to whether those wings would ever be strong enough to lift you out of the rut of obscurity in which you floundered, struggling and grumbling at adverse fate. Now, as millionaire, you think contemptuously of an Earl, because he ventures quite legitimately to add a little to his income by boarding an American heiress and launching her into society where she would never get without him. And you aspire, or probably mean to aspire to the hand of the Earl’s daughter, as if you yourself were a descendant of kings. Nothing can be more topsy-turvey than your condition!”

“My father was a gentleman,” I said, with a touch of hauteur, “and a descendant of gentlemen. We were never common folk,—our family was one of the most highly esteemed in the counties.”

Lucio smiled.

“I do not doubt it, my dear fellow,—I do not in the least doubt it. But a simple ‘gentleman’ is a long way below—or above—an Earl. Have it which side you choose!—because it really doesn’t matter nowadays. We have come to a period of history when rank and lineage count as nothing at all, owing to the profoundly obtuse stupidity of those who happen to possess it. So it chances, that as no resistance is made, brewers are created peers of the realm, and ordinary tradesmen are knighted, and the very old families are so poor that they have to sell their estates and jewels to the highest bidder, who is frequently a vulgar ‘railway-king’ or the introducer of some new manure. You occupy a better position than such, since you inherit your money with the farther satisfaction that you do not know how it was made.”

“True!” I answered meditatively,—then, with a sudden flash of recollection I added—“By the way I never told you that my deceased relative imagined that he had sold his soul to the devil, and that this vast fortune of his was the material result!”

Lucio burst into a violent fit of laughter.

“No! Not possible!” he exclaimed derisively—“What an idea! I suppose he had a screw loose somewhere! Imagine any sane man believing in a devil! Ha, ha, ha! And in these advanced days too! Well, well! The folly of human imaginations will never end! Here we are!”—and he sprang lightly out as the brougham stopped at the Grand Hotel—“I will say good-night to you, Tempest. I’ve promised to go and have a gamble.”

“A gamble? Where?”

“At one of the select private clubs. There are any amount of them in this eminently moral metropolis—no occasion to go to Monte Carlo! Will you come?”

I hesitated. The fair face of Lady Sibyl haunted my mind,—and I felt, with a no doubt foolish sentimentality, that I would rather keep my thoughts of her sacred, and unpolluted by contact with things of lower tone.

“Not to-night;”—I said,—then half smiling, I added—“It must be rather a one-sided affair for other men to gamble with you, Lucio! You can afford to lose,—and perhaps they can’t.”

“If they can’t, they shouldn’t play,”—he answered—“A man should at least know his own mind and his own capacity; if he doesn’t, he is no man at all. As far as I have learned by long experience, those who gamble like it, and when they  like it, I  like it. I’ll take you with me to-morrow if you care to see the fun,—one or two very eminent men are members of the club, though of course they wouldn’t have it known for worlds. You shan’t lose much—I’ll see to that.”

“All right,—to-morrow it shall be!”—I responded, for I did not wish to appear as though I grudged losing a few pounds at play—“But to-night I think I’ll write some letters before going to bed.”

“Yes—and dream of Lady Sibyl!” said Lucio laughing—“If she fascinates you as much when you see her again on Thursday you had better begin the siege!”

He waved his hand gaily, and re-entering his carriage, was driven off at a furious pace through the drifting fog and rain.

IX

My publisher, John Morgeson,—the estimable individual who had first refused my book, and who now, moved by self-interest, was devoting his energies assiduously to the business of launching it in the most modern and approved style, was not like Shakespeare’s Cassio, strictly ‘an honourable man.’ Neither was he the respectable chief of a long-established firm whose system of the cheating of authors, mellowed by time, had become almost sacred;—he was a ‘new’ man, with new ways, and a good stock of new push and impudence. All the same, he was clever, shrewd and diplomatic, and for some reason or other, had secured the favour of a certain portion of the press, many of the dailies and weeklies always giving special prominence to his publications over the heads of other far more legitimately dealing firms. He entered into a partial explanation of his methods, when, on the morning after my first meeting with the Earl of Elton and his daughter, I called upon him to inquire how things were going with regard to my book.

“We shall publish next week,”—he said, rubbing his hands complacently, and addressing me with all the deference due to my banking account—“And as you don’t mind what you spend, I’ll tell you just what I propose to do. I intend to write out a mystifying paragraph of about some seventy lines or so, describing the book in a vague sort of way as ‘likely to create a new era of thought’—or, ‘ere long everybody who is anybody will be compelled to read this remarkable work,’—or ‘as something that must be welcome to all who would understand the drift of one of the most delicate and burning questions of the time.’ These are all stock phrases, used over and over again by the reviewers,—there’s no copyright in them. And the last one always ‘tells’ wonderfully, considering how old it is, and how often it has been made to do duty, because any allusion to a ‘delicate and burning question’ makes a number of people think the novel must be improper, and they send for it at once!”

He chuckled at his own perspicuity, and I sat silent, studying him with much inward amusement. This man on whose decision I had humbly and anxiously waited not so many weeks ago was now my paid tool,—ready to obey me to any possible extent for so much cash,—and I listened to him indulgently while he went on unravelling his schemes for the gratification of my vanity, and the pocketing of his extras.

“The book has been splendidly advertised”—he went on; “It could not have been more lavishly done. Orders do not come in very fast yet—but they will,—they will. This paragraph of mine, which will take the shape of a ‘leaderette,’ I can get inserted in about eight hundred to a thousand newspapers here and in America. It will cost you,—say a hundred guineas—perhaps a trifle more. Do you mind that?”

“Not in the least!” I replied, still vastly amused.

He meditated a moment,—then drew his chair closer to mine and lowered his voice a little.

“You understand I suppose, that I shall only issue two hundred and fifty copies at first?”

This limited number seemed to me absurd, and I protested vehemently.

“Such an idea is ridiculous!” I said—“you cannot supply the trade with such a scanty edition.”

“Wait, my dear sir, wait,—you are too impatient. You do not give me time to explain. All these two hundred and fifty will be given away by me in the proper quarters on the day of publication,—never mind how,—they must be given away—”

“Why?”

“Why?” and the worthy Morgeson laughed sweetly—“I see, my dear Mr Tempest, you are like most men of genius—you do not understand business. The reason why we give the first two hundred and fifty copies away is in order to be able to announce at once in all the papers that ‘The First Large Edition of the New Novel by Geoffrey Tempest being exhausted on the day of publication, a Second is in Rapid Preparation.’ You see we thus hoodwink the public, who of course are not in our secrets, and are not to know whether an edition is two hundred or two thousand. The Second Edition will of course be ready behind the scenes, and will consist of another two hundred and fifty.”

“Do you call that course of procedure honest?” I asked quietly.

“Honest? My dear sir! Honest?” And his countenance wore a virtuously injured expression—“Of course it is honest! Look at the daily papers! Such announcements appear every day—in fact they are getting rather too common. I freely admit that there are a few publishers here and there who stick up for exactitude and go to the trouble of not only giving the number of copies in an Edition, but also publishing the date of each one as it was issued,—this may be principle if they like to call it so, but it involves a great deal of precise calculation and worry! If the public like to be deceived, what is the use of being exact! Now, to resume,—your second edition will be sent off ‘on sale or return’ to provincial booksellers, and then we shall announce—“In consequence of the Enormous Demand for the new novel by Geoffrey Tempest, the Large Second Edition is out of print. A Third will be issued in the course of next week.” And so on, and so on, till we get to the sixth or seventh edition (always numbering two hundred and fifty each) in three volumes; perhaps we can by skilful management work it to a tenth. It is only a question of diplomacy and a little dexterous humbugging of the trade. Then we shall arrive at the one-volume issue, which will require different handling. But there’s time enough for that. The frequent advertisements will add to the expense a bit, but if you don’t mind—”

“I don’t mind anything,” I said—“so long as I have my fun.”

“Your fun?” he queried surprisedly—“I thought it was fame you wanted, more than fun!”

I laughed aloud.

“I’m not such a fool as to suppose that fame is secured by advertisement,” I said—“For instance I am one of those who think the fame of Millais as an artist was marred when he degraded himself to the level of painting the little green boy blowing bubbles of Pears’s Soap. That was an advertisement. And that very incident in his career, trifling though it seems, will prevent his ever standing on the same dignified height of distinction with such masters in art as Romney, Sir Peter Lely, Gainsborough or Reynolds.”

“I believe there is a great deal of justice in what you say;” and Morgeson shook his head wisely—“Viewed from a purely artistic and sentimental standpoint you are right.” And he became suddenly downcast and dubious. “Yes,—it is a most extraordinary thing how fame does escape people sometimes just when they seem on the point of grasping it. They are ‘boomed’ in every imaginable way, and yet after a time nothing will keep them up. And there are others again who get kicked and buffeted and mocked and derided–”

“Like Christ?” I interposed with a half smile. He looked shocked,—he was a Non-conformist,—but remembering in time how rich I was, he bowed with a meek patience.

“Yes”—and he sighed—“as you suggest, Mr Tempest, like Christ. Mocked and derided and opposed at every turn,—and yet by the queerest caprice of destiny, they succeed in winning a world-wide fame and power–”

“Like Christ again!” I said mischievously, for I loved to jar his non-conformist conscience.

“Exactly!” He paused, looking piously down. Then with a return of secular animation he added—“But I was not thinking of the Great Example just then, Mr Tempest—I was thinking of a woman.”

“Indeed!” I said indifferently.

“Yes—a woman, who despite continued abuse and opposition is rapidly becoming celebrated. You are sure to hear of her in literary and social circles”—and he gave me a furtive glance of doubtful inquiry—“but she is not rich, you know,—only famous. However,—we have nothing to do with her just now—so let us return to business. The one uncertain point in the matter of your book’s success is the attitude of the critics. There are only six leading men who do the reviews, and between them they cover all the English magazines and some of the American too, as well as the London papers. Here are their names”—and he handed me a pencilled memorandum,—“and their addresses, as far as I can ascertain them, or the addresses of the papers for which they most frequently write. The man at the head of the list, David McWhing, is the most formidable of the lot. He writes everywhere about everything,—being a Scotchman he’s bound to have his finger in every pie. If you can secure McWhing, you need not trouble so much about the others, as he generally gives the ‘lead,’ and has his own way with the editors. He is one of the ‘personal friends’ of the editor of the Nineteenth Century for example, and you would be sure to get a notice there, which would otherwise be impossible. No reviewer can review anything for that magazine unless he is one of the editor’s friends[2]. You must manage McWhing, or he might, just for the sake of ‘showing off,’ cut you up rather roughly.”

“That would not matter,” I said, diverted at the idea of ‘managing McWhing,’—“A little slating always helps a book to sell.”

“In some cases it does,”—and Morgeson stroked his thin beard perplexedly—“But in others it most emphatically does not. Where there is any very decided or daring originality, adverse criticism is always the most effective. But a work like yours requires fostering with favour,—wants ‘booming’ in short–”

“I see!” and I felt distinctly annoyed—“You don’t think my book original enough to stand alone?”

“My dear sir!—you are really—really—! what shall I say?” and he smiled apologetically—“a little brusque? I think your book shows admirable scholarship and delicacy of thought,—if I find fault with it at all, it is perhaps because I am dense. The only thing it lacks in my opinion is what I should call tenaciousness, for want of a better expression,—the quality of holding the reader’s fancy fixed like a nail. But after all this is a common failing of modern literature; few authors feel sufficiently themselves to make others feel.”

I made no reply for a moment. I was thinking of Lucio’s remarks on this very same subject.

“Well!” I said at last—“If I had no feeling when I wrote the book, I certainly have none now. Why man, I felt every line of it!—painfully and intensely!”

“Ay, ay indeed!” said Morgeson soothingly—“Or perhaps you thought you felt, which is another very curious phase of the literary temperament. You see, to convince people at all, you must first yourself be convinced. The result of this is generally a singular magnetic attraction between author and public. However I am a bad hand at argument,—and it is possible that in hasty reading I may have gathered a wrong impression of your intentions. Anyhow the book shall be a success if we can make it so. All I venture to ask of you is that you should personally endeavour to manage McWhing!”

I promised to do my best, and on this understanding we parted. I realised that Morgeson was capable of greater discernment than I had imagined, and his observations had given me material for thought which was not altogether agreeable. For if my book, as he said, lacked tenacity, why then it would not take root in the public mind,—it would be merely the ephemeral success of a season,—one of those brief ‘booms’ in literary wares for which I had such unmitigated contempt,—and Fame would be as far off as ever, except that spurious imitation of it which the fact of my millions had secured. I was in no good humour that afternoon, and Lucio saw it. He soon elicited the sum and substance of my interview with Morgeson, and laughed long and somewhat uproariously over the proposed ‘managing’ of the redoubtable McWhing. He glanced at the five names of the other leading critics and shrugged his shoulders.

“Morgeson is quite right,”—he said—“McWhing is intimate with the rest of these fellows—they meet at the same clubs, dine at the same cheap restaurants and make love to the same painted ballet-girls. All in a comfortable little fraternal union together, and one obliges the other on their several journals when occasion offers. Oh yes! I should make up to McWhing if I were you.”

“But how?” I demanded, for though I knew McWhing’s name well enough having seen it signed ad nauseam to literary articles in almost every paper extant, I had never met the man; “I cannot ask any favour of a press critic.”

“Of course not!” and Lucio laughed heartily again—“If you were to do such an idiotic thing what a slating you’d get for your pains! There’s no sport a critic loves so much as the flaying of an author who has made the mistake of lowering himself to the level of asking favours of his intellectual inferiors! No, no, my dear fellow!—we shall manage McWhing quite differently,—I know him, though you do not.”

“Come, that’s good news!” I exclaimed—“Upon my word Lucio, you seem to know everybody.”

“I think I know most people worth knowing—“ responded Lucio quietly—“Though I by no means include Mr McWhing in the category of worthiness. I happened to make his personal acquaintance in a somewhat singular and exciting manner. It was in Switzerland, on that awkward ledge of rock known as the Mauvais Pas. I had been some weeks in the neighbourhood on business of my own, and being surefooted and fearless, was frequently allowed by the guides to volunteer my services with theirs. In this capacity of amateur guide, capricious destiny gave me the pleasure of escorting the timid and bilious McWhing across the chasms of the Mer de Glace, and I conversed with him in the choicest French all the while, a language of which, despite his boasted erudition, he was deplorably ignorant. I knew who he was I must tell you, as I know most of his craft, and had long been aware of him as one of the authorised murderers of aspiring genius. When I got him on the Mauvais Pas, I saw that he was seized with vertigo; I held him firmly by the arm and addressed him in sound strong English thus—‘Mr McWhing, you wrote a damnable and scurrilous article against the work of a certain poet’ and I named the man—‘an article that was a tissue of lies from beginning to end, and which by its cruelty and venom embittered a life of brilliant promise, and crushed a noble spirit. Now, unless you promise to write and publish in a leading magazine a total recantation of this your crime when you get back to England,—if you get back!—giving that wronged man the ‘honourable mention’ he rightly deserves,—down you go! I have but to loosen my hold!’ Geoffrey, you should have seen McWhing then! He whined, he wriggled, he clung! Never was an oracle of the press in such an unoracular condition. ‘Murder!—murder!’ he gasped, but his voice failed him. Above him towered the snow peaks like the summits of that Fame he could not reach and therefore grudged to others,—below him the glittering ice-waves yawned in deep transparent hollows of opaline blue and green,—and afar off the tinkling cowbells echoed through the still air, suggestive of safe green pastures and happy homes. ‘Murder!’ he whispered gurglingly. ‘Nay!’ said I, ‘’tis I should cry Murder!—for if ever an arresting hand held a murderer, mine holds one now! Your system of slaying is worse than that of the midnight assassin, for the assassin can but kill the body,—you strive to kill the soul. You cannot succeed, ’tis true, but the mere attempt is devilish. No shouts, no struggles will serve you here,—we are alone with Eternal Nature,—give the man you have slandered his tardy recognition, or else, as I said before—down you go!’ Well, to make my story short, he yielded, and swore to do as I bade him,—whereupon placing my arm round him as though he were my tender twin-brother, I led him safely off the Mauvais Pas and down the kindlier hill, where, what with the fright and the remains of vertigo, he fell a’weeping grievously. Would you believe it, that before we reached Chamounix we had become the best friends in the world? He explained himself and his rascally modes of action, and I nobly exonerated him,—we exchanged cards,—and when we parted, this same author’s bug-bear McWhing, overcome with sentiment and whisky toddy (he is a Scotchman you know) swore that I was the grandest fellow in the world, and that if ever he could serve me he would. He knew my princely title by this time, but he would have given me a still higher name. ‘You are not—hic—a poet yourself?’ he murmured, leaning on me fondly as he rolled to bed. I told him no. ‘I am sorry—very!’ he declared, the tears of whisky rising to his eyes, ‘If you had been I would have done a great thing for you,—I would have boomed you,—for nothing!’ I left him snoring nobly, and saw him no more. But I think he’ll recognize me, Geoffrey;—I’ll go and look him up personally. By all the gods!—if he had only known Who held him between life and death upon the Mauvais Pas!”

I stared, puzzled.

“But he did know”—I said—“Did you not say you exchanged cards?”

“True, but that was afterwards!” and Lucio laughed; “I assure you, my dear fellow, we can ‘manage’ McWhing!”

I was intensely interested in the story as he told it,—he had such a dramatic way of speaking and looking, while his very gestures brought the whole scene vividly before me like a picture. I spoke out my thought impulsively.

“You would certainly have made a superb actor, Lucio!”

“How do you know I am not one?” he asked with a flashing glance, then he added quickly—“No,—there is no occasion to paint the face and prance over the boards before a row of tawdry footlights like the paid mimes, in order to be histrionically great. The finest actor is he who can play the comedy of life perfectly, as I aspire to do. To walk well, talk well, smile well, weep well, groan well, laugh well—and die well!—it is all pure acting,—because in every man there is the dumb dreadful immortal Spirit who is real,—who cannot act,—who Is,—and who steadily maintains an infinite though speechless protest against the body’s Lie!”

I said nothing in answer to this outburst,—I was beginning to be used to his shifting humours and strange utterances,—they increased the mysterious attraction I had for him, and made his character a perpetual riddle to me which was not without its subtle charm. Every now and then I realized, with a faintly startled sense of self-abasement, that I was completely under his dominance,—that my life was being entirely guided by his control and suggestion,—but I argued with myself that surely it was well it should be so, seeing he had so much more experience and influence than I. We dined together that night as we often did, and our conversation was entirely taken up with monetary and business concerns. Under Lucio’s advice I was making several important investments, and these matters gave us ample subject for discussion. At about eleven o’clock, it being a fine frosty evening and fit for brisk walking, we went out, our destination being the private gambling club to which my companion had volunteered to introduce me as a guest. It was situated at the end of a mysterious little back street, not far from the respectable precincts of Pall-Mall, and was an unpretentious looking house enough outside, but within, it was sumptuously though tastelessly furnished. Apparently, the premises were presided over by a woman,—a woman with painted eyes and dyed hair who received us first of all within the lamp-lighted splendours of an Anglo-Japanese drawing-room. Her looks and manner undisguisedly proclaimed her as a demi-mondaine of the most pronounced type,—one of those ‘pure’ ladies with a ‘past’ who are represented as such martyrs to the vices of men. Lucio said something to her apart,—whereupon she glanced at me deferentially and smiled,—then rang the bell. A discreet looking man-servant in sober black made his appearance, and at a slight sign from his mistress who bowed to me as I passed her, proceeded to show us upstairs. We trod on a carpet of the softest felt,—in fact I noticed that everything was rendered as noiseless as possible in this establishment, the very doors being covered with thick baize and swinging on silent hinges. On the upper landing, the servant knocked very cautiously at a side-door,—a key turned in the lock, and we were admitted into a long double room, very brilliantly lit with electric lamps, which at a first glance seemed crowded with men playing at rouge et noir and baccarat. Some looked up as Lucio entered and nodded smilingly,—others glanced inquisitively at me, but our entrance was otherwise scarcely noticed. Lucio drawing me along by the arm, sat down to watch the play,—I followed his example and presently found myself infected by the intense excitement which permeated the room like the silent tension of the air before a thunderstorm. I recognised the faces of many well known public men,—men eminent in politics and society whom one would never have imagined capable of supporting a gambling club by their presence and authority. But I took care to betray no sign of surprise, and quietly observed the games and the gamesters with almost as impassive a demeanour as that of my companion. I was prepared to play and to lose,—I was not prepared however for the strange scene which was soon to occur and in which I, by force of circumstances was compelled to take a leading part.

X

As soon as the immediate game we were watching was finished, the players rose, and greeted Lucio with a good deal of eagerness and effusion. I instinctively guessed from their manner that they looked upon him as an influential member of the club, a person likely to lend them money to gamble with, and otherwise to oblige them in various ways, financially speaking. He introduced me to them all, and I was not slow to perceive the effect my name had upon most of them. I was asked if I would join in a game of baccarat, and I readily consented. The stakes were ruinously high, but I had no need to falter for that. One of the players near me was a fair-haired young man, handsome in face and of aristocratic bearing,—he had been introduced to me as Viscount Lynton. I noticed him particularly on account of the reckless way he had of doubling his stakes suddenly and apparently out of mere bravado, and when he lost, as he mostly did, he laughed uproariously as though he were drunk or delirious. On first beginning to play I was entirely indifferent as to the results of the game, caring nothing at all as to whether I had losses or gains. Lucio did not join us, but sat apart, quietly observant, and watching me, so I fancied, more than anyone. And as chance would have it, all the luck came my way, and I won steadily. The more I won the more excited I became, till presently my humour changed and I was seized by a whimsical desire to lose. I suppose it was the touch of some better impulse in my nature that made me wish this for young Lynton’s sake. For he seemed literally maddened by my constant winnings, and continued his foolhardy and desperate play,—his young face grew drawn and sharply thin, and his eyes glittered with a hungry feverishness. The other gamesters, though sharing in his run of ill-luck, seemed better able to stand it, or perhaps they concealed their feelings more cleverly,—anyhow I know I caught myself very earnestly wishing that this devil’s luck of mine would desert me and set in the young Viscount’s direction. But my wishes were no use,—again and again I gathered up the stakes, till at last the players rose, Viscount Lynton among them.

“Well, I’m cleaned out!” he said, with a loud forced laugh. “You must give me my chance of a revanche to-morrow, Mr Tempest!”

I bowed.

“With pleasure!”

He called a waiter at the end of the room to bring him a brandy and soda, and meanwhile I was surrounded by the rest of the men, all of them repeating the Viscount’s suggestion of a ‘revanche,’ and strenuously urging upon me the necessity of returning to the club the next night in order to give them an opportunity of winning back what they had lost. I readily agreed, and while we were in the midst of talk, Lucio suddenly addressed young Lynton.

“Will you make up another game with me?” he inquired. “I’ll start the bank with this,”—and he placed two crisp notes of five hundred pounds each on the table.

There was a moment’s silence. The Viscount was thirstily drinking his brandy-and-soda, and glanced over the rim of his tall tumbler at the notes with covetous bloodshot eyes,—then he shrugged his shoulders indifferently. “I can’t stake anything,” he said; “I’ve already told you I’m cleaned out,—‘stony-broke,’ as the slang goes. It’s no use my joining.”

“Sit down, sit down, Lynton!” urged one man near him. “I’ll lend you enough to go on with.”

“Thanks, I’d rather not!” he returned, flushing a little. “I’m too much in your debt already. Awfully good of you all the same. You go on, you fellows, and I’ll watch the play.”

“Let me persuade you Viscount Lynton,” said Lucio, looking at him with his dazzling inscrutable smile—“just for the fun of the thing! If you do not feel justified in staking money, stake something trifling and merely nominal, for the sake of seeing whether the luck will turn”—and here he took up a counter—“This frequently represents fifty pounds,—let it represent for once something that is not valuable like money,—your soul, for example!” A burst of laughter broke from all the men. Lucio laughed softly with them.

“We all have, I hope, enough instruction in modern science to be aware that there is no such thing as a soul in existence”—he continued. “Therefore, in proposing it as a stake for this game at baccarat, I really propose less than one hair of your head, because the hair is a something, and the soul is a nothing! Come! Will you risk that non-existent quantity for the chance of winning a thousand pounds?”

The Viscount drained off the last drop of brandy, and turned upon us, his eyes flushing mingled derision and defiance.

“Done!” he exclaimed; whereupon the party sat down.

The game was brief,—and in its rapid excitement, almost breathless. Six or seven minutes sufficed, and Lucio rose, the winner. He smiled as he pointed to the counter which had represented Viscount Lynton’s last stake.

“I have won!” he said quietly. “But you owe me nothing, my dear Viscount, inasmuch as you risked—Nothing! We played this game simply for fun. If souls had any existence of course I should claim yours;—I wonder what I should do with it by the way!” He laughed good-humouredly. “What nonsense, isn’t it!—and how thankful we ought to be that we live in advanced days like the present, when such silly superstitions are being swept aside by the march of progress and pure Reason! Good-night! Tempest and I will give you, your full revenge to-morrow,—the luck is sure to change by then, and you will probably have the victory. Again—good-night!”

He held out his hand,—there was a peculiar melting tenderness in his brilliant dark eyes,—an impressive kindness in his manner. Something—I could not tell what—held us all for the moment spellbound as if by enchantment, and several of the players at other tables, hearing of the eccentric stake that had been wagered and lost, looked over at us curiously from a distance. Viscount Lynton, however, professed himself immensely diverted, and shook Lucio’s proffered hand heartily.

“You are an awfully good fellow!” he said, speaking a little thickly and hurriedly—“And I assure you seriously if I had a soul I should be very glad to part with it for a thousand pounds at the present moment. The soul wouldn’t be an atom of use to me and the thousand pounds would. But I feel convinced I shall win to-morrow!”

“I am equally sure you will!” returned Lucio affably, “In the meantime, you will not find my friend here, Geoffrey Tempest, a hard creditor,—he can afford to wait. But in the case of the lost soul,”—here he paused, looking straight into the young man’s eyes,—“of course I cannot afford to wait!”

The Viscount smiled vaguely at this pleasantry, and almost immediately afterwards left the club. As soon as the door had closed behind him, several of the gamesters exchanged sententious nods and glances.

“Ruined!” said one of them in a sotto-voce.

“His gambling debts are more than he can ever pay”—added another—“And I hear he has lost a clear fifty thousand on the turf.”

These remarks were made indifferently, as though one should talk of the weather,—no sympathy was expressed,—no pity wasted. Every gambler there was selfish to the core, and as I studied their hardened faces, a thrill of honest indignation moved me,—indignation mingled with shame. I was not yet altogether callous or cruel-hearted, though as I look back upon those days which now resemble a wild vision rather than a reality, I know that I was becoming more and more of a brutal egoist with every hour I lived. Still I was so far then from being utterly vile, that I inwardly resolved to write to Viscount Lynton that very evening, and tell him to consider his debt to me cancelled, as I should refuse to claim it. While this thought was passing through my mind, I met Lucio’s gaze fixed steadily upon me. He smiled,—and presently signed to me to accompany him. In a few minutes we had left the club, and were out in the cold night air under a heaven of frostily sparkling stars. Standing still for a moment, my companion laid his hand on my shoulder.

“Tempest, if you are going to be kind-hearted or sympathetic to undeserving rascals, I shall have to part company with you!” he said, with a curious mixture of satire and seriousness in his voice—“I see by the expression of your face that you are meditating some silly disinterested action of pure generosity. Now you might just as well flop down on these paving stones and begin saying prayers in public. You want to let Lynton off his debt,—you are a fool for your pains. He is a born scoundrel,—and has never seen his way to being anything else,—why should you compassionate him? From the time he first went to college till now, he has been doing nothing but live a life of degraded sensuality,—he is a worthless rake, less to be respected than an honest dog!”

“Yet some one loves him I daresay!” I said.

“Some one loves him!” echoed Lucio with inimitable disdain—“Bah! Three ballet girls live on him if that is what you mean. His mother loved him,—but she is dead,—he broke her heart. He is no good I tell you,—let him pay his debt in full, even to the soul he staked so lightly. If I were the devil now, and had just won the strange game we played to-night, I suppose according to priestly tradition, I should be piling up the fire for Lynton in high glee,—but being what I am, I say let the man alone to make his own destiny,—let things take their course,—and as he chose to risk everything, so let him pay everything.”

We were by this time walking slowly into Pall Mall,—I was on the point of making some reply, when catching sight of a man’s figure on the opposite side of the way, not far from the Marlborough Club, I uttered an involuntary exclamation.

“Why there he is!” I said—“there is Viscount Lynton!”

Lucio’s hand closed tightly on my arm.

“You don’t want to speak to him now, surely!”

“No. But I wonder where he’s going? He walks rather unsteadily.”

“Drunk, most probably!”

And Lucio’s face presented the same relentless expression of scorn I had so often seen and marvelled at.

We paused a moment, watching the Viscount strolling aimlessly up and down in front of the clubs,—till all at once he seemed to come to a sudden resolution, and stopping short, he shouted,

“Hansom!”

A silent-wheeled smart vehicle came bowling up immediately. Giving some order to the driver, he jumped in. The cab approached swiftly in our direction,—just as it passed us the loud report of a pistol crashed on the silence.

“Good God!” I cried reeling back a step or two—“He has shot himself!”

The hansom stopped,—the driver sprang down,—club-porters, waiters, policemen and no end of people starting up from Heaven knows where, were on the scene on an instant,—I rushed forward to join the rapidly gathering throng, but before I could do so, Lucio’s strong arm was thrown round me, and he dragged me by main force away.

“Keep cool, Geoffrey!” he said—“Do you want to be called up to identify? And betray the club and all its members? Not while I am here to prevent you! Check your mad impulses, my good fellow,—they will lead you into no end of difficulties. If the man’s dead he’s dead, and there’s an end of it.”

“Lucio! You have no heart!” I exclaimed, struggling violently to escape from his hold—“How can you stop to reason in such a case! Think of it! I am the cause of all the mischief!—it is my cursed luck at baccarat this evening that has been the final blow to the wretched young fellow’s fortunes,—I am convinced of it!—I shall never forgive myself—”

“Upon my word, Geoffrey, your conscience is very tender!” he answered, holding my arm still more closely and hurrying me away despite myself—“You must try and toughen it a little if you want to be successful in life. Your ‘cursed luck’ you think, has caused Lynton’s death? Surely it is a contradiction in terms to call luck ‘cursed,’—and as for the Viscount, he did not need that last game at baccarat to emphasise his ruin. You are not to blame. And for the sake of the club, if for nothing else, I do not intend either you or myself to be mixed up in a case of suicide. The coroner’s verdict always disposes of these incidents comfortably in two words—‘Temporary insanity.’”

I shuddered. My soul sickened as I thought that within a few yards of us was the bleeding corpse of the man I had so lately seen alive and spoken with,—and notwithstanding Lucio’s words I felt as if I had murdered him.

“‘Temporary insanity’”—repeated Lucio again, as if speaking to himself—“all remorse, despair, outraged honour, wasted love, together with the scientific modern theory of Reasonable Nothingness—Life a Nothing, God a Nothing,—when these drive the distracted human unit to make of himself also a nothing, ‘temporary insanity’ covers up his plunge into the infinite with an untruthful pleasantness. However, after all, it is as Shakespeare says, a mad world!”

I made no answer. I was too overcome by my own miserable sensations. I walked along almost unconscious of movement, and as I stared bewilderedly up at the stars they danced before my sight like fireflies whirling in a mist of miasma. Presently a faint hope occurred to me.

“Perhaps,” I said, “he has not really killed himself? It may be only an attempt?”

“He was a capital shot”—returned Lucio composedly,—“That was his one quality. He has no principles,—but he was a good marksman. I cannot imagine his missing aim.”

“It is horrible! An hour ago alive, … and now … I tell you, Lucio, it is horrible!”

“What is? Death? It is not half so horrible as Life lived wrongly,”—he responded, with a gravity that impressed me in spite of my emotion and excitement—“Believe me, the mental sickness and confusion of a wilfully degraded existence are worse tortures than are contained in the priestly notions of Hell. Come come, Geoffrey, you take this matter too much to heart,—you are not to blame. If Lynton has given himself the ‘happy dispatch’ it is really the best thing he could do,—he was of no use to anybody, and he is well out of it. It is positively weak of you to attach importance to such a trifle. You are only at the beginning of your career–”

“Well, I hope that career will not lead me into any more such tragedies as the one enacted to-night,”—I said passionately—“If it does, it will be entirely against my will!”

Lucio looked at me curiously.

“Nothing can happen to you against your will”—he replied; “I suppose you wish to imply that I am to blame for introducing you to the club? My good fellow, you need not have gone there unless you had chosen to do so! I did not bind and drag you there! You are upset and unnerved,—come into my room and take a glass of wine,—you will feel more of a man afterwards.”

We had by this time reached the hotel, and I went with him passively. With equal passiveness I drank what he gave me, and stood, glass in hand, watching him with a kind of morbid fascination as he threw off his fur-lined overcoat and confronted me, his pale handsome face strangely set and stern, and his dark eyes glittering like cold steel.

“That last stake of Lynton’s, … to you—” I said falteringly—“His soul–”

“Which he did not believe in, and which you do not believe in!” returned Lucio, regarding me fixedly. “Why do you now seem to tremble at a mere sentimental idea? If fantastic notions such as God, the Soul, and the Devil were real facts, there would perhaps be cause for trembling, but being only the brainsick imaginations of superstitious mankind, there is nothing in them to awaken the slightest anxiety or fear.”

“But you”—I began—“you say you believe in the soul?”

“I? I am brainsick!” and he laughed bitterly—“Have you not found that out yet? Much learning hath driven me mad, my friend! Science has led me into such deep wells of dark discovery, that it is no wonder if my senses sometimes reel,—and I believe—at such insane moments—in the Soul!”

I sighed heavily.

“I think I will go to bed,” I answered. “I am tired out,—and absolutely miserable!”

“Alas, poor millionaire!” said Lucio gently,—“I am sorry, I assure you, that the evening has ended so disastrously.”

“So am I!” I returned despondently.

“Imagine it!” he went on, dreamily regarding me—“If my beliefs,—my crack-brained theories,—were worth anything,—which they are not—I could claim the only positive existing part of our late acquaintance Viscount Lynton! But,—where and how to send in my account with him? If I were Satan now…”

I forced a faint smile.

“You would have cause to rejoice!” I said.

He moved two paces towards me, and laid his hands gently on my shoulders.

“No, Geoffrey”—and his rich voice had a strange soft music in it—“No, my friend! If I were Satan I should probably lament!—for every lost soul would of necessity remind me of my own fall, my own despair,—and set another bar between myself and heaven! Remember,—the very Devil was an Angel once!”

His eyes smiled, and yet I could have sworn there were tears in them. I wrung his hand hard,—I felt that notwithstanding his assumed coldness and cynicism, the fate of young Lynton had affected him profoundly. My liking for him gained new fervour from this impression, and I went to bed more at ease with myself and things in general. During the few minutes I spent in undressing I became even able to contemplate the tragedy of the evening with less regret and greater calmness,—for it was certainly no use worrying over the irrevocable,—and, after all, what interest had the Viscount’s life for me? None. I began to ridicule myself for my own weakness and disinterested emotion,—and presently, being thoroughly fatigued, fell sound asleep. Towards morning however, perhaps about four or five o’clock, I woke suddenly as though touched by an invisible hand. I was shivering violently, and my body was bathed in a cold perspiration. In the otherwise dark room there was something strangely luminous, like a cloud of white smoke or fire. I started up, rubbing my eyes,—and stared before me for a moment, doubting the evidence of my own senses. For, plainly visible and substantially distinct, at a distance of perhaps five paces from my bed, stood three Figures, muffled in dark garments and closely hooded. So solemnly inert they were,—so heavily did their sable draperies fall about them that it was impossible to tell whether they were men or women,—but what paralysed me with amazement and terror was the strange light that played around and above them,—the spectral, wandering, chill radiance that illumined them like the rays of a faint wintry moon. I strove to cry out,—but my tongue refused to obey me—and my voice was strangled in my throat. The Three remained absolutely motionless,—and again I rubbed my eyes, wondering if this were a dream or some hideous optical delusion. Trembling in every limb, I stretched my hand towards the bell intending to ring violently for assistance,—when—a Voice, low and thrilling with intense anguish, caused me to shrink back appalled, and my arm fell nerveless at my side. “Misery!”

The word struck the air with a harsh reproachful clang, and I nearly swooned with the horror of it. For now one of the Figures moved, and a face gleamed out from beneath its hooded wrappings—a face white as whitest marble and fixed into such an expression of dreadful despair as froze my blood. Then came a deep sigh that was more like a death-groan, and again the word, “Misery!” shuddered upon the silence.

Mad with fear, and scarcely knowing what I did, I sprang from the bed, and began desperately to advance upon these fantastic masqueraders, determined to seize them and demand the meaning of this practical and untimely jest,—when suddenly all Three lifted their heads and turned their faces on me,—such faces!—indescribably awful in their pallid agony,—and a whisper more ghastly than a shriek, penetrated the very fibres of my consciousness—“Misery!”

With a furious bound I flung myself upon them,—my hands struck empty space. Yet there—distinct as ever—they stood, glowering down upon me, while my clenched fists beat impotently through and beyond their seemingly corporeal shapes! And then—all at once—I became aware of their eyes,—eyes that watched me pitilessly, stedfastly, and disdainfully,—eyes that like witch-fires, seemed to slowly burn terrific meanings into my very flesh and spirit. Convulsed and almost frantic with the strain on my nerves, I abandoned myself to despair,—this awful sight meant death I thought,—my last hour had surely come! Then—I saw the lips of one of those dreadful faces move … some superhuman instinct in me leaped to life, … in some strange way I thought I knew, or guessed the horror of what that next utterance would be, … and with all my remaining force I cried out—

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Примечания

1

A fact.

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2

The author has Mr Knowles’s own written authority for this fact.

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