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?"