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.”
