Part 12

"Ah, my dear lord, that is not enough for the aspirations of my gifted friend"--responded Lucio, speaking for me, his eyes darkening with that mystic shadow of mingled sorrow and scorn which so frequently clouded their lustrous brilliancy; "He does not particularly care for the 'immense position' that is due to wealth alone, because that does not lift him a jot higher than Maple of Tottenham Court Road. He seeks to soar beyond the furniture man,--and who shall blame him? He would be known for that indescribable quality called Genius,--for high thoughts, poetry, divine instincts, and prophetic probings into the heart of humanity,--in short, for the power of the Pen, which topples down great kingdoms like card-houses and sticks foolscaps on the heads of kings. Generally it is the moneyless man or woman who is endowed with this unpurchaseable power,--this independence of action and indifference to opinion,--the wealthy seldom do anything but spend or hoard. But Tempest means to unite for once in his own person the two most strenuously opposed forces in nature,--genius and cash,--or in other words, God and Mammon."

Lady Sibyl turned her head towards me;--there was a look of doubt and wonder on her beautiful face.

"I am afraid,"--she said half smiling, "that the claims of society will take up too much of your time, Mr Tempest, to allow you to continue the writing of books. I remember you told me the other evening that you were about to publish a novel. I suppose you were--originally I mean--an author by profession?"

A curious sense of anger burned dully within me. 'Originally' an author? Was I not one still? Was I to be given credit for nothing but my banking-book? 'Originally'? Why, I had never been an actual 'author' till now,--I had simply been a wandering literary hack,--a stray 'super' of Grub Street, occasionally engaged to write articles 'to order' on any subject that came uppermost, at a starvation rate of pay, without any visible prospect of rising from that lowest and dirtiest rung of the literary ladder. I felt myself growing red, then pale,--and I saw that Lucio was looking at me fixedly.

"I _am_ an author, Lady Sibyl"--I said at last--"and I hope I may soon prove my right to be acknowledged as one. 'Author' is in my opinion, a prouder title than king, and I do not think any social claims will deter me from following the profession of literature, which I look upon as the highest in the world."

Lord Elton fidgetted uneasily in his chair.

"But your people"--he said--"Your family--are they literary?"

"No members of my family are now living,"--I answered somewhat stiffly--"My father was John Tempest of Rexmoor."

"Indeed!" and the Earl's face brightened considerably--"Dear me, dear me! I used to meet him often in the hunting field years ago. You come of a fine old stock, sir!--the Tempests of Rexmoor are well and honourably known in county chronicles."

I said nothing, feeling a trifle heated in temper, though I could not have quite explained why.

"One begins to wonder,"--said Lucio then in his soft smooth accents--"when one is the descendant of a good English county family,--a distinct cause for pride!--and moreover has the still more substantial fact of a large fortune to support that high lineage, why one should trouble to fight for merely literary honours! You are far too modest in your ambitions, Tempest!--high-seated as you are upon bank-notes and bullion, with all the glory of effulgent county chronicles behind you, you still stoop to clutch the laurel! Fie, my dear fellow! You degrade yourself by this desire to join the company of the immortals!"

His satirical tone was not lost upon the company; and I, who saw that in his own special way he was defending the claims of literature against those of mere place and money, felt soothed and grateful. The Earl looked a trifle annoyed.

"That's all very fine," he said--"But you see it isn't as if Mr Tempest were driven by necessity to write for his living"--

"One may love work for the work's sake without any actual necessity for doing it,"--I interposed--"For example,--this Mavis Clare you speak of,--is she,--a woman,--driven by necessity?"

"Mavis Clare hasn't a penny in the world that she does not earn,"--said Lord Elton gruffly--"I suppose that if she did not write she would starve."

Diana Chesney laughed.

"I guess she's a long way off starvation just now,"--she remarked, her brown eyes twinkling--"Why, she's as proud as the proudest,--drives in the Park in her victoria and pair with the best in the land, and knows all the 'swagger' people. She's nowhere near Grub Street _I_ should say. I hear she's a splendid business woman, and more than a match for the publishers all round."

"Well I should rather doubt that,"--said the Earl with a chuckle. "It needs the devil himself to match the publishers."

"You are right!"--said Lucio--"In fact I daresay that in the various 'phases' or transmigrations of the spirit into differing forms of earthy matter, the devil (should he exist at all) has frequently become a publisher,--and a particularly benevolent publisher too!--by way of diversion."

We all smiled.

"Well, I should imagine Mavis Clare to be a match for anybody or anything,"--said Lady Sibyl--"Of course she is not rich,--but she spends her money wisely and to effective advantage. I do not know her personally,--I wish I did; but I have read her books, which are quite out of the common. She is a most independent creature too; quite indifferent to opinions"--

"I suppose she must be extremely plain then"--I observed; "Plain women always try to do something more or less startling in order to attract the attention denied to their personality."

"True,--but that would not apply to Miss Clare. She is pretty, and knows how to dress besides."

"_Such_ a virtue in literary women!" exclaimed Diana Chesney--"Some of them _are_ such dowdies!"

"Most people of culture," went on Lady Sibyl--"in our set at any rate, are accustomed to look upon Miss Clare as quite an exception to the usual run of authors. She is charming in herself as well as in her books, and she goes everywhere. She writes with inspiration,--and always has something so new to say--"

"That of course all the critics are down upon her?" queried Lucio.

"Oh, naturally! But _we_ never read reviews."

"Nor anyone else I should hope,"--said Lord Elton with a laugh--"except the fellows who write them, ha--ha--ha! I call it damned impertinence--excuse the word--on the part of a newspaper hack to presume to teach _me_ what I ought to read, or what I ought to appreciate. I'm quite capable of forming my own judgment on any book that ever was written. But I avoid all the confounded 'new' poets,--avoid 'em like poison, sir--ha--ha! Anything but a 'new' poet; the old ones are good enough for me! Why sir, these reviewers who give themselves such airs with a pennorth of ink and a pen, are mostly half-grown half-educated boys who for a couple of guineas a week undertake to tell the public what _they_ think of such and such a book, as if anyone cared a jot about their green opinions! Ridiculous--quite ridiculous!--what do they take the public for I wonder! Editors of responsible journals ought to know better than to employ such young coxcombs just because they can get them cheap----"

At this juncture the butler came up behind his master's chair and whispered a few words. The Earl's brow clouded,--then he addressed his sister-in-law,--

"Charlotte, Lady Elton sends word that she will come into the drawing-room to-night. Perhaps you had better go and see that she is made comfortable." And, as Miss Charlotte rose, he turned to us saying--"My wife is seldom well enough to see visitors, but this evening she feels inclined for a little change and distraction from the monotony of her sick-room. It will be very kind of you two gentlemen to entertain her,--she cannot speak much, but her hearing and sight are excellent, and she takes great interest in all that is going on. Dear dear me!" and he heaved a short troubled sigh--"She used to be one of the brightest of women!"

"The sweet Countess!" murmured Miss Chesney with patronizing tenderness--"She is quite lovely still!"

Lady Sibyl glanced at her with a sudden haughty frown which showed me plainly what a rebellious temper the young beauty held in control; and I fell straightway more in love,--according to _my_ idea of love,--than ever. I confess I like a woman to have a certain amount of temper. I cannot endure your preternaturally amiable female who can find nothing in all the length or breadth of the globe to move her to any other expression than a fatuous smile. I love to see the danger-flash in bright eyes,--the delicate quiver of pride in the lines of a lovely mouth, and the warm flush of indignation on fair cheeks. It all suggests spirit, and untamed will; and rouses in a man the love of mastery that is born in his nature, urging him to conquer and subdue that which seems unconquerable. And all the desire of such conquest was strong within me, when at the close of dinner I rose and held the door open for the ladies to pass out of the room. As the fair Sibyl went, the violets she wore at her bosom dropped. I picked them up and made my first move.

"May I keep these?" I said in a low tone.

Her breath came and went quickly,--but she looked straight in my eyes with a smile that perfectly comprehended my hidden meaning.

"You may!" she answered.

I bowed,--closed the door behind her, and secreting the flowers, returned, well-satisfied, to my place at table.

XIII

Left with myself and Lucio, Lord Elton threw off all reserve, and became not only familiar, but fawning in his adulation of us both. An abject and pitiable desire to please and propitiate us expressed itself in his every look and word; and I firmly believe that if I had coolly and brutally offered to buy his fair daughter by private treaty for a hundred thousand pounds, that sum to be paid down to him on the day of marriage, he would have gladly agreed to sell. Apart however from his personal covetousness, I felt and knew that my projected courtship of Lady Sibyl would of necessity resolve itself into something more or less of a market bargain, unless indeed I could win the girl's love. I meant to try and do this, but I fully realized how difficult, nay, almost impossible it would be for her to forget the fact of my unhampered and vast fortune, and consider me for myself alone. Herein is one of the blessings of poverty which the poor are frequently too apt to forget. A moneyless man if he wins a woman's love knows that such love is genuine and untainted by self-interest; but a rich man can never be truly certain of love at all. The advantages of a wealthy match are constantly urged upon all marriageable girls by both their parents and friends,--and it would have to be a very unsophisticated feminine nature indeed that could contemplate a husband possessing five millions of money, without a touch of purely interested satisfaction. A very wealthy man can never be sure even of friendship,--while the highest, strongest and noblest kind of love is nearly always denied to him, in this way carrying out the fulfilment of those strange but true words--"How hardly shall he that is a rich man, enter the Kingdom of Heaven!" The heaven of a woman's love, tried and proved true through disaster and difficulty,--of her unflinching faithfulness and devotion in days of toil and bitter anguish,--of her heroic self-abnegation, sweetness and courage through the darkest hours of doubt and disappointment;--this bright and splendid side of woman's character is reserved by Divine ordinance for the poor man. The millionaire can indeed wed whomsoever he pleases among all the beauties of the world,--he can deck his wife in gorgeous apparel, load her with jewels and look upon her in all the radiance of her richly adorned loveliness as one may look upon a perfect statue or matchless picture,--but he can never reach the deeper secrets of her soul or probe the well-springs of her finer nature. I thought this even thus early in the beginning of my admiration for Lady Sibyl Elton, though I did not then dwell upon it as I have often done since. I was too elated with the pride of wealth to count the possibilities of subtle losses amid so many solid gains; and I enjoyed to the full and with a somewhat contemptuous malice the humble prostration of a 'belted Earl' before the dazzling mine of practically unlimited cash as represented to him in the persons of my brilliant comrade and myself. I took a curious sort of pleasure in patronizing him, and addressed him with a protecting air of indulgent kindness whereat he seemed gratified. Inwardly I laughed as I thought how differently matters would have stood, supposing I had been indeed no more than 'author'! I might have proved to be one of the greatest writers of the age, but if, with that, I had been poor or only moderately well off, this same half bankrupt Earl who privately boarded an American heiress for two thousand guineas a year, would have deemed it a 'condescension' to so much as invite me to his house,--would have looked down upon me from his titled nothingness and perhaps carelessly alluded to me as 'a man who writes--er--yes--er--rather clever I believe!' and then would have thought no more about me. For this very cause as 'author' still, though millionaire, I took a fantastic pleasure in humiliating his lordship as much as possible, and I found the best way to do this was to talk about Willowsmere. I saw that he winced at the very name of his lost estate, and that notwithstanding this, he could not avoid showing his anxiety as to my intentions with regard to its occupation. Lucio, whose wisdom and foresight had suggested my becoming the purchaser of the place, assisted me in the most adroit fashion to draw him out and to make his character manifest, and by the time we had finished our cigars and coffee I knew that the 'proud' Earl of Elton, who could trace his lineage to the earliest days of the Crusaders, was as ready to bend his back and crawl in the dust for money as the veriest hotel-porter expectant of a sovereign 'tip.' I had never entertained a high opinion of the aristocracy, and on this occasion it was certainly not improved, but remembering that the spendthrift nobleman beside me was the father of Lady Sibyl, I treated him on the whole with more respect than his mean and grasping nature deserved.

On returning to the drawing-room after dinner I was struck by the chill weirdness that seemed to be imparted to it by the addition of Lady Elton's couch, which, placed near the fire, suggested a black sarcophagus in bulk and outline. It was practically a narrow bed on wheels, though partially disguised by a silk coverlet draped skilfully so as to somewhat hide its coffin-like shape. The extended figure of the paralysed Countess herself presented a death-like rigidity; but her face as she turned it towards us on our entrance, was undisfigured as yet and distinctly handsome, her eyes especially being large, clear, and almost brilliant. Her daughter introduced us both in a low tone, and she moved her head slightly by way of acknowledgment, studying us curiously the while.

"Well, my dear"--said Lord Elton briskly, "This is an unexpected pleasure! It is nearly three months since you honoured us with your company. How do you feel?"

"Better," she replied slowly, yet distinctly, her gaze now fixed with wondering intentness on Prince Rimânez.

"Mother found the room rather cold"--explained Lady Sibyl--"So we brought her as near to the fire as possible. It _is_ cold"--and she shivered--"I fancy it must be freezing hard."

"Where is Diana?" asked the Earl, looking about in search of that lively young lady.

"Miss Chesney has gone to her own room to write a letter;" replied his daughter somewhat frigidly--"She will be back directly."

At this moment Lady Elton feebly raised her hand and pointed to Lucio, who had moved aside to answer some question asked of him by Miss Charlotte.

"Who is that?" she murmured.

"Why, mother dear, I told you"--said Lady Sibyl gently--"That is Prince Lucio Rimânez, Papa's great friend."

The Countess's pallid hand still remained lifted, as though it were frozen in air.

"_What_ is he?" the slow voice again inquired,--and then the hand dropped suddenly like a dead thing.

"Now Helena, you must not excite yourself"--said her husband, bending over her couch with real or assumed anxiety; "Surely you remember all I have told you about the prince? And also about this gentleman, Mr Geoffrey Tempest?"

She nodded, and her eyes, turning reluctantly away from Rimânez, regarded me fixedly.

"You are a very young man to be a millionaire,"--were her next words, uttered with evident difficulty--"Are you married?"

I smiled, and answered in the negative. Her looks wandered from me to her daughter's face,--then back to me again with a singularly intent expression. Finally, the potent magnetism of Lucio's presence again attracted her, and she indicated him by a gesture.

"Ask your friend ... to come here ... and speak to me."

Rimânez turned instinctively at her request, and with his own peculiar charm and gallant grace of bearing, came to the side of the paralysed lady, and taking her hand, kissed it.

"Your face seems familiar to me,"--she said, speaking now, as it seemed, with greater ease--"Have I ever met you before?"

"Dear lady, you may have done so"--he replied in dulcet tones and with a most captivating gentleness of manner--"It occurs to me, now I think of it, that years ago, I saw once, as a passing vision of loveliness, in the hey-day of youth and happiness, Helena Fitzroy, before she was Countess of Elton."

"You must have been a mere boy--a child,--at that time!" she murmured faintly smiling.

"Not so!--for you are still young, Madame, and I am old. You look incredulous? Alas, why is it I wonder, I may not look the age I am! Most of my acquaintances spend a great part of their lives in trying to look the age they are not; and I never came across a man of fifty who was not proud to be considered thirty-nine. My desires are more laudable,--yet honourable eld refuses to impress itself upon my features. It is quite a sore point with me I assure you."

"Well, how old are you really?" asked Lady Sibyl smiling at him.

"Ah, I dare not tell you!" he answered, returning the smile; "But I ought to explain that in my countings I judge age by the workings of thought and feeling, more than by the passing of years. Thus it should not surprise you to hear that I feel myself old,--old as the world!"

"But there are scientists who say that the world is young;" I observed, "And that it is only now beginning to feel its forces and put forth its vigour."

"Such optimistic wise-acres are wrong," he answered,--"The world is a veritable husk of a planet; humanity has nearly completed all its allotted phases, and the end is near."

"The end?" echoed Lady Sibyl,--"Do you believe the world will ever come to an end?"

"I do, most certainly. Or, to be more correct, it will not actually perish, but will simply change. And the change will not agree with the constitution of its present inhabitants. They will call the transformation the Day of Judgment. I should imagine it would be a fine sight."

The Countess gazed at him wonderingly,--Lady Sibyl seemed amused.

"I would rather not witness it,"--said Lord Elton gruffly.

"Oh, why?" and Rimânez looked about with quite a cheerful air--"A final glimpse of the planet ere we _a_scend or _de_scend to our future homes elsewhere, would be something to remember! Madame"--here he addressed Lady Elton; "are you fond of music?"

The invalid smiled gratefully, and bent her head in acquiescence. Miss Chesney had just entered the room and heard the question.

"Do you play?" she exclaimed vivaciously, touching him on the arm with her fan.

He bowed. "I do. In an erratic sort of fashion. I also sing. Music has always been one of my passions. When I was very young,--ages ago,--I used to imagine I could hear the angel Israfel chanting his strophes amid the golden glow of heavenly glory,--himself white-winged and wonderful, with a voice out-ringing beyond the verge of paradise!"

As he spoke, a sudden silence fell upon us all. Something in his accent touched my heart to a strange sense of sorrow and yearning, and the Countess of Elton's dark eyes, languid with long suffering, grew soft as though with repressed tears.

"Sometimes," he continued more lightly--"just at odd moments--I like to believe in Paradise. It is a relief, even to a hardened sinner like myself, to fancy that there _may_ exist something in the way of a world better than this one."

"Surely sir," said Miss Charlotte Fitzroy severely--"you believe in Heaven?"

He looked at her and smiled slightly.

"Madame, forgive me! I do not believe in the clerical heaven. I know you will be angry with me for this frank confession! But I cannot picture the angels in white smocks with goose wings, or the Deity as a somewhat excitable personage with a beard. Personally I should decline to go to any heaven which was only a city with golden streets; and I should object to a sea of glass, resenting it as a want of invention on the part of the creative Intelligence. But----do not frown, dear Miss Fitzroy!--I do believe in Heaven all the same,--a different kind of heaven,--I often see it in my dreams!"

He paused, and again we were all silent, gazing at him. Lady Sibyl's eyes indeed, rested upon him with such absorbed interest, that I became somewhat irritated, and was glad, when turning towards the Countess once more, he said quietly.

"Shall I give you some music now, Madame?"