Ardath, Marie Corelli [e ink ebook reader txt] 📗

worst of it. One day it is an author who is ‘interviewed,’ the next it is a murderer,—now a statesman,—then a ballet dancer,—the same honor is paid to all who have won any distinct notoriety. And what is so absurd is, that the reading million don’t seem able to distinguish between ‘notoriety’ and ‘fame.’ The two things are so widely, utterly apart! Byron’s reputation, for instance, was much more notoriety during his life than fame—while Keats had actually laid hold on fame while as yet deeming himself unfamous. It’s curious, but true, nevertheless, that very often the writers who thought least of themselves during their lifetime have become the most universally renowned after their deaths. Shakespeare, I dare say, had no very exaggerated idea of the beauty of his own plays,—he seems to have written just the best that was in him, without caring what anybody thought of it. And I believe that is the only way to succeed in the end.”

 

“In the end!” repeated Alwyn dreamily—“In the end, no worldly success is worth attaining,—a few thousand years and the greatest are forgotten!”

 

“Not the GREATEST,”—said Villiers warmly—“The greatest must always be remembered.”

 

“No, my friend!—Not even the greatest! Do you not think there must have been great and wise and gifted men in Tyre, in Sidon, in Carthage, in Babylon?—There are five men mentioned in Scripture, as being ‘ready to write swiftly’—Sarea, Dabria, Selemia, Ecanus, and Ariel—where is the no doubt admirable work done by these?

Perhaps … who knows? … one of them was as great as Homer in genius,—we cannot tell!”

 

“True,—we cannot tell!” responded Villiers meditatively—“But, Alwyn, if you persist in viewing things through such tremendous vistas of time, and in measuring the Future by the Past, then one may ask what is the use of anything?”

 

“There IS no use in anything, except in the making of a strong, persistent, steady effort after good,” said Alwyn earnestly …

“We men are cast, as it were, between two swift currents, Wrong and Right,—Self and God,—and it seems more easy to shut our eyes and drift into Self and Wrong, than to strike out brave arms, and swim, despite all difficulty, toward God and Right, yet if we once take the latter course, we shall find it the most natural and the least fatiguing. And with every separate stroke of high endeavor we carry others with us,—we raise our race,—we bear it onward,—

upward! And the true reward, or best result of fame, is, that having succeeded in winning brief attention from the multitude, a man may be able to pronounce one of God’s lightning messages of inspired Truth plainly to them, while they are yet willing to stand and listen. This momentary hearing from the people is, as I take it, the sole reward any writer can dare to hope for,—and when he obtains it, he should remember that his audience remains with him but a very short while,—so that it is his duty to see that he employ his chance WELL, not to win applause for himself, but to cheer and lift others to noble thought, and still more noble fulfilment.”

 

Villiers regarded him wistfully.

 

“Alwyn, my dear fellow, do you want to be the Sisyphus of this era?—You will find the stone of Evil heavy to roll upward,—

moreover, it will exhibit the usually painful tendency to slip back and crush you!”

 

“How can it crush me?” asked his friend with a serene smile. “My heart cannot be broken, or my spirit dismayed, and as for my body, it can but die,—and death comes to every man! I would rather try to roll up the stone, however fruitless the task, than sit idly looking at it, and doing nothing!”

 

“Your heart cannot be broken? Ah! how do you know” … and Villiers shook his head dubiously—“What man can be certain of his own destiny?”

 

“Everyman can WILL his own destiny,”—returned Alwyn firmly. “That is just it. But here we are getting into a serious discussion, and I had determined to talk no more on such subjects till tonight.”

 

“And tonight we are to go in for them thoroughly, I suppose?”—

inquired Villiers with a quick look. “Tonight, my dear boy, you will have to decide whether you consider me mad or sane,” said Alwyn cheerfully—“I shall tell you truths that seem like romances—and facts that sound like fables,—moreover, I shall have to assure you that miracles DO happen whenever God chooses, in spite of all human denial of their possibility. Do you remember Whately’s clever skit—‘Historical Doubts of Napoleon I’?—showing how easy it was to logically prove that Napoleon never existed?—

That ought to enlighten people as to the very precise and convincing manner in which we can, if we choose, argue away what is nevertheless an incontestible FACT. Thus do skeptics deny miracles—yet we live surrounded by miracles! … do you think me crazed for saying so?”

 

Villiers laughed. “Crazed! No, indeed!—I wish every man in London were as sane and sound as you are!”

 

“Ah, but wait till tonight!” and Alwyn’s eyes sparkled mirthfully—“Perhaps you will alter your opinion then!”—Here, collecting his scattered manuscripts, he put them by—“I’ve done work for the present,”—he said—“Shall we go for a walk somewhere?”

 

Villiers assented, and they left the room together.

 

CHAPTER XXXV.

 

ONE AGAINST MANY.

 

The beautiful and socially popular Duchess de la Santoisie sat her at brilliantly appointed dinner-table, and flashed her bright eyes comprehensively round the board,—her party was complete. She had secured twenty of the best-known men and women of letters in all London, and yet she was not quite satisfied with the result attained. One dark, splendid face on her right hand had taken the lustre out of all the rest,—one quiet, courteous smile on a mouth haughty, yet sweet, had somehow or other made the entertainment of little worth in her own estimation. She was very fair to look upon, very witty, very worldly-wise,—but for once her beauty seemed to herself defective and powerless to charm, while the graceful cloak of social hypocrisy she was always accustomed to wear would not adapt itself to her manner tonight so well as usual. The author of “Nourhalma” the successful poet whose acquaintance she had very eagerly sought to make, was not at all the kind of man she had expected,—and now, when he was beside her as her guest, she did not quite know what to do with him.

 

She had met plenty of poets, so called, before,—and had, for the most part, found them insignificant looking men with an enormous opinion of themselves, and a suave, condescending contempt for all others of their craft; but this being,—this stately, kingly creature with the noble head, and far-gazing, luminous eyes,—this man, whose every gesture was graceful, whose demeanor was more royal than that of many a crowned monarch,—whose voice had such a singular soft thrill of music in its tone,—he was a personage for whom she had not been prepared,—and in whose presence she felt curiously embarrassed and almost ill at ease. And she was not the only one present who experienced these odd sensations. Alwyn’s appearance, when, with his friend Villiers, he had first entered the Duchess’s drawing-room that evening, and had there been introduced to his hostess, had been a sort of revelation to the languid, fashionable guests assembled; sudden quick whispers were exchanged—surprised glances,—how unlike he was to the general type of the nervous, fagged, dyspeptic “literary” man!

 

And now that every one was seated at dinner, the same impression remained on all,—an impression that was to some disagreeable and humiliating, and that yet could not be got over,—namely, that this “poet,” whom, in a way, the Duchess and her friends had intended to patronize, was distinctly superior to them all.

Nature, as though proud of her handiwork, proclaimed him as such, —while he, quite unconscious of the effect he produced, wondered why this bevy of human beings, most of whom were more or less distinguished in the world of art and literature, had so little to say for themselves. Their conversation was BANAL,—tame,—

ordinary; they might have been well-behaved, elegantly dressed peasants for aught they said of wise, cheerful, or witty. The weather,—the parks,—the theatres,—the newest actress, and the newest remedies for indigestion,—these sort of subjects were bandied about from one to the other with a vaguely tame persistence that was really irritating,—the question of remedies for indigestion seemed to hold ground longest, owing to the variety of opinions expressed thereon.

 

The Duchess grew more and more inwardly vexed, and her little foot beat an impatient tattoo under the table, as she replied with careless brevity to a few of the commonplace observations addressed to her, and cast an occasional annoyed glance at her lord, M le Duc, a thin, military-looking individual, with a well waxed and pointed mustache, whose countenance suggested an admirably executed mask. It was a face that said absolutely nothing,—yet beneath its cold impassiveness linked the satyr-like, complex, half civilized, half brutish mind of the born and bred Parisian,—the goblin-creature with whom pure virtues, whether in man or woman, are no more sacred than nuts to a monkey.

The suave charm of a polished civility sat on M le Due’s smooth brow, and beamed in his urbane smile,—his manners were exquisite, his courtesy irreproachable, his whole demeanor that of a very precise and elegant master of deportment. Yet, notwithstanding his calm and perfectly self-possessed exterior, he was, oddly enough, the frequent prey of certain extraordinary and ungovernable passions; there were times when he became impossible to himself,—

and when, to escape from his own horrible thoughts, he would plunge headlong into an orgie of wild riot and debauchery, such as might have made the hair of his respectable English acquaintances stand on end, had they known to what an extent he carried his excesses. But at these seasons of moral attack, he “went abroad for his health,” as he said, delicately touching his chest in order to suggest some interesting latent weakness there, and in these migratory excursions his wife never accompanied him, nor did she complain of his absence. When he returned, after two or three months, he looked more the “chevalier sans peur et sans reproche”

than ever; and neither he, nor the fair partner of his joys and sorrows, even committed such a breach of politeness as to inquire into each other’s doings during the time of their separation. So they jogged on together, presenting the most delightful outward show of wedded harmony to the world,—and only a few were found to hazard the remark, that the “racy” novels Madame la Duchesse wrote to wile away her duller hours were singularly “bitter” in tone, for a woman whose lot in life was so extremely enviable!

 

On this particular evening, the Duke affected to be utterly unconscious of the meaning looks his beautiful spouse shot at him every now and then,—looks which plainly said—“Why don’t you start some interesting subject of conversation, and stop these people from talking such everyday twaddle?” He was a clever man in his way, and his present mood was malign and mischievous; therefore he went on eating daintily, and discussing mild platitudes in the most languidly amiable manner imaginable, enjoying to the full the mental confusion and discomfort of his guests,—confusion and discomfort which, as he very well knew, was the psychological result of their having one in their midst whose life and character were totally opposite to, and distinctly separate from, their own. As Emerson truly says, “Let the world beware when a Thinker comes into it!”.. and here WAS this Thinker,—this type of the Godlike in Man,—this uncomfortably sincere personage, whose eyes were clear of falsehood, whose genius was incontestable, whose fame had taken society by assault, and who, therefore, was entitled to