“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