Part 16

“Mercy!” exclaimed the Duchessa. “You are enthusiastic.”

“The book's admirers are so few, they must endeavour to make up in enthusiasm what they lack in numbers,” he submitted.

“But--at that rate--why are they so few?” she puzzled. “If the book is all you think it, how do you account for its unpopularity?”

“It could never conceivably be anything but unpopular,” said he. “It has the fatal gift of beauty.”

The Duchessa laughed surprise.

“Is beauty a fatal gift--in works of art?”

“Yes--in England,” he declared.

“In England? Why especially in England?”

“In English-speaking--in Anglo-Saxon lands, if you prefer. The Anglo-Saxon public is beauty-blind. They have fifty religions--only one sauce--and no sense of beauty whatsoever. They can see the nose on one's face--the mote in their neighbour's eye; they can see when a bargain is good, when a war will be expedient. But the one thing they can never see is beauty. And when, by some rare chance, you catch them in the act of admiring a beautiful object, it will never be for its beauty--it will be in spite of its beauty for some other, some extra-aesthetic interest it possesses--some topical or historical interest. Beauty is necessarily detached from all that is topical or historical, or documentary or actual. It is also necessarily an effect of fine shades, delicate values, vanishing distinctions, of evasiveness, inconsequence, suggestion. It is also absolute, unrelated--it is positive or negative or superlative--it is never comparative. Well, the Anglo-Saxon public is totally insensible to such things. They can no more feel them, than a blind worm can feel the colours of the rainbow.”

She laughed again, and regarded him with an air of humorous meditation.

“And that accounts for the unsuccess of 'A Man of Words'?”

“You might as well offer Francois Villon a banquet of Orient pearls.”

“You are bitterly hard on the Anglo-Saxon public.”

“Oh, no,” he disclaimed, “not hard--but just. I wish them all sorts of prosperity, with a little more taste.”

“Oh, but surely,” she caught him up, “if their taste were greater, their prosperity would be less?”

“I don't know,” said he. “The Greeks were fairly prosperous, were n't they? And the Venetians? And the French are not yet quite bankrupt.”

Still again she laughed--always with that little air of humorous meditation.

“You--you don't exactly overwhelm one with compliments,” she observed.

He looked alarm, anxiety.

“Don't I? What have I neglected?” he cried.

“You 've never once evinced the slightest curiosity to learn what I think of the book in question.”

“Oh, I'm sure you like it,” he rejoined hardily. “You have 'the seeing eye.'”

“And yet I'm just a humble member of the Anglo-Saxon public.”

“No--you're a distinguished member of the Anglo-Saxon 'remnant.' Thank heaven, there's a remnant, a little scattered remnant. I'm perfectly sure you like 'A Man of Words.'”

“'Like it' is a proposition so general. Perhaps I am burning to tell someone what I think of it in detail.”

She smiled into his eyes, a trifle oddly.

“If you are, then I know someone who is burning to hear you,” he avowed.

“Well, then, I think--I think...” she began, on a note of deliberation. “But I 'm afraid, just now, it would take too long to formulate my thought. Perhaps I'll try another day.”