Part 82

Then Tanqueray spoke one word, "Splendid!"

Nina turned her head and looked up at the poet. His eyes were still following his vision. Her voice recalled him.

"Owen," she said, "will you bring the rest? Bring down all you've got."

Tanqueray saw as she spoke to him that there came again that betraying tenderness about her mouth; as she looked at him, her eyes lifted their hoods, revealing the sudden softness and surrender.

And as Tanqueray watched her he was aware that the queer eyes of the man were turned on him, rather than on Nina. They looked through him, as if they saw with a lucidity even more unendurable than his, what was going on in Tanqueray's soul.

He said something inaudible to Nina and went out of the room with a light, energetic stride.

"How can you stand his eyes?" said Tanqueray; "it's like being exposed to the everlasting stare of God."

"It is, rather."

"What's his name again?"

"Owen Prothero."

"What do you know about him."

She told him what she knew. Prothero was, as Tanqueray saw, an unlicked Celt. He had been, if Tanqueray would believe it, in the Indian Medical Service, and had flung it up before he got his pension. He had been to British Central Africa on a commission for investigating sleeping sickness; he spoke of it casually as if it were the sort of thing you naturally were on. He had volunteered as a surgeon in the Boer War. And with it all he was what Tanqueray saw.

"And his address?" Tanqueray inquired.

"He lives here."

"Why shouldn't he?" He answered her challenging eyes. They shot light at him.

"He is a great poet? I was right?"

"Absolutely. He's great enough for anybody. How on earth did you get hold of him?"

She was silent. She seemed to be listening for the sound of Prothero's feet on the stair.

He was soon with them, bringing his sheaf of manuscript. He had brought all he had got. The chanting began again and continued till the light failed.

And as Tanqueray listened the restless, irritable devilry passed from his face. Salient, thrust forward toward Prothero, it was the face of a winged creature in adoration, caught suddenly into heaven, breasting the flood of the supernal light. For Tanqueray could be cruel in his contempt for all clevernesses and littlenesses, for all achievements that had the literary taint; but he was on his knees in a moment before the incorruptible divinities. He had the immortal's scent for immortality.

When the chanting ceased they talked.

Tanqueray warned Prothero of the horrors of premature renown. Prothero declared that he had none. Nobody knew his name.

"Good," said Tanqueray. "Celebrity's all very well at the end, when you've done the things you want to do. It's a bad beginning. It doesn't matter quite so much if you live in the country where nobody's likely to know you're celebrated till you're dead. But if you will live in London, your only chance is to remain obscure."

"There are in London at this moment," he continued, "about one thousand celebrated authors. There are, I imagine, about fifty distinct circles where they meet. Fifty distinct hells where they're bound to meet each other. Hells where they're driven round and round, meeting each other. Steaming hells where they sit stewing in each other's sweat----"

"Don't, George!" cried Nina.

"Loathsome hells, where they swarm and squirm and wriggle in and out of each other. Sanguinary, murderous hells, where they're all tearing at each other's throats. How can you hope, how can you possibly hope to do anything original, if you're constantly breathing that atmosphere? Horrid used-up air that authors--beasts!--have breathed over and over and over again."

"As if," said Nina, "we weren't authors."

"My dear Nina, nobody would think it of us. Nobody would have thought it of Jinny if she hadn't gone and got celebrated."