Chapter III
The smoking-room of the ‘Bohemian’ was full of a motley collection of men of the literary vagabond type—reporters, paragraphists, writers of penny dreadfuls, reeled off tape-wise from the thin spools of smoke-dried masculine brains; stray actors, playwrights anxious to translate the work of some famous foreigner and so get fastened on to his superior coat-tails, ‘adapters’ desirous of dramatising some celebrated novel and pocketing all the profits, anxious ‘proposers’ of new magazines looking about for ‘funds’ to back them up, and among all these an extremely casual sprinkling of the brilliant and successful workers in art and literature, who were either honorary members, or who had allowed their names to stand on the committee in order to give ‘prestige’ to a collection which would otherwise be termed the ‘rag-tag and bob-tail’ of literature. The opinions of the ‘Bohemian,’—the airily idiotic theories with which the members disported themselves, and furnished food for laughter to the profane—were occasionally quoted in the newspapers, which of course gave the club a certain amount of importance in its own eyes, if in nobody else’s. And the committee put on what is called a considerable amount of ‘side’; now and then affecting to honour some half-and-half celebrity by asking him to a Five-Shilling dinner, and dubbing him the ‘guest of the evening,’ he meantime gloomily taking note of the half-cold, badly-cooked poorness of the meal, and debating within himself whether it would be possible to get away in time to have a chop ‘from the grill’ somewhere on his way home. The ‘Bohemian’ had been a long time getting started, owing to the manner in which the gentlemen who were ‘in’ persistently black-balled every new aspirant for the honours of membership. The cause of this arose from the chronic state of nervous jealousy in which the ‘Bohemians’ lived. To a certain extent, and as far as their personal animosities would permit, they were a ‘Mutual Admiration Society,’ and dreaded the intrusion of any stranger who might set himself to discover ‘their tricks and their manners.’ They had a lawyer of their own, whose business it was to arrange the disputes of the club, should occasion require his services, and they also had a doctor, a humorous and very clever little man, who was fond of strolling about the premises in the evening, and taking notes for the writing of a medical treatise to be entitled ‘Literary Dyspepsia, and the Passion of Envy considered in its Action on the Spleen and Other Vital Organs,’ a book which he justly considered would excite a great deal of interest among his professional compeers. But in spite of the imposing Committee of Names, the lawyer and the doctor, the ‘Bohemian’ did not pay. It struggled on, hampered with debts and difficulties, like most of its members. It gave smoking-concerts occasionally, for which it charged extra, and twice a year it admitted ladies to its dinners, during which banquets speeches were made distinctly proving to the fair sex that they had no business at all to be present. Still, with every advantage that a running fire of satirical comment could give it in the way of notoriety, the ‘Bohemian’ was not a prosperous concern; and no Yankee Bullion-Bag seemed inclined to take it up or invest in the chances of its future. A more sallow, sour, discontented set of men than were congregated in the smoking-room on the particular evening now in question could hardly be found anywhere between London and the Antipodes, and only the little doctor, leaning back in a lounge-chair with his neatly-shaped little legs easily crossed, and a smile on his face, seemed to enjoy his position as an impartial spectator of the scene. His smile, however, was one of purely professional satisfaction; he was making studies of a ‘subject’ in the person of a long-haired ‘poet,’ who wrote his own reviews. This son of the Muses was an untidy, dirty-looking man, and his abundant locks irresistibly reminded one of a black goat-skin door-mat, worn in places where reckless visitors had wiped their muddy boots thereon. No doubt this poet washed occasionally, but his skin was somewhat of the peculiar composition complained of by Lady Macbeth—‘All the perfumes of Arabia’ would neither cleanse nor ‘sweeten’ it.
‘Jaundice,’ murmured the little doctor, pleasantly; ‘I’ll give him a year, and he’ll be down with its worst form. Too much smoke, too much whisky, combined mentally with conceit, spite, and the habitual concentration of the imagination on self; and no gaiety, wit or kindness to temper the mixture. All bad for the health—as bad as bad can be! But, God bless my soul, what does it matter? He’d never be missed!’
And he rubbed his hands jubilantly, smiling still.
Meanwhile the rhymester thus doomed was seated at a distant table and writing of himself thus,—
‘If Shelley was a poet, if Byron was a poet, if we own Shakespeare as a king of bards and dramatists, then Mr Aubrey Grovelyn is a poet also, eminently fitted to be the comrade of these immortals. Inspired thought, beauty of diction, ease and splendour of rhythm distinguish Aubrey Grovelyn’s muse as they distinguish Shakespeare’s utterances; and in bestowing upon this gifted singer the praise that is justly due to him, we feel we are rendering a service to England in being among the first to point out the glorious promise and value of a genius who is destined to outsoar all his contemporaries in far-reaching originality and grandeur of design.’
Finishing this with a bold dash, he put it in an envelope and addressed it to the office of the journal on which he was employed and known, simply as Alfred Brown. Mr Alfred Brown was on the staff of that journal as a critic; and as Brown he praised himself in the person of Aubrey Grovelyn. The great editor of the journal, being half his time away shooting, golfing, or otherwise amusing himself, didn’t know anything about either Grovelyn or Brown, and didn’t care. And the public, seeing Grovelyn described as a Shakespeare, promptly concluded he must be a humbug, and avoided his books as cautiously as though they had been labelled ‘Poison.’ Hence Brown-Aubrey-Grovelyn’s chronic yellow melancholy—his poems wouldn’t ‘sell.’ He crammed his eulogistic review of his own latest production into his pocket, and went over to the doctor, from whose cigar he kindled his own.
‘Have you seen the papers this evening?’ he asked languidly, dropping into a chair next to the club’s ‘Galen,’ and running one skinny hand through his door-mat curls.
‘I have just glanced through them,’ replied the doctor, indifferently. ‘I never do read anything but the telegrams.’
The poet raised his eyebrows superciliously.
‘So? You don’t allow your mind to be influenced by the ebb and flow of the human tide of events,’ he murmured vaguely. ‘But I should have thought you would have observed the ridiculous announcement concerning the new book by that horrid woman, Delicia Vaughan. It is monstrous! A sale of one hundred thousand copies; it’s an infernal lie!’
‘It’s a damnation truth!’ said a pleasant voice, suddenly, in the mildest of accents; and a good-looking man with a pretty trick of twirling his moustache, and an uncomfortable way of flashing his eyes, squared himself upright in front of both physician and poet. ‘I’m the publisher, and I know!’
There was a silence, during which Mr Grovelyn smiled angrily and re-arranged his door-mat. ‘When,’ proceeded the publisher, sweetly, ‘will you enable me to do the same thing for you, Mr Grovelyn?’
The doctor, whose name was Dalley, laughed; the poet frowned.
‘Sir,’ said Grovelyn, ‘my work does not appeal to this age, which is merely prolific in the generating of idiots; I trust myself and my productions to the justice of posterity.’
‘Then you must appeal to posterity’s publishers as well, mustn’t he, Mr Granton?’ suggested Doctor Dalley, with a humorous twinkle in his eyes, addressing the publisher, who, being the head of a wealthy and influential firm, was regarded by all the penniless scribblers in the ‘Bohemian’ with feelings divided betwixt awe and fear.
‘He must, indeed!’ said Granton. ‘Personally, I prefer to speculate in Delicia Vaughan, now Lady Carlyon. Her new book is a masterpiece; I am proud to be the publisher of it. And upon my word, I think the public show capital taste in “rushing” for it.’
‘Pooh, she can’t write!’ sneered Grovelyn. ‘Did you ever know a woman who could?’
‘I have heard of George Eliot,’ hinted Dalley.
‘An old hen, that imagined it could crow!’ said the poet, with intense malignity. ‘She’ll be forgotten as though she never existed, in a little while; and as for that Vaughan woman, she’s several grades lower still, and ought only to be employed for the London Journal!’
Granton looked at him, and bit his lips to hide a smile.
‘It strikes me you’d rather like to stand in Lady Carlyon’s shoes, all the same, Mr Grovelyn,’ he said.
Grovelyn laughed, with such a shrill sound in the laughter, that Dr Dalley immediately made a mental note entitled ‘Splenetic Hysteria,’ and watched him with professional eagerness.
‘Not I,’ he exclaimed. ‘Everybody knows her husband writes more than half her books!’
‘That’s a lie!’ said a full, clear voice behind them. ‘Her husband is as big an ass as you are!’
Grovelyn turned round fiercely, and confronted Paul Valdis. There was a silence of surprise and consternation. Several men rose from various parts of the room, and came to see what was going on. Dr Dalley rubbed his hands in delightful anticipation of a ‘row,’ but no one spoke or moved to interfere. The two men, Grovelyn and Valdis, stood face to face; the one mean-featured, with every movement of his body marked by a false and repulsive affectation, the other a manly and heroic figure distinguished by good looks and grace of bearing, with the consciousness of right and justice flashing in his eyes.
‘You accuse me of telling a lie, Mr Valdis,’ hissed Grovelyn, ‘and you call me an ass!’
‘I do,’ retorted Valdis, coolly. ‘It is certainly a lie that Lord Carlyon writes half his wife’s books. I had a letter from him once, and found out by it that he didn’t known how to spell, much less express himself grammatically. And of course you are an ass if you think he could do anything in the way of literature; but you don’t think so—you only say so out of pure jealousy of a woman’s fame!’
‘You shall answer for this, Mr Valdis!’ exclaimed Grovelyn, the curls of his door-mat coiffure bristling with rage. ‘By Heaven, you shall answer for it!’
‘When you please, and how you please,’ returned Valdis, composedly; ‘Now and here, if you like, and if the members permit fighting on the club premises.’
Exclamations of ‘No, no!’ mingled with laughter, partially drowned his voice. Everyone at the ‘Bohemian’ knew and dreaded Valdis; he was the most influential person on the committee, and the most dangerous if offended.
‘Lady Carlyon’s name is hardly fitted to be a bone of contention for us literary and play-acting dogs-in-the-manger,’ he continued. ‘She does not write verse, so she is not in your way, Mr Grovelyn, nor will she interfere with your claim on posterity. She is not an actress, so she does not rob me of any of my honours as an actor, and I think we should do well to magnanimously allow her the peaceful enjoyment of her honestly-earned reputation, without grouping ourselves together like dirty street-boys to try and throw mud at her. Our mud doesn’t stick, you know! Her book is an overwhelming success, and her husband will doubtless enjoy all the financial profits of it.’
He turned on his heel and looked over some papers lying on the table. Grovelyn touched his arm; there was an evil leer on his face.
‘The pen is mightier than the sword, Mr Valdis!’ he observed.
‘Ay, ay! That means you are going to blackguard me in the next number of the ha’penny Clarion? Be it so! Truth shall not budge for a ha’porth of slander!’
He resumed his perusal of the papers, and Grovelyn walked away slowly, his eyes fixed on the ground, and a brooding mischief in his face.
‘You should never ruffle the temper of a man who has liver complaint, Valdis,’ said Dr Dalley, cheerfully, drawing his chair up to the table where the handsome actor still leaned. ‘All evil humours come from the troubles of that important organ, and I am sure, if I could only meet a would-be murderer in time, I could save him from the committal of his intended wicked deed by a dose—quite a small dose—of suitable medicine!’
Valdis laughed rather forcedly.
‘Could you? Then you’d better attend to Grovelyn without delay. He’s ripe for murder—with the pen!’
Dr Dalley rubbed his well-shaven, rounded chin meditatively.
‘Is he? Well, perhaps he is; I really shouldn’t wonder! Curiously enough, now I come to think of it, he has certain points about him that are synonymous with a murderer’s instinct—phrenologically and physiologically speaking, I mean. It is rather strange he should be a poet at all.’
‘Is he a poet?’ queried Valdis, contemptuously; ‘I never heard it honestly admitted. One does not acknowledge a man as a poet simply because he has a shock head of very dirty hair.’
‘My dear Valdis,’ expostulated the little doctor, amiably, ‘you really are very bitter, almost violent in your strictures upon the man, who to me is one of the most interesting persons I have ever met! Because I foresee his death—due to very complex and entertaining complications of disease—in the space of—let me see! Well, suppose we say eighteen months! I do not think we shall have any chance of an autopsy. I wish I could think it likely, but I am afraid—’ Here Dr Dalley shook his head, and looked so despondent concerning the slender hope he had of dissecting Grovelyn after death, that Valdis laughed heartily, and this time unrestrainedly.
‘You forget, there’s the new photography; you could photograph his interior while he’s alive!’
‘By Jove! I never thought of that!’ cried the doctor, joyfully; ‘Of course! I’ll have it done when the disease has made a little more progress. It will be extremely instructive!’
‘It will,’ said Valdis. ‘Especially if you reproduce it in the journals, and call it “Portrait of a Lampooner’s Interior under Process of Destruction by the Microbes of Disappointment and Envy.”
‘Good! good!’ chuckled Dalley, ‘And, my dear Valdis, how would you like a photo entitled, “Portrait of a Distinguished Actor’s Imaginative Organism consumed by the Fires of a Hopeless Love?”’
Valdis coloured violently, and anon grew pale.
‘You are an old friend of mine, Dalley,’ he said slowly, ‘but you may go too far!’
‘So I may, and so I have!’ returned the little doctor, penitently, and with an abashed look. ‘Forgive me, my dear boy; I’ve been guilty of a piece of impertinence, and I’m sorry! There! But I should like a few words with you alone, if you don’t mind. It’s Sunday night; you can’t go and be “Ernani.” Will you waste a few minutes of your company on me—outside these premises, where the very walls have ears?’
Valdis assented, and in a few minutes they left the club together. With their departure there was a slight stir among the men in the room, who were reading, smoking, and drinking whisky and water.
‘I wish she’d take up with him!’ growled one man, whose head was half hidden behind a Referee. ‘Why the devil doesn’t she play the fool like other women?’
‘Whom are you speaking of?’ inquired a stout personage, who was busy correcting his critical notes on a new play which had been acted for the first time the previous evening.
‘Delicia Vaughan—Lady Carlyon,’ answered the first man. ‘Valdis is infatuated with her. Why she doesn’t go over to him, I can’t imagine; a writing female need not be more particular than a dancing female, I should say they’re both public characters, and Carlyon has thrown himself down as a free gift at the feet of La Marina, so there’s no obstacle in the way, except the woman’s own extraordinary “cussedness.”
‘What good would it do you that she should “go over,” as you call it, to Valdis?’ inquired the stout scribbler, dubiously, biting the end of his pencil.
‘Good? Why, none to me in particular,’ said the other, ‘but it would drag her down! Don’t you see? It would prove to the idiotic public, that is just now running after her as if she were a goddess, that she is only the usual frail stuff of which women are made. I should like that! I confess I should like it! I like women to keep in their places—’
‘That is, on the down grade,’ suggested the stout gentleman, still dubiously.
‘Of course! what else were they made for? La Marina, who kicks up her skirts, and hits her nose with the point of her big toe, is far more of a woman, I take it, and certainly more to the taste of a man, than the insolent, brilliant, superior Delicia Vaughan!’
‘Oh! You admit she is brilliant and superior?’ said the stout critic, with a smile. ‘Well, you know that’s saying a great deal! I’m an old-fashioned man—’
‘Of course you are!’ put in a young fellow, standing near. ‘You like to believe there may be good women,—real angels,—on earth; you like to believe it, and so do I!’
He was a fresh-coloured youth, lately come up to London from the provinces to try his hand at literature; and the individual with the Referee, who had started the conversation, glanced him over with the supremest contempt.
‘I hope your mother’s in town to take care of you, you ninny,’ he said. ‘You’re a very callow bird!’
The young man laughed good-naturedly.
‘Am I? Well, all the same, I’d rather honour women than despise them.’
The stout critic looked up from his notebook approvingly.
‘Keep that up as long as you can, youngster,’ he said. ‘It won’t hurt you!’
A silence followed; the man with the Referee spoke not another word, and the fresh-coloured provincial, getting tired of the smoke and the general air of egotistical self-concentration with which each member of the club sat fast in his own chosen chair, absorbed in his own chosen form of inward meditation, took a hasty departure, glad to get out into the cool night air. His way home lay through a part of Mayfair, and at one of the houses he passed he saw a long line of carriages outside and a brilliant display of light within. Some fashionable leader of society was holding a Sunday evening reception; and moved by a certain vague interest and curiosity, the young reporter lingered for a moment watching the gaily-dressed women passing in and out. While he yet waited, a dignified butler appeared on the steps and murmured something in the ear of a gold-buttoned commissionaire, who thereupon shouted vociferously,—
‘Lady Car-ly-on’s carriage! This way!’
And as an elegant coupé, drawn by two spirited horses drove swiftly up in response to the summons, a woman wrapped in a soft, white mantilla of old Spanish lace, and holding up her silken train with one hand, came out of the house with a gentleman, evidently her host, who was escorting her to the carriage. The young man from the country leaned eagerly forward and caught sight of a proud, delicate face illumined by two dark violet eyes, a flashing glimpse of beauty that vanished ere fully seen. But it was enough to make him who had been called a ‘callow bird’ wax suddenly indignant with certain self-styled celebrities he had just left behind at the ‘Bohemian.’
‘What beasts they are!’ he muttered; ‘what cads! Thank God they’ll never be famous; they’re too mean! To fling their dirty spite at a woman like that! It’s disgusting! Wait till I get a chance; I’ll “review” their trash for them!’
And warmed by the prospect of this future vengeance, the ‘callow bird’ went home to roost.