THE FLYBYNIGHTS.
To such of womankind as knew of its existence there were few places in
London so thoroughly unpopular as the Flybynights Club. And yet it was
an unpretending little room, boasting none of the luxury of decoration
generally associated in the female mind with notions of club-life, and
offering no inducement for membership save that it was open at very
abnormal hours, and that it was very select. The necessary
qualification for candidature was that you should be somebody; no
matter what your profession (provided, of course, that you were a
gentleman by position), you must have made some mark in it, shown
yourself ahead of the ruck of competitors, before you could have been
welcome among the Flybynights. Two or three leading advocates,
attached for the most part to the criminal bar; half-a-dozen landscape
and figure painters of renown; half-a-dozen actors; a sporting man or
two, with the power of talking about something else besides Brother to
Bluenose's performances; two or three City men, who combined the most
thorough business habits with convivial tastes in the "off" hours; a
few members of Parliament, who were compelled to respect the room as a
thoroughly neutral ground; a few journalists and authors, and a
sprinkling of nothing-doing men about town,--formed the corporate body
of the club. What was its origin? I believe that certain members of
the Haresfoot Club, finding that establishment scarcely so convivial
as report had led them to believe; that the _Dii majores_ of the house
were a few snuffy old gentlemen, without an idea beyond the assertion
of their own dignity and the keeping up of some dreary fictions and
time-worn conventionalities; that the delights of the smoking-room, so
much talked of in the outer world, in reality consisted in sitting
between a talkative barrister and a silent stockbroker, or listening
to the complaints against the management of the club by the committee;
finding, in fact, that the place was dull, bethought them of
establishing another where they could be more amused. Hence the
Flybynights.
The Flybynights had no house of their own; they merely occupied a room
on the basement of the Orpheus tavern,--a dull sombre old room, with
big couches and lounges covered with frayed leather, with a smoky
old green-flock paper, and with no ornament save a battered old
looking-glass in a fly-blown frame. Occasionally roisterers new to
town, on their way to the big concert-room of the Orpheus, where they
were to be enchanted with the humour of Mr. Bloss's "Dying Cadger's
Lament," or the pathos of Mr. Seeinault's "Trim-built Wherry," would
in mistake push open the green-baize door leading to the Flybynights
sanctum, and immediately withdraw in dismay at the dinginess of the
room and the grim aspect of its occupants. That grimness, however, was
only assumed at the apparition of a stranger; when the members were
alone among themselves, perfect freedom from restraint was the rule.
And if, on the next morning, the jurymen who listened with awe to the
withering denunciations which fell from the lips of the learned
counsel for the prosecution,--the bank-directors who nodded approval
to the suggestions of certain shrewd financiers,--the noble sitters
who marked the brows of the artists engaged on their portraits,
"sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,"--nay, even the patients
who gazed with eager eyes to glean something from the countenances of
the physicians then clutching their pulses,--had seen counsel,
financiers, artists, and physicians on the previous evening at the
Flybynights, they could not have recognised them for the same men. The
fame of the club spread; anecdotes and _bon-mots_ ran round town more
quickly, and were better received, when they had the Flybynight stamp.
It was rumoured that O'Blank and Macaster, the great authors, were
occasionally to be seen there in the flesh, conversing like ordinary
mortals; heavy swells found out that it was open as late as Pratt's,
and asked each other, in elliptic phraseology, "Whether 'twasn't good
kind place, eh? met 'musing kind fellahs there; made laugh'n, that
kind thing?" But though they made various attempts at election, they
never got beyond an occasional visit to the club; friendly attempts to
smuggle them in as members were dead failures; and at every ballot,
generally held at midnight, the strident voice of Rupert Robinson,
author and dramatist, could be heard asking, at the mention of any
candidate's name, "Who is he? what can he do? what has he done?"
questions which, unless satisfactorily answered, caused the immediate
pilling of the pretender to association with the Flybynights.
A few weeks after the Schröders' reception, Beresford and Simnel, who
had been dining together, strolled into the club soon after midnight.
Beresford was a member; Simnel came as his guest; the latter would
have been safe of election, as his tact and shrewdness were very
generally known and highly esteemed amongst the men, but he always
refused to be put in nomination. "It's all very well for Beresford,"
he would say; "he's a Commissioner, and can do as he likes; I'm an
upper servant; and though you're a deuced pleasant set of fellows, you
haven't got a great name for respectability with the B.P., or British
Public, whom I serve. It's horribly virtuous, is the B.P., and is
always in bed before you sweet youths meet in this bower of bliss. So
that though I'm delighted to come occasionally with Charley and pay
you a visit, I must be in a position, if called upon, to swear that
I'm not an affiliated member of your sacred brotherhood." The other
men understood all this, and liked Simnel better for his candour; and
there was no visitor at the Flybynights more welcome than he. It was a
great occasion at the Flybynights; one of the members, Mr. Plinlimmon
the poet, had that day been giving a lecture "On Sentiment, its Use
and Abuse," at St. Cecilia's Hall, and had had great success. For Mr.
Plinlimmon was not a mere common poet who made verses and sold
them; he was cousin to Lady Heritage, whose husband was the Lord
Privy-Purse; and he was very well off, and wrote only for his
amusement, and consequently was the very man to be patronised.
Moreover, he wrote weak little verselets, like very-much-diluted
Wordsworth, abounding in passages quotable for Academy pictures of
bread-and-butter children; and he was much taken up by Mr.
Spicklittle, the editor of the _Boomerang Magazine_, so soon as it was
understood that he stood well with the fashionable world. And there
had been a very fashionable audience at St. Cecilia's Hall to hear Mr.
Plinlimmon on "Sentiment," and the stalls had been filled with what
was afterwards stated in the public prints to be the rank and flower
of the land; and high-born women had complimented him on the
conclusion of his labours, and had voted his lecture charming; all of
which thoroughly consoled the lecturer, and enabled him to forget the
rude conduct of certain rough-spoken critics in the body of the hall,
who had loudly cried "Bosh!" at his finest passages, and gone out with
much shuffling of thick boots and dropping of heavy walking-sticks
long before his peroration. And after dining with a countess, Mr.
Plinlimmon thought that the right thing was to go down and show
himself at the Flybynights Club, of which he was a member; and he had
entered the room just before Beresford and Simnel arrived.
"Hail, Plinlimmon!" shouted Mr. Magnus the historian, with kindly
glances beaming through his spectacles; "hail, bard of the
what-d'ye-call-it! How air you, colonel?"
"Hallo, Plinlimmon!" shouted Mr. Rupert Robinson; "been giving a show,
haven't you? what sort of house did you have? who looked after your
checks? you were very well billed, I noticed."
Plinlimmon shuddered.
"Lecturing, haven't you?" asked Mr. Slater, critic of the _Moon_.
"Yes," said Plinlimmon, "I have been giving a lecture."
"Ah!" said Mr. Schrink, critic of the _Statesman_, "if I'm not wrong,
Dr. Johnson defines the verb to lecture as to 'instruct insolently and
dogmatically.' You're quite capable of that, Plinlimmon."
"What was your subject, sir?" asked Mr. Mugg, low comedian of the
Sanspareil Theatre.
"Sentiment, sir!" said Mr. Plinlimmon, fiercely; it began to dawn on
him that he was being chaffed.
"Deary me!" said Mr. Mugg, with feigned wonder and uplifted hands;
"sentiment, eh? them's my sentiments!"
"Silence, you ribalds!" said Mr. Magnus. "You had a large attendance,
I hear, Plinlimmon; more women than men, though, I suppose? Men don't
come in the daytime."
"There was a great gathering of the female aristocracy," said
Plinlimmon, perking up his head.
"One old woman jawing always brings together a lot of others,"
growled Mr. Dunster, beneath his breath. He had been apparently
dozing in a far corner of the room, but had roused up at the word
"aristocracy,"--as sure an irritant to him as a red rag to a
bull,--and his bright blue eyes were gleaming.
"I didn't think much of your delivery, Plinlimmon," said Mr. Slater.
"It was as slow as a midday postman's, and not so sure," said Mr.
Schrink; "you got uncommonly drowsy and bag-pipy at times."
"I'll tell you what it is Plinlimmon," said Mr. Dunster; "you are
uncommonly dreary! You're a swell, and you can't help it; but you were
horribly slow. I'll tell you what it is, my young friend; you're far
too dull by yourself,--_you want a piano_."
During the roar which followed this remark, Beresford felt a light
touch on his arm, and turning round saw Dr. Prater.
Not to be known to Dr. Prater was to confess that the "pleasure of
your acquaintance" was of little value; for assuredly, had it been
worth any thing, Dr. Prater would have had it by hook or by crook. A
wonderful man, Dr. Prater, who had risen from nothing, as his
detractors said; but however that might be, he had a practice scarcely
excelled by any in London. Heart and lungs were Dr. Prater's
specialities; and persons imagining themselves afflicted in those
regions came from all parts of England, and thronged the doctor's
dining room in Queen-Anne Street in the early forenoons, vainly
pretending to read Darwin _On the Fertilisation of Orchids, the Life
of Captain Hedley Vicars_, or the Supplement of yesterday's _Times_;
and furtively glancing round at the other occupants of the room, and
wondering what was the matter with them. That dining-room looked
rather different about a dozen times in the season, of an evening,
when the books were cleared away, and the big bronze gas-chandelier
lighted, and the doctor sat at the large round-table surrounded by a
dozen of the pleasantest people in London. Such a mixture! Never
was such a man for "bringing people together" as Dr. Prater. The
manager of the Italian Opera (Dr. Prater's name was to all the
sick-certificates for singers) would be seated next to a judge, who
would have a leading member of the Jockey Club on his other hand, and
a bishop for his _vis-à-vis_. Next the bishop would be a cotton-lord,
next to him the artist of a comic periodical, and next to him a rising
member of the Opposition, with an Indian colonel and an American
comedian, here on a starring engagement, in juxtaposition. The dinner
was always good, the wines excellent, and the doctor was the life and
soul of the party. He had something special to say to every one; and
as his big protruding eyes shone and glimmered through his gold-rimmed
spectacles, he looked like a convivial little owl. A very different
man over the dinner-table to the smug little pale-faced man in black,
whom wretched patients found in the morning sitting behind a
leather-covered table, on which a stethoscope was conspicuously
displayed, and who, after sounding the chests of consumptive curates
or struggling clerks, would say, with an air of blandness, dashed with
sorrow, "I'm afraid the proverbially treacherous air of our climate
will not do for us, my dear sir! I'm afraid we must spend our winter
at Madeira, or at least at Pau. _Good_ day to you;" and then the
doctor, after shaking hands with his patient, would slip the tips of
his fingers into his trousers-pockets, into which would fall another
little paper-package to join a number already there deposited, while
the curate or clerk, whose yearly income was perhaps two hundred
pounds, and who probably had debts amounting to twice his annual
earnings, would go away wondering whether it was better to endeavour
to borrow the further sum necessary at ruinous interest, or to go back
and die in the cold Lincolnshire clay parish, or in the bleak Northern
city, as the case might be. On one thing the doctor prided himself
greatly, that he never let a patient know what he thought of him. He
would bid a man remove his waistcoat with a semi-jocund air, and the
next instant listen to a peculiar "click" inside his frame, which
betrayed the presence of heart-disease liable at any moment to carry
the man off, without altering a muscle of his face or a tone of his
voice. "Hum! ha! we must be a little careful; we must not expose
ourselves to the night-air! Take a leetle more care of yourself, my
dear sir; for instance, I would wear a wrap round the throat--some
wrap, you know, to prevent the cold striking to the part affected.
Send this to Bell's, and get it made up, and take it three times a-day;
and let me see you on--on Saturday. _Good_ day to you." And there
would not be the smallest quiver in the hard metallic voice, or the
smallest twinkle in the observant eye behind the gold-rimmed glasses,
although the doctor knew that the demon Consumption, by his buffet,
had raised that red spot on the sufferer's cheek, and was rapidly
eating away his vitality.
But if Dr. Prater kept a strict reticence to his patients as regarded
their own ailments, he was never so happy as when enlarging to them on
the diseases of their fellow-sufferers, or of informing esoteric
circles of the special varieties of disorder with which his practice
led him to cope. "_You_ ill, my dear sir!" he would say to some puny
specimen; then, settling himself into his waistcoat after examination,
"_you_ complain of narrow-chestedness,--why, my dear sir, do you know
Sir Hawker de la Crache? You've a pectoral development which is
perfectly surprising when contrasted with Sir Hawker's. But then he,
poor man! last stage,--Madeira no good,--would sit up all night
playing whist at Reid's Hotel. Algiers no good,--too much brandy,
tobacco, and _baccarat_ with French officers--nothing any good. _You_,
my dear sir, compared to Sir Hawker--pooh, nonsense!" Or in another
form: "Any such case, my dear madam? any such case?"--turning to a
large book, having previously consulted a small index--"a hundred
such! Here, for instance, Lady Susan Bray, now staying at Ventnor,
living entirely on asses'-milk--in some of our conditions we must live
on asses'-milk--left lung quite gone, life hanging by a thread. You're
a Juno, ma'am, in comparison to Lady Susan!" There was no mistake,
however, about the doctor's talent; men in his own profession, who
sneered at his _charlatanerie_ of manner, allowed that he was
thoroughly well versed in his subject. He was very fond of young men's
society; and, with all his engagements, always found time to dine
occasionally with the Guards at Windsor, with a City Company or two,
or with a snug set _en petit comité_ in Temple chambers, and to visit
the behind-scenes of two or three theatres, the receptions of certain
great ladies, and occasionally the meetings of the Flybynights Club.
To the latter he always came in a special suit of clothes on account
of the impregnation of tobacco-smoke; and when coming thither he left
his carriage and his address, in case he was required, at the Minerva,
with orders to fetch him at once. It would never have done for some of
his patients to know that he was a member of the Flybynights.
Such was Dr. Prater, who touched Beresford on the arm and said, "Not
again, my dear sir! I will not be balked of the opportunity of saying,
'how d'ye do?' to you again."
"Ah, doctor," said Beresford with that apparent frankness and
_bonhomie_ to which he owed so much of his popularity, "delighted to
see you! But what do you mean 'balked of the opportunity'? Where was
that?"
"A few weeks since, just before I left town;--I've been away, and Dr.
Seaton has kindly attended to my practice;--we met at the house of our
charming friend Mrs. Schröder; but I could not catch your eye. You
were too well engaged; there was, as somebody--I don't know who, but
somebody that every one knows--has said, there was metal more
attractive. Ha! ha! A charming woman, Mrs. Schröder! a very charming
woman!"
"Very charming," echoed Mr. Beresford shortly, not particularly caring
about finding himself thoroughly focussed by the doctor's sharpest
glances concentrated through his spectacles. "By the way, don't you
know our secretary, Mr. Simnel, Dr. Prater?"
The gentlemen bowed. "I have the pleasure of being well acquainted
with Mr. Simnel by name, and of being at the present moment engaged in
a correspondence with him in reference to a certificate which I have
given. And, by the way, my dear sir," turning to Simnel, "you really
must give young Pierrepoint his six weeks. You must indeed!"
"If it rested with me, doctor, I'd give him unlimited leave; confer on
him the order of the 'sack,'" said Simnel, bluntly--"an idle stuck-up
young hound!"
"Harsh words, my dear sir; harsh words! However, I will leave our
young friend's case with you and Mr. Beresford; I am sure it could not
be in better hands. You were not in Saxe-Coburg Square the other
night, I think? De-lightful party!"
"No," said Simnel, "I'm not a great evening-party man myself; it's
only your butterflies of fashion, like our friend here, who enjoy
those light and airy gaieties. My pleasures are of a more substantial
kind. By the way, doctor, how's Kitty Vavasour's cough?"
The doctor's eyes twinkled as he replied, "Oh, much better--very much
better. Horrible draught down that first entrance, my dear sir, as she
perhaps told--I mean, as you probably know. Dreadful draught! enough
to kill half the _coryphées_ in London. I've spoken to Grabb about it,
but he won't do any thing; and when I hinted at the drapery, asked
me if I thought he was going to let his ballet-girls dance in
bathing-gowns. Very rude man, Grabb."
"Very good style they did that in the other night," said Beresford,
cutting in--"in Saxe-Coburg Square, I mean--very good, wasn't it? I
suppose it was the lady's taste; but when they get hold of a woman
with any notion of arrangement and effect, these _parvenu_ fellows
from the City certainly don't grudge the money for their fun. And in
the way the Schröders are living, the establishment must cost a pretty
sum, I should imagine."
"A pretty sum indeed, my dear sir," said the doctor. "However, I
understand on all sides that Mr. Schröder can perfectly afford it. I
hear from those who ought to know" (a great phrase of Dr. Prater's,
this) "that his income is princely!" And then the doctor looked at the
other two and repeated "princely!" and smacked his lips as though the
word had quite a nice taste in his mouth.
"It's a good thing to be a Polish Jew," growled Mr. Simnel. "This
fellow's ancestors lent money to long-haired Grafs and swaggering
Electors, and got their interest when they could; and thought
themselves deuced lucky not to get their teeth pulled out when they
asked for a little on account, or not to be put on the fire when they
presented their bill. Their descendant lives in pleasanter days; we've
given up pulling out their teeth, worse luck! And that neat little
instrument, 'Victoria, by the grace,' is as open to Jews as
Christians. I always thought there was something wrong in that."
"This Schröder is a tremendously lucky fellow, by Jove!" said
Beresford. "He's got a very pretty wife and an enormous fortune; and
though he's not young, to judge from all appearances, has a
constitution of iron, and will live for years to enjoy his good
fortune."
"Ah, my dear sir," said Dr. Prater in a low and solemn voice, "I'm
afraid you're not correct in one particular; not correct in one
particular!" and the little man shook his head and looked specially
oracular.
Simnel glanced up at him at once from under his heavy eyebrows; but
Beresford only said, "Why, doctor, you're not going to try and make me
believe any envious disparagement of Schröder's riches?"
"Not for the world, my dear sir; not for the world! Such rumours have
been spread! but, as you say, only among the envious and jealous, who
would whisper-away Coutts's credit, and decline to intrust their
miserable balance to Barings'! No; my doubts as to Schröder relate to
another matter."
"His health?" said Simnel, who had kept his eyes on the solemn little
man, and was regarding him keenly.
"Pre-cisely!" said the doctor. And he stepped aside for an instant,
helped himself to a pinch of snuff from a box on a neighbouring table,
and returned to his companions, gazing up at them with a solemn steady
stare that made him look more like an owl than ever.
"His health!" exclaimed Beresford, "why there's surely nothing the
matter with that! He has the chest of a horse and the digestion of an
ostrich. I don't know a man of his age to whom, to look at, you'd give
a longer life."
"Right, my dear sir," replied the doctor, "right enough from a
non-professional view. But Mr. Schröder, like the gentleman of whom I
have heard, but whose name I can't call to mind, has that within which
passeth show. I _know_ the exact state of his condition."
"This is very interesting," said Mr. Simnel, drawing closer to the
doctor on the ottoman; "very interesting, indeed; yours is a wonderful
profession, doctor, for gaining insight into men and things. Would it
be too much to ask you to tell us a little more about this particular
case?"
"Well, you know, I don't often talk of these matters; there are men in
our profession, my dear sir, who gossip and chatter, and I believe
make it pay very well; but they are men of no intellect, mere quacks
and charlatans--quacks and charlatans! But with gentlemen like
yourselves, men of the world, I don't mind occasionally revealing a
few of the secrets of the--the--what d'ye call 'em?--prison-house. The
fact is--" and the doctor lowered his voice and looked additionally
solemn,--"that Mr. Schröder's life hangs by a thread."
Both his listeners started, and Mr. Simnel from between his set teeth
said, "The devil!"
"By a thread!" repeated the doctor, holding out his finger and thumb
as though he actually had the thread between them. "He may go off at
any moment; his life is not certain for an hour; he's engaged, as you
know, in tremendous transactions, and any sudden fright or passion
would be his certain death."
"Ah, then his disease is--"
"Heart, my dear sir, heart!" said the doctor, tapping himself on the
left side of his waistcoat; "his heart's diseased,--one cannot exactly
say how far, but I suspect strongly,--and he may go out at any moment
like the snuff of a candle."
"Have you known this long?" asked Beresford.
"Only two days: he came to me two days ago to consult me about a
little worrying cough which he described himself as having; and in
listening at his chest I heard the death-beat. No mistaking it, my
dear sir; when you've once heard that 'click,' you never forget it."
"By Jove, how horrible!" said Simnel.
"Poor devil! does he know it himself?" asked Beresford.
"Know it, my dear sir? Of course not. You don't imagine _I_ told him?
Why the shock might have killed him on the spot. Oh, dear, no! I
prescribed for his cough, and told him specially to avoid all kind of
excitement: that was the only warning I dare give him."
As the doctor said this, Mr. Simnel rose. "It's a horrible idea," said
he with a shudder--"horrible!"
"Very common, my dear sir, very common. If you knew how many men there
are whom I meet out at dinner, in society, here and there, whom I know
to be as distinctly marked for death as if I saw the plague-spot on
their breasts!"
"Well, you've completely frightened me," said Beresford. "I'll get
home to bed, and try and forget it in sleep. Are you coming, Simnel?
Good night, doctor." And the two gentlemen went out together, leaving
the little doctor already sidling up to another group.
When they were out in the street, and had started on their homeward
walk, Simnel said to his companion:
"That was strange news we've just heard."
"Strange, indeed," replied Beresford. "Do you think the doctor's
right?"
"Not a doubt of it; he's a garrulous idiot; as full of talk as an old
woman; but I have always heard very skilful in his profession, and in
this special disease I believe there are none to beat him. Oh, yes,
he's right enough. Well, you always held winning cards, and now the
game looks like yours."
"Simnel," said Beresford, stopping short and looking up into his face,
"what the devil do you mean?"
"Mean!" echoed Simnel; "I'll tell you when you come on; it's cold
stopping still in the streets, and the policeman at the corner is
staring at you in unmitigated wonder. Mean!" he repeated, as they
walked on; "well, it's not a very difficult matter to explain. You
hear that Schröder has heart-disease--that at any moment he may die.
You always had a partiality for Mrs. Schröder, I believe; and if there
be any truth in what I gather from yourself and others, you stand very
well with her."
"Well?"
"Well! You're dense to-night, Master Charley. Well? Why, you've as
great a chance as man ever had before you. You've only to wait until
what Prater told us of happens,--and if he's right, it won't be
long,--and then marry the widow and start as a millionaire."
"By Jove, it _is_ a great chance!" said Beresford, looking at his
friend.
"And yet you didn't see it until just now. Why, it opened straight up
in front of me the instant that chattering medico mentioned the fact.
If you play your cards well, you're all right; but remember,
flirtation and courtship are two different things, and must be managed
differently. And recollect it's for the latter you're now going in.
Now, here's my street, so adieu. Sleep on this matter, and we'll talk
of it to-morrow morning."
"It's a tremendous fluke," said Mr. Simnel, as he leisurely undressed
himself; "but it will serve my purpose admirably. That eight hundred
pounds of mine lent to Master Charley looks much less shaky than it
did, and what a trump-card to play with Kate!"