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 schr?ders' 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. schr?der; 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. schr?der! 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 schr?ders 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. schr?der 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 schr?der 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 schr?der'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 schr?der 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. schr?der, 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. schr?der'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 schr?der has heart-disease--that at any moment he may die. you always had a partiality for mrs. schr?der, 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!"
