A Babe in Bohemia

Chapter I

Bohemia is a vast city — a city growing daily more extensive as the repute of its charms attracts one by one the Prince and the poet, the Arch bishop and the artist. In such a city there are Palaces and pig-sties, there is an Aristocracy and a democracy, there are the Pharisees and the publicans. No. 200, Southampton Row, W.C., the house where the Babe first saw the light, the house in which her twin brother Marius took his last glance at it — a dim and uncertain glance enough — is not a segment of aristocratic Bohemia. It is a low house leading straight on to the street ; its windows are dulled with the smoke from Tottenham Court Road, and dreary with mists from Russell Square. The railings are begrimed, the stone area green and worn with neglect and decay. The bell hangs loosely in its socket, and the knocker is wrenched off its biding-place.

But for all its dirt, neglect, decay, No. 200, Southampton Row is in the City — the gay, rollicking, careless City of Bohemia. Respectability frowns at it from over the way, whitens its steps perennially, brightens its bell handles, and hangs up its white window-curtains. Respectability round the corner puts its nose in the air, virtuously using its latch-key as it returns from the City, and thanks God that ' we are not as they.' Respectability next door is woke up out of its first sleep by the midnight cabs and the midnight music, the racket and the din of wine parties and supper-parties, the sound of the piano, and the noise of brawling voices chaffing phleg matic policemen as the revellers depart in the early morning, rolling homeward singing noisily as the pale moon fades in the glow of dawn.

This was the home Lucilla was brought up in ; such a home as a man like Roland Lewesham can make for his children. Roland Lewesham, pro prietor of Footlights, and putative editor of that weekly journal, was a largely-built man, about forty years of age. He was above the middle height, and his figure was aldermanic. His features were coarse, his eyes bloodshot, his nose made one suspicious. He wore glasses, and had a habit of pushing them back and fidgeting with them constantly. His big head looked like 'brain'; but he had a weak mouth and chin, sweet in the smiling, that contradicted the promise of the brow. He had founded a new school of journalism, and everyone in London knows of Roland Lewesham. Yet Roily — he was the sort of man that even strangers called Rolly — was country bred and country born.

Honourable and chanly living people were Rolly's parents ; the man tilled the ground, the woman tended her cows and her chickens. Bad agricultural years respected their thrift, and passed them by harmless ; the rain softened their seed, the sun ripened their corn, their granaries were well filled, and their fruit-trees bowed under the weight of the fruit. Seventeen years they toiled together with hearts a little empty save of each other, hardening perhaps in the weathers, but sweet and sound. Thus when it seemed too late for hope, their many prayers were answered, and Rolly was born. A strange sapling to grow from Such a tree ! A country lad ; the idol of his old parents ; quick I — at his lessons, eager in play ; in short, rosy cheeked and active, fair, wholesome and abundantly English. And so he might have been living until now ; undeveloped, primitive, harmless, but for William Ringer, and William Ringer's training-stables that were within a walk of his home.

How dull was agriculture, and how slow of result, compared to those rows of boxes with their sleek and shining coated occupants ! How few the pence, gathered slowly with sweating brow and horny hand, com pared to the gold that flowed in easily to the inspired backer of Bellerophon or his stable companion ! The companionship of stable-boys and racing touts had its usual results. There was not much evil in Roland Lewesham, and what there was might have remained for ever dor mant; but there was an eager, excitable, nervous nature, and there had been no training or exercise in self-repression. When he lost more than he could pay — and he was barely nineteen when this inevitable incident occurred — he could not bear to face those parents of his who had trusted and believed in him, and even looked up to him, whose bright-faced youth had seemed God-like to their toil-worn eyes ; so he left them.

Rather than see a momentary cloud he fled — let them suffer, let their hearts bleed for him, only that he was not there to see it. This was Roily all over — perhaps there is something lovable in such weakness ; tender hearted, he could not bear to see the pain of their disappointment, yet by flight he doubled it. He came to London, nineteen years of age, country bred and born, ignorant but eager. The Metropolis acted upon him and corroded his brightness ; his sensitive ears became attuned to the roar of the multitude and lost their relish for sweeter sounds. Bright as a mirror, the foul breath of the City tarnished him, and he no longer reflected the loving faces of his parents, or the merriment of his boy friends. He was possessed with eager desires ; the youth that woke in him awoke in a hot and noxious atmosphere, and he absorbed the atmosphere, breathing it back, adding his quota later on to the general murkiness.

There is no need to dwell upon the details of his fall. Those friends he gathers round him now — for Roily Lewesham has a very real existence in London to-day — would be surprised to hear that it can be considered a fall, from being the village hero and the loved son of his parents, to being the editor of Footlights, and one of the ' dearest old chappies in the world.' Temptations abound in everyone's life, but some people are warned to withstand them ; and some, not bred in the country, can see through tinsel into the grosser body that it covers. Impetuous Roily saw nothing but pleasure, and he was as eager for pleasures in his youth as he became for excitement in his manhood There was no one to help or guide him. The old couple, dreaming away in their gathering years, never dreamed of Rolly as aught but the bright faced boy they knew and loved, until the awaken ing was too late.

On the Tom Tiddler's ground where William Jecks had introduced him he scattered the guineas for others to pick up. He had no guide but youth and recklessness ; the old couple in the country were alone again in their age, and went down into the Valley of the Shadow of Death with hearts that ached and eyes that were red with weeping for a prodigal who did not return. London swallowed up Roily. The ' turf was only the commencement ; other vices followed. He grew in wisdom then, but the knowledge came too late to profit him — it came when the hopes of his early manhood and the charm of his early manner had left him for ever, and physical suffering drove him, in the decay of his ruined constitution, to fresh excesses, against which his new-born wisdom profited him nothing. His father died first.

The mother lived long enough to see her bright and beautiful boy in his profitless and degraded manhood. Whence came the two children he brought her one day — the twin babies whom he asked her to take and bring up for his sake, and to let them comfort her in her loneliness and disappointment ? She never asked, and Rolly never told her ; the terror and degradation of their birth was not for her to hear ; their mother's name was to be forgotten, and to perish for ever off the face of the earth. And so it came about. They were pretty babes, these children of Rolly's and that ' nameless one.' Marius, epileptic and idiot, the seeds of his malady developed fast, and as it developed, so faded all hopes of in fluencing Rolly through his children. The hope faded, as all hopes in and about Rolly had a habit of fading.

She kept the children until she died, and Roily lived his life apart from her and them. He loved his mother always, this developed Rolly, this harddrinking, loose-living Roland ; he caressed her always — she at least never heard from his lips any ungentle word — he never lied to her or deceived her, save by holding back that which would grieve her. He had no moral backbone, became in time unable to distinguish between right and wrong, all his finer senses decayed and melted away ; but it must be written he loved his mother. When she died he fetched the children home. Home to Southampton Row, home to Nettie ; for the mother of the children was forgotten, and genial Rolly did not live alone. He did not live alone. Such men as Roland Lewesham rarely live alone. But at the time his mother died, and he brought the children home with him, Roland's vagrant fancies had crystal lized, and Nettie was the guiding star of his life.

Nettie was — had been — but never mind Nettie's career ; it would fill a volume, and the volume would be interdicted, so the writing would be a waste of time. She took a fancy to Roily ; she robbed him of all he had left : his ambitions, his remnant of self-respect, his sense of order and decency. She enjoyed the courtesy title and all the privileges of Mrs. Roland Lewesham. Rolly spent his parents' money right royally. Nettie, getting on in years, and off in attractions, thought his attention should be turned to in creasing instead of decreasing his income. There was something very bright about Nettie's in telligence. And she knew her world — such a world as it was — very well. Rolly had had as good an education as the local school could afford him ; in whatever he under took as a boy he had been easily first.

Which of his talents to turn to account was his only doubt, when Nettie began to drum into him that he must make money for them both. ' Shall I go to the Bar ?' he asked her. ' The bar !' retorted Nettie ; ' you'd never get any further.' The misunderstanding was natural, for Rolly had grown to think that of all enjoyable feelings, none was so delightful as the irresponsibility that comes upon the semi-drunk. However, the idea of his studying for a profession at his time of life was pooh-poohed by the lady to whom he looked for guidance. But something he must do. There are careers in Bohemia very much open to a young man with a little brains, a little money, and a popular burlesque actress — for such had been Nettie's profession in life — at his command. Roily took a theatre — that was the climax of the discussions as to ways and means — and although he did not become a millionnaire at the business, still he mismanaged it less than most amateurs.

The children were growing up while Rolly was the proprietor of the ' Leggeries ' — as his place of amusement was aptly nicknamed. And Nettie was also growing, not exactly up, but rather down ; she grew stiff, and her voice was not what it had been. Before failure had time to write its indelible letters across the portal of the theatre, Nettie retired, and as it was not in her to see another star arise in her place, Rolly retired with her. Still, the money he had made was not enough to keep the home going for ever. He had gathered around him a large circle of friends, and he had made no enemies. Roily never had an enemy in his life ; all his weaknesses were lovable. His friends were sporting and theatrical, but Nettie's wisdom and her desire for good notices had made him also entertain journalists.

Who first started the idea was never quite re membered, but there the idea came, and it sprang full-grown into action. Roily must have a paper ; there was room for another theatrical paper ; all these smart young friends of his would write for him — that was how to make a fortune. Hoorah ! that's the idea ; Roily should have a paper. Footlights sprang into success almost with the first number ; it caught on, and it settled once and for ever the question of Rolly's income. Rolly's ten years of knocking about left him very little bucolic ignorance. He had ceased to be a living for the bookmakers, and even learnt to add to his income by a timely bet. In truth, the lad, who had almost been brought up in a training-stable, possessed a very pretty knowledge of the noble beast. Fortunately, also, just about the time Roily left off theatre-managing, and had a little ready money, William Ringer was in pecuniary difficulties.

Rolly tided him over them, and the information he received in return helped the paper to a reputation. Rolly's sporting article — the one thing in the paper he always wrote himself — was well done. When success was assured, and money came in regularly, Rolly bought horses, and put them in training. He was not very fortunate in his animals, but remained ' in the know ' through them ; and, in reality, it was the racing, more than the pleasing details as to the private life of actresses, that gave Footlights its place. Rolly's instructions to his staff were clear. ' None of your sweetness and light,' he said ; ' sweetness and light are off. Excitement, glare, that's what the Johnnies want, and I mean to give it them. Something spicy, something with a flavour in it. Teddie and I will see the sport ing is kept up to the mark.

You fellows must fill up with all the good things you can get hold of. Mordaunt Rivers will boss that.' With such instructions, and the able lieutenancy of an old friend of Nettie's, Mr. Mordaunt Rivers, Footlights breasted the tide and floated into popularity. Nettie was the key that had unlocked to the mercurial son of the old yeoman all the gates of this curious Bohemia. Footlights even came to have a certain amount of influence ; and in pursuit of it the house in Southampton Row was daily and nightly thronged with a company difficult to parallel in any other city than London, in any other quarter than Bohemia. Journalists, clean and dull, brilliant but soiled, striving upwards or sinking downwards ; trainers and racing men ; young lordlings who patronized the stage, young actresses who patronized them ; oyster -shop proprietors, stage -managers, prize fighters and music-hall singers — anybody and everybody who could make Roily laugh and pay Nettie compliments, that she craved for the more as she evoked them the less.

They practised a brilliant hospitality — the place was the very paradise of bar-loafers ; and so amusing were the scenes that occurred and the incidents which developed, that the ' paper ' soon became the medium through which an interested and curious world followed their doings. They invented words and phrases, this circle of the apostles of loose living. They corre sponded with each other and the outer world by means of " Replies to Contributors," couched in their own peculiar vernacular ; advertised their favourite restaurants free of charge, and made the fortune of more than one innkeeper who gave credit for dinners and suppers. For the small sum of one penny the British public read about them and their doings every week in a column or so, written in conjunction and headed 'Nights out !' Bacchus was their god ; and soon the title of Footlights was supplemented by that of the Guzzler's Gazette.

Rolly became better known as ' Guzzleton,' and all the synonyms of drink were freely lavished on the rest of the staff, who became world-re nowned under their nicknames. What orgies under their roof! The neighbour hood was scandalized, and the quiet nights turned into uproarious day. Rolly had no time to remember anything but the last good story or the next bad song. Nettie was queen of the revels, and it is sufficient to say that her myrmidons were worthy of their queen. Such was the house Rolly had brought his twin children to, eight years ago now. Eight years the children had lived there, high up under the roof, away from the house and the gaiety, neglected, forgotten, living alone — two of them, a boy and a girl, Marius and Lucilla. Soon there would be only one. There was drink and talk downstairs while Marius lay dying ; but the din was hushed when the news spread that he was dead.

Off went the gay young men and the gayer women, shrinking away one by one as death poised its black wings over the house, shedding its gloom in a message they were not ready to hear.

Chapter II

But still Marius was not alone in his death-agonies. One there was who had shared with him these long eight years all the horrors of his life — who had lived by him, with him, benumbed by the burden, paralyzed by the weight, but always gentle, always forbearing, trying to hide from him and from herself the dreadful physical shrinking that his infirmities awoke in her. For there was the fact in all its native hideous ness — Marius, the only son of our brilliant Rolly, was a loathsome epileptic idiot. And for eight years now — ever since her grand mother died, and dying left no one to take up, as she had done, the responsibilities Rolly had been so glad to drop — Lucilla, his twin sister, had lived with Marius alone in these dull upstair rooms ; had looked out of the dirty windows and envied the neat and prim little girls, with their plaits and their governesses, and their air of being hemmed in by laws and rules and restrictions ; had turned away from the sight, her child's heart sick with the longing for the care, and the love, and the very restrictions which proved that love and care, and in the turning had been met by the shambling figure that pervaded all her tender youth.

Marius's figure, his dim eyes gazing unspecula tive, his loose limbs as if badly connected with the parent trunk, his gait uncertain, now bringing him into contact with this or that article of furniture, his heavy feet planted springless on the floor — Marius, poor, slow-speeched, idiot Marius, was her constant and only companion. If the sound of music and of laughter penetrated to her ears, and awoke in her heart — that, if only a child's heart, was yet a girl-child's heart — a desire, innocent, human, feminine, for pleasure and com panionship and the unknown joys of the world, she would look at him for sympathy : his unrespon sive face would but mock her with the feeble ghost of a sunless smile, that tried to light his face when he looked at her, who was his sun. She was still but a child, although seventeen summers had come and gone to ripen the pale corn-colour of her hair into red gold, to deepen the blue of her sad young eyes, to mould into form the rose-leaf sensitive lips ; but a child unnaturally burdened.

Marius, octopus-like, had twined his long arms around her, sucking the blood from her cheeks and lips, the light from her eyes. He had claimed from her, and had from her, everything ! She had striven for knowledge and for light, but his dull brain had mocked her with its unseeing. Pure and fresh and free she would have been, but his inert body had caressed her with all an idiot's animal-like desire for contact, clinging to her side, hanging his heavy head on her lap, crushing her under the weight of his dreadful personality. And now Marius was dying ! The room he lay in was large and bare, the carpet thick, the window grated. He lay on a big low bed, curiously surrounded with twine netting ; and she stood beside the bed and tended him timorously — for it had been a scene to make the stoutest heart quake — but gently and with unutterable pity.

The sun streamed into the room and slanted a dusty shaft of light right on to Marius's face — the convulsed and swollen face of a dying idiot. The dusty shaft of light brought into relief every hideous feature of that death-bed— the writhing figure, the large head rolling from side to side, its unseeing, squinting eyes strained and bloodshot ; the blood-stained foam gathered in the corners of the mouth and on the spotted and disordered sheets, the feeble twitchings and tremblings that still remained now that the violence of the epileptic fit had worn itself out. His shrieks were still ringing in her ears as she had heard them for hours — endless,terrible,anguish haunted hours ; but now the utterer was dumb. Feebler and feebler grew the movements, duller and more glazed his eyes ; a clear whiteness seemed to wipe out the dusky pallor of the skin.

His cheeks fell in, the tortured eyes were closed, and the loose lips stiffened into rigidity. Epileptic in his cradle, idiotic in his boyhood, dying horribly before manhood was reached, Death dealt with him more pitifully than life had ever done — smoothed his distorted features, closed his expressionless eyes, and stilled him into a dignity of repose he had never known. But the death that stilled him appalled her yet more than all else she had suffered. What did she see that made her start and shudder, and rush from the room, her hands before her eyes to shut out the sight, her heart beating violently with a new strange pain and fear, her legs trembling under her, and her lips white and strained with dread ? Only this : in the dying, back had come to the unfortunate boy the semblance of that sentient soul of which disease had robbed him ; it illumi nated him, and now in the dead face Lucilla could see a likeness — a likeness that appalled her, for it was a likeness to herself.

Her weakened mind, unhinged with the long strain, saw the flicker of intelligence in his face ; she pressed her hands to her brow : ' My God ! my God ! he has taken my brain. I am like him ; he is like me. O God ! Oh, help ! the room is going round me ! I am dying ! I am going mad ' She sank upon the floor, and there they found them both, hours after — the boy dead and calm on the bed, the girl writhing and moaning on the floor. Lucilla went through an illness after that : long nights of fever, when she would rave that Marius was near her : he was sucking her brain with his damp kisses on her forehead ; she would shriek that his cold blue hands were around her throat, and that he was crushing her under his loose ill-guided movements. Long days of semi-con- 2 — sciousness, in which Marius was ever before her.

She would start as she had been startled from her sleep that April morning, by his screams, wordless, as of some dumb animal in mortal pain. She would see again his convulsions as the epileptic demon tightened its hideous grasp and shook him with an earthquake force, until arms, and legs, and loose bitten lips, and heavy head, all shook and trembled, and were flung about directionless in that remorseless shaking ; and then she would lie quiet after that vision, her heart turned to stone, the big drops of perspiration on her forehead, waiting, waiting dreadfully, until that same demon should seize her and rend her, and make her hideous and hateful as he had been hideous and hateful to all who saw him. So she lay for many weeks, not realizing her freedom, nor knowing that Marius was at rest in his grave, seemingly drifting to join him before her girlhood could shake off the burden and taste the fruition of womanhood.

And Roland might have remained as ignorant of her condition as he had been neglectful of her interests, but for the fact that doctors have con sciences, and Dr. Grey was no exception to the rule. Roily had had a deep bout of drinking after Marius's death, to help to drown the remembrances it evoked. Marius it was who had made of Roily the father that he had been. Rolly had a gentle vein in him — men of his stamp are not unkind to little children — but from his earliest infancy his boy had damped any possible pride, of fatherhood. The intelligence, which is the charm of dawning childhood, had never beamed out of Marius's eyes ; that dull, heavy look, growing duller as the years rolled on, never encouraged his ambition nor flattered his paternal pride. His only son, Marius, never calling on the name of ' father,' never giving back babysmile for loving glance, grew through dull babyhood to vacant-eyed childhood, when he stopped speechless on the threshold of understanding.

Rolly was nervous enough, and imaginative enough, to see in the boy an embodied sin — to see in him also his frail young mother's transmitted revenge. He never looked upon the boy, nor upon the girl, that was his living complement, if he could help it ; and he drank deeply after Marius's death, giving rare orgies downstairs, surrounding himself with friends, while Lucilla fought her lonely battle between life and death. But Dr. Grey felt it his duty to speak, and speak he did, and to the purpose. 'I want to speak to Mr. Lewesham,' he said to the footman one evening, as he came downstairs, disheartened, from his patient. The footman was laden with a tray of glasses ; the sound of many voices and loud laughter and the fumes of smoke, came through the half-open dining-room door. ' The master is engaged,' answered the man doubtfully, looking first at his tray, then at the door. ' Never mind if he is engaged or not ; my business is important.

Announce me,' he said peremptorily. John put the tray down, threw open the door, and announced ' Dr. Grey.' The room was full of men ; they had evidently been just dining, and had the unrestraint of satiety. Two or three women he could also distinguish, undraped, diamond-sprinkled, talking loudly, smoking cigarettes, and lounging in easy attitudes. The smoke-tainted atmosphere, and the incense with which Nettie's rooms were always filled, sickened him, fresh from such a different scene. But he stood his ground. Roily was in the first stage of intoxication, flushed, nervous ; he had been laughing with the easily aroused laughter of the semi-inebriate. But he staggered quickly to his feet when he saw the Doctor. ' Do you want me?' he said hurriedly. ' Don't come in here. Weekly dinner — all my staff" — matter of business — you understand.' He tried to explain, as he hurried him into a smaller and quieter room at the end of the passage. ' What is it ?

You want to speak to me : nothing wrong, I hope ? Excuse me sitting down, I've been laughing so, I'm quite done up.' He burst into weak laughter, but relapsed into silence under the con temptuous look of the man who regarded him. 'Sit down, won't you? Have a drink? I must have one ; I am as dry as a bone. Ring the bell for me, there's a good fellow ; it is such a con foundedly long way off' The Doctor rang as he was desired. ' A bottle of soda-water,' he ordered, when the man appeared. ' By Jove ! it is serious then,' said Rolly, with an attempt at jocularity, ' if I've got to hear it on temperance liquors.' ' If you can control your hilarity for a few •moments,' said the Doctor sternly, ' I shall be glad. I will not detain you longer, and you can, if you then wish, return to your boon companions.' ' Well, sit down, anyway ; it gives me the jumps to see you standing over me.' Rolly's hands were trembling as he filled up his glass and drank off a long draught of soda water.

The Doctor looked at him steadily for a moment or two. They were men of the same age, and Dr. ' Grey had known Rolly from the days he first came to London. Roily had had the advantages of more money, more leisure, more talent ; but the Doctor had had strength of purpose. He thought of Rolly's youth and promise as he looked at him now, the fumes of the wine passing off a little, and the restless vitality of the man flickering in his blue eyes. ' Speak out, Doctor ; don't stand there staring like a mute at a funeral !' 'At your son's funeral I was mute,' said the other quickly, putting his chair opposite Rolly's and holding him with his eyes, ' though perhaps I should have spoken. Do you remember these children's mother?' he asked abruptly. Rolly shuddered ; the incident with the children's mother was one that even Rolly had never learnt to look upon lightly.