Then, again, it is in the most desirable quarter of the town; handy to the clubs and to the park; within a shilling fare of all the theatres; and yet providing its inhabitants--those who dwell in the topmost stories at all events--with plenty of fresh air; and the pleasant expanse of the Green-park to look upon, instead of the dismal line of brick or stucco abomination on which most Londoners are compelled to feast their eyes when they come to the window in ungratified search for light and air.
It is probable, however, that none of these considerations figured as inducements in the mind of Mr. Bryan Duval, when, some three years before the period of our story, he took a set of rooms on the second floor, and agreed, without hesitation or attempt at abatement, to pay for them the rather stiff price of three hundred a year.
Mr. Duval did not go much into fashionable society; but at such great houses as he was in the habit of frequenting in the season he would have been as welcome if he lived in Greek-street, Soho--a choice locality, in which, indeed, at some anterior period of his life, he had once pitched his tent. He was not a member of any club, and he would as soon have thought of going into the Thames as into the park; he hated fresh air (his first order in connection with his new rooms was to have double windows made to exclude the noise), and, if he occasionally looked out on the Green-park, it was not with any idea of pleasing his eyes with its verdure, or amusing himself with contemplating what was going on there, but rather in a fit of abstraction, when he had got into what he had called 'a knot' in the work on which he was engaged, and during the disentanglement of which he would, perhaps, lean his forehead against the window, and stare straight out before him, with a prolonged gaze, which saw nothing.
It was not to be imagined, however, that Mr. Duval had selected this residence haphazard; he had a motive for everything he did; and, when it suited him, was ready to explain it in the most candid manner.
'I took these rooms,' he would say to any inquiring friend, 'and I pay about twice what they are really worth, because I wanted them. My business lies sometimes in Bayswater, and sometimes in Basinghall-street'--he would smile grimly as he pronounced the last name--'and I want to be right in the centre, "the hub of the wheel," as they say in America, whence I can fly out east or west with equal ease. Then again, of late years, a certain number of swells, not being able to spend their money quickly enough on the turf, have chosen to mix themselves up with my profession, and this is a handy kind of place to come and see me at when they want. I have not any feeling for them but one of intense contempt; but that, of course, I keep to myself. Out of them I get a certain portion of my bread-and-cheese, and so I treat them civilly enough, never rubbing them the wrong way, never bowing down and worshipping them. Then, again, I want large rooms, for there are books and papers, and files of playbills, and all sorts of things knocking about; and there is a little slip of a room out there--the warm-bath, I call it--where my secretary works; and altogether the crib suits me, and is not so bad.'
'The crib,' as Mr. Duval called it in his pleasant argot, was furnished and fitted with such good taste that it might have puzzled an ingenious Sybarite to suggest an improvement in it.
It has been said that the arrangement of a room often furnishes an index to the owner's mind; and if there be truth in the dictum, Mr. Bryan Duval must be a singular compound of many apparently antagonistic qualities.
The broad, cosy-cushioned, spring-seated ottoman, or divan, in green and gold, which ran the whole length of one side of the room, was counter-balanced by three or four grave, high-backed, Puritan-looking chairs, in the darkest of brown leather; a huge, massive black oak writing-table, littered all over with papers, proof-sheets, and bills, had its pendant in an elegant sandalwood davenport, inlaid with mosaic, on which lay a green velvet blotting-book, with raised crest and monogram. The wall opposite to the ottoman was taken up by a large black oak bookcase, and among the treasures which filled it, and overflowed on to the floor, were rare elzevirs in creamy vellum covers, British classics in stout old leather jackets, a splendid edition of French plays--ancient and modern--rare works on costume splendidly illustrated, novels of the day, blue-books, political pamphlets, two or three thick rolls of Irish ballads bought in Dublin streets, French pasquinades, and comic songsters. A great roaring double breechloader, by Lancaster, hung close over the head of an ancient arquebuse, the stock of which was elegantly inlaid with pearl and ivory, and on the writing-table a gold-hilted dagger--said to have been worn by Henry of Navarre--lay side by side with a very vicious-looking six-shooter, with an inscription on its barrel: 'Jacob F. Bodges and Co., Danville, Pa.'
Nor was the room without examples of art; a wonderfully executed copy of Greuze's 'La Cruche Cassée' hung in the place of honour, proof engravings after Sir Joshua Reynolds and Landseer occupied every available space on the walls, and in a recess, half shaded by deep-green velvet curtains, was a marvellous Venus, by Pradier. But, en revanche, the mantelpiece was studded with Danton's comic caricatures of celebrities, and on the wall, suspended by the frame of Sir Joshua's 'Strawberry Girl,' which overlapped it, was a flaring-coloured lithograph of Pat Hamilton, in his favourite character of Bryan Boroo, with on it a memorandum, in Mr. Duval's own hand: 'Wants situation in third act altered; address Wolverhampton till 29th.'
On a fine morning in early spring the occupant of these rooms stood with his back to the fireplace, where--for the cold winds had not yet abated--some logs were burning on the iron dogs, with an open letter in his hand.