Wherein a Strutting Cock comes near to Losing a Feather upon his Own Dunghill
At a table, with his disciples, sat Quilliam O’Flaherty Macloughlin Myre—a slack-headed, loose-lipped, colourless-haired, untidy-minded fellow enough to outward seeming.
As Noll listened to his affected voice and caught the tenor of his mind he understood why the man was known amongst the robuster wits as The Brixton Celt.
Sitting next to him, and admiring himself in a mirror opposite, was his friend the poet Aubrey, who, it must be acknowledged, paid but little attention to anyone but himself. As Noll entered the place Myre’s loud drawl was giving utterance to the innuendo that the love of woman was only worth the seeking in order “to take her soul up by the roots and examine it”; on which Aubrey had raised a laugh somewhat at his own cost and yet with a certain vague undefined loss to the Quogge Myre, by saying:
“I personally am content to take up my own soul by the roots and examine it.”
When the ironic applause and laughter were run down, Aubrey, still gazing at himself, said:
“That laugh is sheer affected hypocrisy. I am of the only importance—that is the only real heart’s creed of man.” And he added lovingly: “I thank God that I am beautiful—very beautiful.”
It was a historic night....
Quogge Myre had been irked of late by the perpetual reference to him as the English Zola. He felt that he ought to be original. He saw that he must again strike a new and original note. Above all he felt that Realism was running dry—the public were grown used to it; nay, worse, the public had accepted it at his estimate.
On this evening he had planned the surprise of a great Renunciation. One or two sonnets had been given by poets, as was the custom in Parisian students’ taverns, before Myre himself arose to read an essay he had just written, and thus give to the privileged few the advantage of the earliest communion with his latest thought.