Short Fiction

In the Modern Vein An Unsympathetic Love Story

Of course the cultivated reader has heard of Aubrey Vair. He has published on three several occasions volumes of delicate verses⁠—some, indeed, border on indelicacy⁠—and his column “Of Things Literary” in the Climax is well known. His Byronic visage and an interview have appeared in the Perfect Lady. It was Aubrey Vair, I believe, who demonstrated that the humour of Dickens was worse than his sentiment, and who detected “a subtle bourgeois flavour” in Shakespeare. However, it is not generally known that Aubrey Vair has had erotic experiences as well as erotic inspirations. He adopted Goethe some little time since as his literary prototype, and that may have had something to do with his temporary lapse from sexual integrity.

For it is one of the commonest things that undermine literary men, giving us landslips and picturesque effects along the otherwise even cliff of their respectable life, ranking next to avarice, and certainly above drink, this instability called genius, or, more fully, the consciousness of genius, such as Aubrey Vair possessed. Since Shelley set the fashion, your man of gifts has been assured that his duty to himself and his duty to his wife are incompatible, and his renunciation of the Philistine has been marked by such infidelity as his means and courage warranted. Most virtue is lack of imagination. At anyrate, a minor genius without his affections twisted into an inextricable muddle, and who did not occasionally shed sonnets over his troubles, I have never met.

“This again,” said the Bacteriologist, slipping a glass slide under the microscope, “is well⁠—a preparation of the Bacillus of cholera⁠—the cholera germ.”

The pale-faced man peered down the microscope. He was evidently not accustomed to that kind of thing, and held a limp white hand over his disengaged eye. “I see very little,” he said.

“Touch this screw,” said the Bacteriologist; “perhaps the microscope is out of focus for you. Eyes vary so much. Just the fraction of a turn this way or that.”

“Ah! now I see,” said the visitor. “Not so very much to see after all. Little streaks and shreds of pink. And yet those little particles, those mere atomies, might multiply and devastate a city! Wonderful!”

He stood up, and releasing the glass slip from the microscope, held it in his hand towards the window. “Scarcely visible,” he said, scrutinising the preparation. He hesitated. “Are these⁠—alive? Are they dangerous now?”

“Those have been stained and killed,” said the Bacteriologist. “I wish, for my own part, we could kill and stain every one of them in the universe.”

“I suppose,” the pale man said, with a slight smile, “that you scarcely care to have such things about you in the living⁠—in the active state?”

“On the contrary, we are obliged to,” said the Bacteriologist. “Here, for instance⁠—” He walked across the room and took up one of several sealed tubes.

The buying of orchids always has in it a certain speculative flavour. You have before you the brown shrivelled lump of tissue, and for the rest you must trust your judgment, or the auctioneer, or your good luck, as your taste may incline. The plant may be moribund or dead, or it may be just a respectable purchase, fair value for your money, or perhaps⁠—for the thing has happened again and again⁠—there slowly unfolds before the delighted eyes of the happy purchaser, day after day, some new variety, some novel richness, a strange twist of the labellum, or some subtler colouration or unexpected mimicry. Pride, beauty, and profit blossom together on one delicate green spike, and, it may be, even immortality. For the new miracle of nature may stand in need of a new specific name, and what so convenient as that of its discoverer? “John-smithia”! There have been worse names.

It was perhaps the hope of some such happy discovery that made Winter Wedderburn such a frequent attendant at these sales⁠—that hope, and also, maybe, the fact that he had nothing else of the slightest interest to do in the world. He was a shy, lonely, rather ineffectual man, provided with just enough income to keep off the spur of necessity, and not enough nervous energy to make him seek any exacting employments. He might have collected stamps or coins, or translated Horace, or bound books, or invented new species of diatoms. But, as it happened, he grew orchids, and had one ambitious little hothouse.

The man with the scarred face leant over the table and looked at my bundle.

“Orchids?” he asked.

“A few,” I said.

“Cypripediums,” he said.

“Chiefly,” said I.

“Anything new? I thought not. I did these islands twenty-five⁠—twenty-seven years ago. If you find anything new here⁠—well, it’s brand new. I didn’t leave much.”

“I’m not a collector,” said I.

“I was young then,” he went on. “Lord! how I used to fly round.” He seemed to take my measure. “I was in the East Indies two years, and in Brazil seven. Then I went to Madagascar.”

“I know a few explorers by name,” I said, anticipating a yarn. “Whom did you collect for?”

“Dawson’s. I wonder if you’ve heard the name of Butcher ever?”

“Butcher⁠—Butcher?” The name seemed vaguely present in my memory; then I recalled Butcher v. Dawson. “Why!” said I, “you are the man who sued them for four years’ salary⁠—got cast away on a desert island⁠—”

“Your servant,” said the man with the scar, bowing. “Funny case, wasn’t it? Here was me, making a little fortune on that island, doing nothing for it neither, and them quite unable to give me notice. It often used to amuse me thinking over it while I was there. I did calculations of it⁠—big⁠—all over the blessed atoll in ornamental figuring.”

“How did it happen?” said I. “I don’t rightly remember the case.”

The diabolified Italian before him shut both his eyes, pursed his mouth, and wiped the colour off his face with his hand.

Then the red eye opened again, with a sound like the opening of lips, and the face smiled. “That was rather hasty of you,” said the picture.

Harringay states that, now that the worst had happened, his self-possession returned. He had a saving persuasion that devils were reasonable creatures.

“Why do you keep moving about then,” he said, “making faces and all that⁠—sneering and squinting, while I am painting you?”

“I don’t,” said the picture.

“You do,” said Harringay.

“It’s yourself,” said the picture.

“It’s not myself,” said Harringay.

“It is yourself,” said the picture. “No! don’t go hitting me with paint again, because it’s true. You have been trying to fluke an expression on my face all the morning. Really, you haven’t an idea what your picture ought to look like.”

“I have,” said Harringay.

“You have not,” said the picture: “You never have with your pictures. You always start with the vaguest presentiment of what you are going to do; it is to be something beautiful⁠—you are sure of that⁠—and devout, perhaps, or tragic; but beyond that it is all experiment and chance. My dear fellow! you don’t think you can paint a picture like that?”

Now it must be remembered that for what follows we have only Harringay’s word.

“I shall paint a picture exactly as I like,” said Harringay, calmly.