Part 2 (2/2)

He went down the ladder by the side of the boat, and was pulled away in a caique. As he went he laughed to himself, and pulled out Barndale's pipe--remembrancer of his mean triumph, since repaired by his own hands.

He filled and lit it, smoking calmly as the st.u.r.dy caiquejee pulled him across the Golden Horn. Suddenly the caique fouled with another, and there came a volley of Turkish oaths and objurgations. The Greek looked up, and saw Miss Leland in the other boat. Her eyes were fixed upon him and the pipe. He pa.s.sed his hand lazily over the bowl and took the pipe indolently from his lips, and addressed himself to the caiquejee. The boats got clear of each other. Lilian, coming aboard the boat, could not get speech with Barndale until the steamer was well under way. By then, she had time to think the matter over, and had come to the conclusion that she would say nothing about it. For, womanlike, she was half jealous of the pipe, and she was altogether afraid of two things--first, that Barndale would leave her to go back to Constantinople; and next, that the Greek and he would enter on a deadly quarrel. For she had a general belief that all Orientals were bloodthirsty. But the meerschaum pipe was not yet done with, and it played its part in a tragedy before its tale was fully told.

CHAPTER III.

The English party reached London in the middle of July, and made haste out of it--Lilian and her elders to peaceful Suffolk, where they had a house they visited rarely; and her lover and her brother to Thames Ditton, where these two inseparables took a house-boat, aboard which they lived in Bohemian and barbaric ease, like rovers of the deep. Here they fished, and swam, and boated, and grew daily more and more mahogany coloured beneath the glorious summer sun. They cooked their own steaks, and ate with ravenous appet.i.tes, and enjoyed themselves like the two wholesome young giants they were, and grew and waxed in muscle, and appet.i.te, and ruddiness until a city clerk had gone wild with envy, beholding them. Their demands for beer amazed the landlord of the historic 'Swan,' and their absorption of steaks left the village butcher in astonishment.

But in the midst of all this a purpose came upon Barndale quite suddenly one day as he lay beneath the awning, intent on doing nothing. He had not always been a wealthy man. There had been a time when he had had to write for a living, or, at least, to eke a not over-plentiful living out. At this time his name was known to the editors of most magazines.

He had written a good deal of graceful verse, and one or two pretty idyllic stories, and there were people who looked very hopefully on him as a rising light of literature. His sudden accession to wealth had almost buried the poor taper of his genius when the hands of Love triumphant took it suddenly at the time of that lazy lounge beneath the awning, and gave it a chance once more. He was meditating, as lovers will, upon his own unworthiness and the all-worthy attributes of the divine Lilian. And it came to him to do something--such as in him lay--to be more worthy of her. 'I often used to say,' he said now within himself, 'that if I had time and money I would try to write a comedy. Well then, here goes. Not one of the flimsy Byron or Burnand frivolities, but a comedy with heart in it, and motive in it, and honest, patient labour.'

So, all on fire with this laudable ambition, he set to work at once. The plot had been laid long since, in the old impecunious hardworking days.

He revised it now and strengthened it. Day after day the pa.s.sers by upon the silent highway came in sight of this bronzed young giant under his awning, with a pipe in his mouth and a vast bottle by his side, and beheld him enthusiastically scrawling, or gazing with fixed eye at nothing in particular on the other side of the river. Once or twice being caught in the act of declaiming fragments of his dialogue, by easy-going scullers who pulled silently round the side of the houseboat, he dashed into the interior of that aquatic residence with much precipitation. At other times his meditations were broken in upon by the cheery invitations and restless invasions of a wild tribe of the youth of Twickenham and its neighbourhood who had a tent in a field hard by, and whose joy at morning, noon, and night, was beer. These savages had an accordion and a penny whistle and other instruments of music wherewith to make the night unbearable and the day a heavy burden.

They were known as 'The Tribe of the Scorchers,' and were a happy and a genial people, but their presence was inimical to the rising hopes of the drama. Nevertheless, Barndale worked, and the comedy grew little by little towards completion. James, outwardly cynical regarding it, was inwardly delighted. He believed in Barndale with a full and firm conviction; and he used to read his friend's work at night, or listen to it when Barndale read, with internal enthusiasm and an exterior of coolness. Barndale knew him through and through, and in one scene in the comedy had drawn the better part of him to the life. Hearing this scene read over, it occurred to the genial youth himself that he would like to play the part.

'Billy, old man,' said he, 'I think Sir What's-his-name there's about my style of man. Before you put that immortal work upon the public stage you'd better try an amateur performance carefully rehea.r.s.ed. You play George Rondel. I'll play Sir What's-his-name. Easily fill up the other characters. Ladies from London. Week's rehearsals. Bring it out at your own place at Christmas.'

Barndale caught at this idea so eagerly that he sat down that evening and wrote to a London manager requesting him to secure the services of three famous actresses, whom he named, for the first week of the next year. He stipulated also for the presence of a competent stage manager through the whole week, and promised instructions with respect to scenery, and so forth, later on. In his enthusiasm he drew up a list of critics and authors to invite, and he and Leland straightway began to study their respective parts. It was getting near the end of August now, and the evenings began to close in rapidly. The river was quite deserted as a rule by eight o'clock, and then the two friends used to rehea.r.s.e one especial scene. There was a quarrel in this scene which, but for the intervening hand of the deux ex machina, bade fair to be deadly. When, after repeated trials, they warmed to their work, and got hold of something like the pa.s.sion of their part, a listener might have acquitted them of all play-acting, and broken in himself to prevent bloodshed. For they both started from the a.s.sumption that the tones of the stage must be gradually built up into power from those used in ordinary speech, and so they avoided the least taint of staginess, and were on their way to become rather better actors than the best we have just now.

Leland's temperament was not of a nature to persuade him to perpetual effort in any direction; and so, whilst Barndale worked, the other amateur relieved vacuity with billiards. It got into a settled habit with him at last to leave Barndale nightly at his comedy, and to return to the house-boat at an hour little short of midnight. He would find Barndale still at work writing by the light of a lamp grown dim with incrustations of self-immolated insects. Moths fluttered to this light in incredible numbers, and literal thousands of lives were thus sacrificed nightly at the drama's shrine. It was nearly midnight, and as black as a wolfs mouth, when Leland sculled up from the 'Swan' to spend his last night but one aboard the house-boat.

'Billy, old man,' he cried, bursting in suddenly; 'look here! Ain't I in for it now? Read this!'

He handed to his friend a letter which Barndale read in silence.

'This is awkward,' the latter said after a long, grave pause.

Leland sat in constrained solemnity for awhile, but by-and-by a genial grin spread over his features, and he chuckled in deep enjoyment.

'It's a lark for all that, Billy. We shall have the n.o.ble Demetri here next, I suppose. Let's hire him for the great Christmas show. ”Signor Demetri Agryopoulo will appear in his great stiletto trick, frustrated by Billy Barndale, the Bounding Brother of the Bosphorus.”'

'What is to be done?' said Barndale, ignoring his companion's flippancies.

'Yes,' said Leland, sitting down and growing suddenly grave. 'What's to be done? Read the letter out, Billy, and let's consider the thing seriously.'

Barndale read aloud.

'My very dear Friend,--At what time you was at Constantinople, when trouble came, you made promise that you would not forget me if my poor Demetri should trouble about you. When you last wrote to me this was made again--the promise. My life for not one moment is safe. My aunt is dead and my possessions are now mine, but there is no friend in all the world. Demetri is mad. Of him I know not when I am safe. I fly then to London, where all is safe. But there it is not possible that I should be alone. If there is any lady in the circle of your knowledge who would be kind with me, and permit that I should live with her, it will have for ever my grat.i.tude. I shall go as of old to the Palace Hotel at Westminster. Two days beyond this letter I shall be there.

'Always your friend,

'Thecla Perzio.'

After the reading of this epistle, the friends sat in silence, regarding each other with grave looks. In the silence they could hear the river lapping against the bank, and the rustling of the boughs on the roof, and the moaning and sighing of the wind. But they could not hear the suppressed breathing of Demetri Agryopoulo where he stood knee-deep in water below the house-boat window, listening to their talk. Yet there he stood, not knowing that he was not on dry land; drunk with rage and jealousy; with murder plainly written in his heart and eyes, and all his blood on fire. He threw his soul into his ears, and listened.

'This letter has been a long time on its way, surely,' said Barndale, referring to the date. 'It can't take three weeks to bring a letter from Constantinople.'

'Where's the envelope?' asked. Leland. 'Look at that, and see what the London date is.'

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