He opened the door and went upstairs in the darkness, with the a.s.sured step of custom. Christopher, less used to the house, blundered slowly upwards after him.

'Wait a minute,' said the occupant of the attic, 'and I'll get a light.'

There was a little pause, and then came the splutter of a match. The pale glow of a single candle lit the room dimly. Christopher jumped at the sight of a third man in the room. No! There were but two people there. But where, then, was the man who had led him hither? Here before him was a merry-looking youngster of perhaps two-and-twenty, with a light brown moustache and eyes grey or blue, and close-cropped fair hair. The hirsute and uncombed genius of the street had vanished.

'Don't stare like that, sir,' said the transformed comically. 'Here are the props.' He held up a ragged wig and beard.

'The what?' asked Christopher. 'The props,' returned the other. 'Props are properties. Properties are theatrical belongings. There's nothing diabolical or supernatural about it. Wait a minute, and I'll light the lamp and set the fire going.'

Christopher stood in silence whilst his new acquaintance bustled about the room. The lamp cast a full and mellow light over the whole apartment, and the fire began to crackle and leap merrily.

'Sit down,' said the host, and Christopher obeyed. 'I always like to take the bull by the horns,' the host continued with a little blush. 'I didn't want to be found out at this game, but you have found me out, and so I make the best of it, and throw myself upon your confidence.'

He took up the wig and beard lightly between his finger and thumb and dropped them again, laughing and blushing.

'You may rely upon me,' said Christopher in his own dogged and sulky tones. 'If I wanted to tell of it, I know n.o.body in London.'

'That was your theme, was it?' said the host, throwing one leg over the other and nursing it with both hands.

'Yes,' said Christopher; 'you played it very accurately, you must have a very fine memory.'

'I suppose I have,' said the other, with a little laugh. 'But it's a wonderful thing.'

'Do you think so?' asked Christopher, blushing with pleasure.

'I do indeed,' his new acquaintance answered. 'Play something else of yours.'

There was a bed in one corner of the room, and on this he had laid the instrument and the bow when he came in. He arose now and proffered them to Christopher. Christopher took them from his outstretched hand and played. The other listened, nursing his leg again, and nodding at the fire, in time to the music.

'You write better than you play,' he said at length, with more candour than was altogether agreeable. 'Not that your playing isn't good, but it misses--just misses--the real grip--the real royal thing. Only one player in a million has it.'

'Do you think you have it?' asked Christopher, not sneeringly, though the words might imply a sneer, but speaking because he was shy and felt bound to say something.

'I?' said the other, with a merry laugh.

'O Lord no! A man can't bring out more than there is in him. There's no divine melody in _me_. Good spirits now and then, a bit of sentiment now and then, a dash more or less of the devil now and then--that's all I'm equal to. If I could have written that gavotte you played a minute ago, I could knock sparks out of people with it. Here! lend me the fiddle.'

He played it through with the grave-faced merriment proper to it, and here and there with such a frolicking forth of sudden laughter and innocent fun as gave gravity the lie and made the pretence of it dearly droll.

'That's it,' he said, looking up with nave triumph when he had finished.

Yes, that was it, Christopher confessed, as he took back the violin and bow and laid them on the table.

'What brings a man who plays as you do, playing in the streets?' he asked a little sulkily.

'That eternal want of pence which vexes fiddlers,' said the youngster 'I lost an engagement a month ago. First violin at the Garrick. Rowed with the manager. Nothing else turned up. Must make money somehow.'

'What have you made to-night?' Christopher asked. 'I beg your pardon,'

he said a second later; 'that is no business of mine, of course.'

'About seven or eight shillings,' said the other, disregarding the withdrawal of the question. 'And I won't ask you,' he went on, 'what brings a man who writes like you living near the clouds in a street like this?'

'Are you an Englishman?' asked Christopher.

'No,' said the other. 'No fiddler ever was. I beg your pardon. I oughtn't to have said that, even though I think it. No. I am a Bohemian, blood and bones, but I came to England when I was eight years old, and I have lived in London ever since.'

They went on talking together, and laid the foundations of a friendship which afterwards built itself up steadily. In two months' time Carl Rubach was restored to his old place at the Garrick, and poor Christopher was beginning to find out in real earnest what it was to be hungry. He was too proud to ask anybody for a loan, and Rubach was the only man he really knew. 'When things are at their worst,' says the cynical bard, 'they sometimes mend.' Things suddenly mended for Christopher. The Bohemian turned up one afternoon with an Englishman in his train, a handsome young fellow of perhaps five-and-twenty, with a light curling beard and a blonde moustache.

'Allow me to introduce to you Mr. John Holt,' said the Bohemian. 'This, Mr. Holt, is Mr. Christopher Stretton, a musician of great genius.

This--Stretton--is Mr. John Holt, a dramatist of great power. Gentlemen, know each other. Mr. Holt writes charming songs. Mr. Stretton writes beautiful music.'

He flourished with mock gravity as he said these things, turning first to one and then to the other. Mr. John Holt's eyes were keen and observant; and one swift glance took in the knowledge of the composer's hungry pallor, his threadbare dress, the bare and poverty-stricken aspect of the room.

'I have two songs for a new play of mine,' he said; 'I want them set to music.'

Christopher's hand, thinner and more transparent than a healthy man's hand should be, reached out for the offered ma.n.u.script.

'When do you think you can let me have the music?' asked the dramatist.

Christopher read the songs through, and looked up.

'To-morrow?' he said.

'So soon!' said the other. 'At what time to-morrow?'

'Will midday suit you?'

'Can you bring them to that address?' 'I will be there,' responded Christopher.

His visitors left him and he sat down to think. He was weak, and the pains of hunger gnawed him, but as he sat over one of the songs the words built themselves into a tune almost without his knowledge or effort. Then he turned to write, and found that he had no music-paper.

He laughed bitterly at this discovery, and looking round the bare apartment sighted his violin-case, and rising, took the violin and bow out of it, put on his hat, and, with the case under his arm, made for the p.a.w.nbroker's. There he realised half-a-crown, one halfpenny of which was confiscated in payment for the p.a.w.n-ticket. He bought paper and pen and ink, and having taken them home, went out again and ate cold sausage at the bar of a public-house, and came back with a few pence still in his pockets. There was a nausea upon him, and he could not recall the air he wished to write. He had eaten nothing for three days and he felt at once sick and drowsy.

He was fain to lie down, and he fell asleep, to awake in two hours' time a little strengthened and refreshed. The tune came back again, and he set it down, and then attacked the second one with like success.

Morning came, and after a meagre breakfast which finished his resources, he went weakly to the address the dramatist had given him. Mr. Holt had left behind him apologies for unavoidable absence. Would Mr. Stretton call again at three? He wandered desolately home, and; waited, and when the time drew near set out again. This time the dramatist was ready to: receive him.

'The lady who will sing the songs is here,' he said, 'and with your permission I will ask her to try them over now. Will you come with me?'

'I would rather await you here,' said Christopher. The tunes he had written were running riot in his head, and he thought them puerile, vulgar, shameful. He would have torn the papers on which they were written if he had not already surrendered them. He had liked them an hour ago, and now he thought them detestable.

'As you please,' said the dramatist, and added 'poor beggar!' inwardly as he went upstairs.

The composer sat in a sick half-dream and faintly heard a piano sounding in a distant room. It played the prelude of one of his songs. Now and then the sound of a female voice just touched his ears. He was so fatigued and weak that, in spite of his anxiety, he glided into a troubled doze in which he dreamed of Barbara. The dramatist returned, and Christopher came back to the daylight at the sound of the opening door.

'Mademoiselle Helene and myself,' said Mr. Holt, 'are alike delighted with your setting of the songs. I shall ask you, Mr. Stretton, to read my comedy and to write the whole of the incidental music, if you will accept the commission. We can talk over terms afterwards. In the mean time, shall I offer you a cheque for ten guineas?'

'Thank you,' said Christopher. He took the cheque and walked to the bank, which was near at hand in Pall Mall, received his money, and plunged into an eating-house, whence he emerged intoxicated by the absorption of a cup of coffee and a steak. If you doubt the physical accuracy of that statement, pray reduce yourself to Christopher's condition and try the experiment. You are respectfully a.s.sured that you will doubt no longer.