CHAPTER III.

Christopher wrote the incidental music for the new comedy and composed an overture and entr'actes for it--work for which he was paid pretty liberally. He wrote to Barbara of his better fortunes, and promised to run down and see her so soon as the business strain was over. But the business strain was over and he did not go. He finished his music, rehea.r.s.ed it once with the orchestra of the Garrick Theatre, and then fell ill of a low fever through which Rubach most kindly nursed him. The Bohemian himself was busy, rehearsing half the day and playing at the theatre at night, but he gave all his spare time to his friend. I had forgotten to tell you that, for convenience' sake, they had quitted their old lodgings, and had taken chambers off the Strand, within three minutes' easy walk of the house. It was here that Christopher fell ill.

When he grew a little better, the Bohemian rather began to aggravate him. Rubach talked of the new piece and its heroine, and of nothing but the new piece and its heroine. He was enraptured with her. He confessed himself overhead in love. So charming, so dainty, so sweet, so piquante, so lovable was Mademoiselle Helene. Rubach, half in earnest, half in jest, confessed himself hopeless. Mademoiselle was engaged to Mr. Holt the dramatist.

'And even if she were not,' he said, 'is it likely she would look at a poor wretch of a fiddler? She is going to make her fortune. She is going to be the rage. She has never played before, but she sings like a lark, like a linnet, like a nightingale; and she walks the boards as naturally as if she had been born upon them. She is English too, in spite of her foreign name. Why on earth do professional English people take foreign names?'

'I don't know, I'm sure,' said Christopher wearily. 'I should like to go to sleep.'

While the sick man slept or made believe to sleep, Rubach was quiet as a mouse; but when he awoke the ecstatic praises began again, until, before the public knew more of the new actress than her name, our poor invalid was sick of her and of her praises to the very soul.

He tried, however, to take some interest in the piece, and as he became stronger he began to grow a little anxious about his own share in its success. When the eventful night came he was able to sit up for an hour before the piece began, and Rubach had to leave him. It was midnight before the faithful chum returned, and after looking in on the invalid, who seemed to slumber calmly, sat down for a final pipe by his own bedside. But Christopher was only 'playing 'possum,' as our playful American cousins put it, and, his anxiety over-riding his desire for quiet, he called out,

'Is that you, Carl?'

'Yes,' said the other, hastening into his room on tiptoe. 'I thought you were asleep.'

'How did the music go?'

'Capitally. Both the songs repeated. The overture and the second entr'acte would have been redemanded at a concert, but of course the play was the thing. Such a success, Stretton! Such a furore! She is a little G.o.ddess, a queen. You should see her and hear her! Ah me!'--with a comic ruefulness--'Holt should be a happy man.'

Christopher, warned by his outbreak, which he knew by old experience to be the merest exordium, 'played 'possum' again, with such success that Rubach left him and he went to sleep in earnest.

Holt came to see him next day, and brought the morning papers with him. The musician and he began to talk about writing an English opera together, and Christopher brightened at the scheme, which opened up the road to all his old ambitions.

'You are getting stronger now,' said Holt. 'We shall have you in to see the piece by-and-by.'

'I shall come in a day or two,' said Christopher; and when his visitor had gone, sat down to read over and over again the reviews of his own work. How they would gladden Barbara, he thought. How proud she would be of his success! how eager to hear the music! He laid-a romantic little plot for her pleasure. He would run down when he got stronger, and compel Barbara and her uncle on a visit to town. He would convey them to the theatre and when Barbara was quite in love with the music he would tell her that he himself had written it. How well the songs would suit her voice, and how charmingly she would sing them to him! Pleasant fancies, such as lovers have, floated through his mind. He took up his violin for the first time for a month, and played through the old tune, 'Cruel Barbara Allen.' Rubach came in and found him thus employed.

'You are getting on, my boy,' said the good Bohemian. 'Can you come and see the piece to-night? Are you strong enough?'

'Not to-night,' Christopher returned. 'In a day or two.' And he went oh playing 'Cruel 'Barbara Allen' dreamily.

'What is that?' said Rubach with a wry grin. 'Is not twice or thrice of it enough?'

Christopher laid down the instrument with a smile. When Carl had left him he took it up again and played over to himself the songs Barbara used to sing. He was weak and could not play for any great length of time together, but he played every now and then a melody, and in a while he got back again to 'Cruel Barbara Allen.' Back came Carl as he played it.

'That tune again? what is it?'

'An old ballad,' answered Christopher. "Cruel Barbara Allen."'

He found a pleasure in speaking her name aloud in this veiled way.

'Let the girl alone,' said Carl. 'I am tired of her.'

'I am not,' said Christopher with a weak little chuckle, 'and I have known her since she was a child.'

He began to play the air again, and Carl took away the violin with simulated theatric anger. But Carl's treatment of the name of the ballad as though it were the name of a girl still extant gave Christopher a temptation, and he played the air once or twice again in Carl's presence.

'You are pa.s.sionately attached to Miss Allen,' said Carl.

'She is the only sweetheart I ever had, responded simple Christopher with shy merriment.

Rubach sat down at the piano and sang this song:--

Through all the green glad summer-time Love told his tale in dainty rhyme, And sighed his loves out one by one, There lives no echo of his laugh, I but record his epitaph, And sigh for love worn out and gone.

For love endures for little time, But dies with every change of rhyme, And lives again with every one.

And every new-born love doth laugh Above his brother's epitaph, The last light love worn out and gone.

'That is not your doctrine, mon ami,' he said as he turned round on the music-stool. 'You are faithful to Miss Allen?'

'I am faithful to Miss Allen, certainly,' said Christopher, reaching out his hand for the violin, and again chuckling weakly.

'No,' said Carl, rising and confiscating the fiddle. 'You shall sing her virtues to that tune no more. Write a new tune for her.'

Anybody who has been in love, and I do not care for any other sort of reader, may fancy for himself the peculiar enjoyment which shy Christopher extracted from this homely badinage.

Two or three days later he was almost reestablished, and had indeed begun to write a little. He would not yet go to the theatre, however, having some fear of the excitement. He sat alone in the sitting-room which he and his chum occupied in common, dreaming of Barbara over a book, and building cloud palaces. It was ten o'clock in the evening, and Carl would not be home till midnight. Then 'who was this dashing tumultuously up the stone steps after Carl's accustomed fashion? Carl himself, it seemed, but unlike himself, pale and breathless, and with an ugly scratch across his forehead which looked at first sight like a severe wound.

'What's the matter?' cried Christopher, rising hastily.

'I have had a fall,' said Carl. 'There is nothing to be alarmed at, but,' holding out his left hand, 'I have sprained my wrist and I cannot play.'

'How did it happen?' asked Christopher, following him into the bedroom, where Carl had already begun to twine a wet handkerchief round the injured wrist.

'I was crossing the stage between the acts,' said Carl; 'a plank had been moved, and I set my foot in the hole and fell--voila tout I want to ask you to play for me. There is not a man in the band who can do justice to "When Love has flown." It will be no trouble to you. You will simply have to stand in the flies and play the air whilst a man on the stage appears to play it, sawing away with a soaped bow. Will you come?'

Christopher stood irresolute. 'They can do without me in the orchestra,'

said Carl, 'but I have been playing your song as it deserves to be played. Mademoiselle Helene looks forward to its being played so. It gives her aid, I know. The people look to hear it well played, and if you do not go it will be given to Jones--to Jones, Gott in Himmel! who plays as a mason cuts stone. Do come. It will cost you no trouble.'

Christopher took up his violin-case, long since extracted from My Uncle's maw, and followed Carl from the chambers into the street.

'You play only the first movement, very low and soft,' said Carl as they went along. 'I will stand by you and tell you when to begin.'

They entered the theatre--a terra incognita to Christopher--and found their way through a chaos of disused dusty scenery. A great burst of applause sounded through the unseen house.

'That is for Mademoiselle,' said Carl, 'We are just in time to get breath comfortably. Stay here. I will be with you directly.'

He left Christopher standing in the flies, looking on the stage. There were two or three people on the boards, but Christopher had not the key to their talk, and had little interest in them. By-and-by all but one left the stage. The light dwindled and faded. The sun-sets on the English stage are as rapid as in any tropic region. The player played his part. He was in love, and true as true could be, but the empress of his soul had her doubts about him. How could she doubt him? That was the burden of his speech as he sat at the table, and murmured the loved one's cruelty with a broken voice and his whole function suiting with forms to his conceit. It was almost dark when the first rays of the silver moon fell athwart the chamber. Christopher felt that the dead silence of the house betokened the coming of the crisis in the play, and he was strung to the expectation of something out of the common.

Watching from his own dark standing-place, he could see the actor draw towards him a violin case, and he silently drew forth his own instrument to be in readiness. Whilst he waited and watched, Carl's stealthy footstep sounded behind him.

'You will see her in a minute or two,' whispered Carl. 'I will touch you once, when you shall make ready, and once when you shall begin.'

For half a minute or nearly, everything was still on the stage and in the house. Then the player's voice, pa.s.sionate and low, broke again upon the silence, and in a second or two Carl touched Christopher upon the shoulder. There was a curiously _crisp_ feeling in the-composer's nerves, and he was a little excited. He tucked his violin under his chin, and stood prepared. Into the definite band of moonlight which crossed the stage glided suddenly a white figure.