'There is no fear of that, sir,' Mr. Warr answered. 'That,' pointing to the empty gla.s.s, 'is my first to-day, and I as thirsty as I am hungry.'

'Eat, man, eat,' said Paul.

'May I, sir?' asked Mr. Warr.

'Your fill,' said Paul.

There were hard-boiled eggs and cold sausages on the marble-topped counter, and Mr. Warr fell to work among them, and mumbled grat.i.tude with his mouth full. When he had half cleared the counter, Paul paid for the depredations, and Mr. Warr, who knew the town of old, picked up his leaking parcels and made off for the address given him.

'Veil,' said Darco when Paul got back to him, 'you haf seen him? Had he any package and luckage?' Paul described Mr. Warr's kit. 'You must puy for him a jeap, useful bordmandeau, and jarge id to me. I shall sdop it out of his wages,' which of course he never did.

Mr. Warr presented himself at Darco's lodging next morning wrapped in a perfume of gin and cloves. He laid upon the table a wordy doc.u.ment in foolscap with a receipt stamp in one corner, and read it aloud in his own breathless chuckle. It set forth that whereas he, the undersigned William Treherne Macfarvel Warr, of the one part, late of, et cetera, had entered into an engagement with George Darco, Esq., et cetera, et cetera, of the other part, to such and such an effect of polysyllabic rigmarole, he, the aforesaid and undersigned, did seriously and truly covenant with the aforesaid George Darco, Esq., of et cetera, et cetera, all over again, not to drink or imbibe or partake of any form of alcoholic liquor, whether distilled or fermented, until such time as the agreement or engagement between the aforesaid and undersigned on the one part, and the aforesaid George Darco, Esq., of the other part, should end, cease, and determine. He signed this doc.u.ment with a great sprawling flourish, and Darco and Paul having appended their names to it also, Mr. Warr wrote the date of the transaction across the receipt stamp, and handed the paper to his employer with a solemn bow.

'You haf peen zaying goot-bye to the dear greature,' said Darco; 'I can see that.'

'In the words of Oth.e.l.lo, sir,' said Mr. Warr: '"I kissed her ere I killed her."' He smiled self-consciously, but instantly grew grave again. 'You know me, Mr. Darco. You have my highly superior word. I never go back on it, sir.'

Mr. Warr kept his word, but he grew insufferably self-righteous, and preached total abstinence to everybody, from Darco to the call-boy. He atoned for this unconsciously by the longing calculations he made.

'I have consulted the almanac,' he confided to Paul; 'it is two hundred and seventy-one days to my next drink.'

After this he offered a figure almost daily: 'Two seventy. A dry journey, Mr. Armstrong.''Two fifty, sir, two fifty. The longest lane must turn, sir.' Then, after a long spell of yearning: 'Only two hundred now, sir. I should like to obliterate two hundred. But a Warr's word is sacred.'

'Now,' said Paul one day, 'why don't you take advantage of this sober spell to cure yourself of the craving, in place of looking forward to the next outburst and counting the days between? Why don't you make up your mind to have done with it altogether?

'Sir,' said Mr. Warr with intense solemnity, 'if I thought I had tasted my last liquor, I'd cut my throat.'

'If ever I find myself disposed to feel like that,' Paul answered, 'I will cut my own.'

'Oh dear no, you won't, sir,' said Mr. Warr. 'If ever you go that way at all, you'll slide into it. You will always believe that you could drop it at any moment until you find you can't. Then you'll be reconciled, like the rest of us.'

Paul had little fear. His temptation, he told himself, did not lie in that direction.

CHAPTER X

Darco's work fell into routine for a time. The wheels of all his affairs went so smoothly that he and his a.s.sistant found many easy breathing-s.p.a.ces. But Paul was of a mind just now to scorn delight and live laborious days. He confined himself for many hours of each day to his bedroom, and on the weekly railway journey with his chief he sat for the most part in a brown study, And made frequent entries in a big note-book.

'Vat are you doing?' Darco asked one day.

Paul blushed, and answered that he would rather wait a day or two before speaking.

'I shall ask your opinion in a week at the outside,' he added.

Darco went to sleep, a thing he seemed able to do whenever the fancy took him, and Paul made notes furiously all through the rest of the journey. His ideas affected him curiously, for at times his eyes would fill and he would blow his nose, and at other times he would chuckle richly to himself. He had got what he conceived to be a dramatic notion by the tip of the tail, and he was engaged in the manufacture of his first drama. In due time the result of his labours in his most clerk-like hand was pa.s.sed over a breakfast-table to Darco, who winced, and looked like a shying horse at it.

'Vot is id?' he asked.

'It is a play,' said Paul, blushing and stammering. 'I want to have your judgment on it.'

'Dake it away!' cried Darco; 'dake it away. I am wriding blays myselluf, ant I will nod look at other beoble's. No. Dake it away!'

Paul stared at him in confusion.

'I do not vant to look at anypoty's blays,' said Darco. 'I haf got alreaty all the tramatic iteas there ever haf been in the vorldt--all there efer will be. I do not vant notions that are olter than the hills brought to me, and then for beobles to say I haf zeen their pieces and gopied from them. I do not vant to gopy from anypoty. I am Cheorge Dargo.'

'I'll bet,' said Paul rashly, 'that you haven't met this idea yet.'

'My tear poy,' Darco answered, 'if you haf cot a new way of bantling an old itea you are ferry lucky. But there are no new iteas, and you may take my vort for it. If anypoty asks who told you that, say it was Cheorge Dargo.'

'Let me read it to you,' Paul urged. 'It's hardly likely that a youngster like myself is going to have the cheek to charge _you_ with having stolen your ideas--now, is it?' Darco smoothed a little. 'You could tell me if there's anything in it, or if I'm wasting time.'

'Go on,' said Darco, suddenly rising from the table and hurling himself into an arm-chair, so that the floor shuddered, and the windows of the room danced in their panes.

Paul sipped his tea, opened his ma.n.u.script and began to read. He read on until a loud snore reached his ears, and then looked up discouraged.

'Vot's the madder?' Darco asked. 'Go on; I am listening.'

Paul went on and Darco snored continuously, but whenever the reader looked up at him, he was wide awake and attentive. The landlady came in to clear the table and Darco drove her from the room as if she had come to steal her own properties. Then he flung himself anew into his arm-chair and snored until the reading came to a close. It had lasted two hours and a half, and Paul at times had been affected by his own humour and pathos. He waited with his eyes on the word 'Curtain 'at the bottom of the final page.

'You think that is a blay?' said Darco. 'Vell, it is nod a blay. It is a ch.e.l.ly.'

'I don't quite think I know what you mean,' Paul answered, horribly crestfallen.

'I say vot I mean,' Darco responded. 'It is a ch.e.l.ly. It is a very goot ch.e.l.ly--in' places. You might like it if you took it in a sboon out of a storypook, or a folume of boedry; but a blay is a very different greation.'

Then he fell to a mortally technical criticism of Paul's work--a practical stage-manager's criticism--and enlightened his hearer's mind on many things. He said, 'I am Cheorge Dargo, ant now you know,' a little oftener than was necessary, but he laid bare all the weaknesses of plot and execution--all the improbabilities which Paul supposed himself cunningly to have effaced or bidden, and he showed him how fatally he had disguised his budding scoundrel in a robe of goodness throughout the whole of the first act.

'But it's life!' cried Paul. 'That's what happens in life. You meet a man who seems made of honesty; you trust him, and he picks your pocket.'

'Aha!' said Darco; 'but there is always somepoty who knows the druth apout him, ant efery memper of your autience must represend that somepoty. Now, I'll dell you. I vill make a sgeleton for you. We will pild your ch.e.l.ly into a gomedy, ant we will preathe into id the preath of life, and it shall valk apout.'

'You'll--you'll work with me?' Paul cried. 'Hurrah!'

Darco rang a peal at the bell, and the landlady, probably thinking the house on fire, scurried madly to answer the call.

'Half-bast elefen o'glock,' growled Darco accusingly, 'ant look at the preakfast-dable.'

'But you told me, sir----' began the gasping woman.

'Now don't sdant jattering there,' said Darco, 'I am koing to be busy.

Glear avay!'

'I came to clear away at nine, sir.'

'Glear avay now,' said Darco; 'don't vaste my dime.'