'Ha!' said Smyth, with a dramatic pose of his legs, 'Archibald is the soul of discretion. Compared to him, an Egyptian mummy is a pithy paragrapher. _Mes amis_, Archibald's is just across the bridge, and I can a.s.sure you that the Twilight Tinkle, in which I have the honour to have collaborated, is guaranteed to change the most elongated countenance of glum into a globular surface of blithesome joy.'

'No,' began Selwyn impatiently.

'Let us try it,' said Durwent eagerly. 'I think this chill has got into my blood. I'd give a lot for a shot of rum or brandy.'

'We can have anything in my rooms,' protested the American. 'You want to get your wet things off--and, besides, it's a risk going in there.'

'No risk--no risk,' said Durwent, laughing foolishly and rubbing his hands together.--'Where is this hole, Smyth?'

'Gentlemen,' said the artist, 'after the custom of these military days, I urge you "fall in."'

Getting in the centre and adjusting his hat at a precipitate angle on the extreme left of his head, Smyth took d.i.c.k Durwent's arm, and extending the other to Selwyn, marched the pair across the bridge, holding the absurd umbrella over each in turn as if it offered some real resistance to the scurvy downpour.

III.

'This way, gentlemen,' said Smyth, leading them up an alley, across a court, and into a lane. 'Permit me to welcome you to Archibald's.'

They entered a dimly lit tavern, where a dozen or so men sat about the room at little tables. Instead of the usual pictures one sees in such places, pictures of dancers with expressive legs, and race-horses with expressive faces, the walls were hung with dusty signed portraits of authors, artists, and actors, most of whom had attained distinction during the previous half-century. Sir Henry Irving as Oth.e.l.lo held the place of honour over the bar, with Garrick as his _vis-a-vis_ on the opposite wall. The divine Sarah cast the spell of her eternal youth on all who gathered there; and Lewis Waller, with eyes intent on his sword-handle, seemed oblivious to the close proximity of Lily Langtry and Ellen Terry, those empresses of the dual realms of Beauty and Intelligence. Without any companion portrait, the puffy sensuality of Oscar Wilde held a prominent place. And between the spectacled face of Rudyard Kipling on one side and the author of _Peter Pan_ on the other, Forbes-Robertson in the garb of the Melancholy Dane looked out with his fine n.o.bility of countenance. The room was heavy with tobacco-smoke, which seemed to have been acc.u.mulating for years, and to have darkened the very beams of the ceiling. Over the floor a liberal coating of sawdust was sprinkled.

'Strange place, this,' whispered Johnston Smyth as they took a table in an unfrequented corner. 'It's an understood thing that the habitues of Archibald's are trailers in the race of life. If you have a fancy for human nature, gentlemen, this is the shop to come to. We've got some queer goods on the shelves--newspaper men with no newspapers to write for; authors that think out new plots every night and forget 'em by morning; playwrights that couldn't afford the pit in the Old Vic.--Do you see that old chap over there?'

'The little man,' said Selwyn, 'with the strange smile?'

'That's right. He's been writing a play now for twenty years, but hasn't had time to finish the last act. "There's no hurry," he says; "true art will not permit of haste"--and the joke of it is that he has a cough that'll give him his own curtain long before he ever writes it on his play. There he goes now.'

The old playwright had been seized with a paroxysm of coughing that took his meagre storehouse of breath. Weakly striking at his breast, he shook and quivered in the clutch of the thing, leaning back exhausted when it had pa.s.sed, but never once losing the odd, whimsical smile.

'What about something to drink?' broke in d.i.c.k Durwent hurriedly, his eyes narrowing.

'Directly,' said Smyth, beckoning to the proprietor, a small man, who, in spite of his years and an oblong head undecorated by a single hair, appeared strangely fresh and unworried, as if he had been sleeping for fifty years in a cellar, and had just come up to view the attending changes.

'Archibald,' said Smyth, 'these are my friends the Duke of Arkansas and Sir Plumtree Crabapple.'

The extraordinary little man smiled toothlessly and fingered his tray.

'Gentlemen,' said Smyth, 'name your brands.'

'Give me a double brandy,' said Durwent, blowing on his chilled fingers. 'Better make it two doubles in a large gla.s.s.'

'Soda, sir?' queried the proprietor in a high-pitched, tranquil voice.

'No,' said Durwent. 'You can bring a little water in a separate gla.s.s.'

'What is your pleasure, your Grace?' said Smyth, addressing the American. 'If you will do Archibald and myself the honour of trying the Twilight Tinkle, it would be an event of importance to us both.'

'Anything at all,' said Selwyn, sick at heart as he saw the nervous interlocked fingers of d.i.c.k Durwent pressed together with such intensity that they were left white and bloodless.

'This is a little slice of London's life,' said Smyth after he had given the order, crossing his left leg over the right, 'that you visitors would never find. You hear about the chaps who succeed and those who come a cropper, but these are the poor beggars who never had a chance to do either. There's genius in this room, gentlemen, but it's genius that started swimming up-stream with a millstone round its neck.'

With a profound shaking of the head, Smyth straightened his left leg, and after carefully taking in its shape with partially closed eyes, he replaced it on its fellow.

'How do they live?' queried Selwyn.

'Scavengers,' said Smyth laconically. 'Scavengers to success. Do you see that fellow there with the poached eyes and a four-days' beard?'

Selwyn looked to the spot indicated by Smyth, and saw a heavily built man with a pale, dissipated face, who was fingering an empty gla.s.s and leering cynically with some odd trend of thought. It was a face that gripped the attention, for written on it was talent--immense talent.

It was a face that openly told its tale of ma.s.sive, misdirected power of mentality, fuddled but not destroyed by alcohol.

'That's Laurence De Foe,' said Smyth; 'a queer case altogether.

Barnardo boy--doesn't know who his parents were, but claims direct descent from Charlemagne. He's never really drunk, but no one ever saw him sober. If he wanted to, he could write better than any man in London. Last year, when the critics scored Welland's play _Salvage_ for its rotten climax, the author himself came to De Foe. All night they sat in his stuffy room, and when Welland went away he had a play that made his name for ever. I could tell you of two of the heavy artillery among the London leader-writers who always bring their big stuff to De Foe before they fire it. Last July, when the war was making its preliminary bow, and Hemphill was thundering those editorials of his that warned the Old Lion he would have to wake up and clean the jungle, Hemphill was simply the errand urchin. There's the man who wrote "To Arms, England!" one day after the Austrian note to Serbia. Hemphill got the credit and the money--but Laurence De Foe did it.'

Smyth's stream of narrative, which carried considerably less impedimenta of caricature and persiflage than was usual with him, came to an end with the arrival of two Twilight Tinkles and a generous-sized tumbler, more than half-full of brandy. After an elaborate search of his coat and trousers pockets to locate a five-pound note, Smyth was forced to allow Selwyn to pay for the refreshment, promising to knock him up before six next morning and repay him.

'Well, gentlemen,' said the conscientious artist, 'here's success to crime!'

Not waiting to honour the misanthropic toast, d.i.c.k Durwent had reached greedily for his gla.s.s, and poured its contents down his throat. With a heavy sigh of gratification, he leaned back in his chair, and the pallor of his cheeks showing beneath the weather-beaten surface of tan was flecked with patches of colour. For an instant only his eyes went yellow, as on the night at the Cafe Rouge; but the horrible glare died out, and was succeeded by the calm, blue tranquillity that had reigned before.

'By St. George!' said Smyth admiringly, 'but we have no amateur with us, Selwyn.'

The solitary figure of De Foe, who had been watching them, left his table, and lurching over to them, stood swaying unevenly.

'_Bon soir_, gentlemen,' he said, speaking with the deep sonorousness which comes of long saturation of the vocal cords with undiluted spirits, 'I think one or two of these faces are new to Archibald's. Am I right?'

'Yes, sir,' said Smyth, rising. 'Permit me, Mr. De Foe, to introduce'----

The writer stopped him with a slow, majestic movement of the hand.

'What care I who they are?' he said heavily. 'Names mean nothing--pretty labels on empty vessels. By what right do these gentlemen invade the sanct.i.ty of Archibald's?' He drew a chair near them and sat down sullenly, hanging his arm over the back. 'Do I see aright?' he queried thickly, opening his eyes with difficulty, and revealing their l.u.s.treless shade. 'There are three of you? Humph!

The one I know--a clumsy dauber in a smudgy world.'

Smyth nodded delightedly to his companions to indicate that the compliment was intended for him.

'Or your friends,' went on the heavy resonant voice, 'one has the face of a dreamer. Come, sir, tell me of these dreams that are keeping you awake of nights. I am descended from Joseph by the line of Charlemagne, and I have it in my power to interpret them. Are you a writer?'

'I am,' said Selwyn calmly.

'You are not English. You haven't the leathery composure of our race.'

'I am an American.'

'I thought as much. You show the smug complacency of your nation. How dare you write, sir? What do you know of life?'

'We have learned something on that subject,' said Selwyn with a slight smile, 'even over there. You see, we have the mistakes of your older countries by which we can profit.'

'Bah!' said the other contemptuously. 'Cant--plat.i.tudes--words! Since when have either nations or individuals learned from the mistakes of others? Take you three. Which of you lies closest to life? Which of you has drunk experience to the dregs? The dauber?--You, author-dreamer, fired by the pa.s.sion of a robin for a cherry?--No, neither of you. . . . That boy there--that youngster with the blue eyes of a girl; he is the one to teach--not you. He has the stamp of failure on him. Welcome, sir--the Prince of Failures welcomes you to Archibald's.'

He lurched forward and extended an unsteady hand to d.i.c.k Durwent, who rose slowly from his chair to take it. As Selwyn watched the two men standing with clasped hands over the table, he felt his heart-strings contract with pain.