Cruel Barbara Allen | Page 8

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 Hélène 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 assured that you
will doubt no longer.
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, rehearsed 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 Hélène. 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