An Old Meerschaum Part 2

She'll be more afraid of him now than ever, and with better reason.

I suppose I shall have to stop here a time, and see that she isn't murdered. Suppose I went to that Greek sweep, Billy--I've got his address--and explained to him politely that it was all a mistake, and that I'm sorry I went poaching on his manor, and told him that if he liked to have a pot at me he'd be quite welcome! D'ye think that would be of any use, old man?'

'Leave ill alone!' said Barndale, pulling solemnly away at his pipe.

'I can't,' answered Leland. 'That cove's likelier to murder her than not, if he hasn't got me to murder. Look here, Billy, I'll marry the girl.'

'Don't be a fool,' said Barndale. 'What do you know about the girl?'

'Lots,' answered the imperturbable James.

'Highly connected. Lots of tin. Character irreproachable. That elderly Bulgarian party, Kesanlyk Attar of Roses man, knew all about her. The fat Bloke aboard the boat. You know.'

'He won't hurt her,' said Barndale, thinking of the Greek lover, 'and you're well out of it. Why should you marry the girl? There's nothing worse than I know, is there?'

'There's nothing at all in it but that confounded meeting at the Concordia.'

'Keep out of the way of the man in future,' Barndale counselled his friend,' and leave him and his ladylove to make this matter up between them. That'll all blow over in time.' With that he said good-night, and rose to go. At the door he turned and asked--

'Who is the man?'

Leland produced his pocket-book, searched for a page, found it, and handed it over to. Barndale. There, in a delicate but tremulous hand, was written, 'Demetri Agryopoulo, Hotel Misserie, Grande Rue de Pera.'

'He lives in this house,' said Barndale gravely. 'Lock your door before you go to bed.'

Leland took his advice.

The next morning at table d'hote they met the Greek. He was evidently well known at the table, and was popular. His right wrist was bandaged, and in answer to many friendly inquiries, he said it had been sprained by a fall. He never looked at either Barndale or Leland, but chatted with his friends in a free and unembarra.s.sed way which extorted the admiration of the two Englishmen, who were both somewhat silent and uncomfortable. But in Lilian's society it was not possible for Barndale to be gravely thoughtful just now. The business of the day was a trip to the Sweet Waters of Europe. Jimmy, who had been caught by that charming t.i.tle on a former visit, proclaimed the show a swindle, and the Sweet Waters a dreary and dirty ca.n.a.l; but Lilian and her mother must needs go and see what everybody else went to see; and so an open vehicle having with infinitude of trouble been procured, and George Stamos, best of dragomans and staunchest of campaigning comrades, being engaged, Barndale and Leland mounted and rode behind the carriage. Papa Leland, in white serge and a big straw hat with a bigger puggaree on it, winked benevolent in the dazzling sunlight.' The party crawled along the Grande Rue, and once off its execrable pavement took the road at a moderately good pace, saw the sights, enjoyed the drive, and started for home again, very much disappointed with the Sweet Waters, and but poorly impressed with the environs of Constantinople on the whole. On the return journey an accident happened which sent grief to Barn-dale's soul.

Five or six years ago, wandering aimlessly in Venice, Barndale had an adventure. He met a sculptor, a young Italian, by name Antoletti, a man of astonishing and daring genius. This man was engaged on a work of exquisite proportions--'Madeline and Porphyro' he called it. He had denied himself the very necessaries of life, as genius will, to buy his marble and to hire his studio. He had paid a twelvemonth's rent in advance, not daring to trust hunger with the money. He lived, poor fellow, by carving meerschaum pipes for the trade, but he lived _for_ 'Madeline and Porphyro' and his art. It took Barndale a long time to get into this young artist's confidence; but he got there at last, and made a bid for 'Madeline and Porphyro,' and paid something in advance for it, and had the work completed. He sold it to a connoisseur at an amazing profit, handed that profit to young Antoletti, and made a man of him.

'What can I do for you?' the artist asked him with all his grateful Italian soul on fire, and the tears sparkling in his beautiful Italian eyes. Barn-dale hesitated awhile: 'You won't feel hurt,' he said at length, 'if I seem to ask too small a thing. I'm a great smoker, and I should like a souvenir now I'm going away. Would you mind carving me a pipe, now? It would be pleasant to have a trifle like that turned out by the hands of genius. I should prize it more than a statue.' 'Ah!' said Antoletti, beaming on him, 'ah, signor! you shall have it. It shall be the last pipe I will ever carve, and I will remember you whilst I carve it.' So the pipe was carved--a work of exquisitely intricate and delicate art. On the rear of the bowl, in view of the smoker, was a female face with a wreath of flowers about the forehead, and with flowers and grapes hanging down in graceful intermingling with flowing bands of hair. These flowers ran into ragged weeds and bedraggled-looking gra.s.ses on the other side, and from these grinned a death's head. In at the open mouth of the skull and out at the eyes, and wrapped in sinuous windings at the base, coiled a snake. The pipe was not over large, for all its wealth of ornamentation. Barndale had hung over it when he smoked it first with the care of an affectionate nurse over a baby. It had rewarded his cares by colouring magnificently until it had grown a deep equable ebony everywhere. Not a trace of burn or scratch defaced its surface, and no touch of its first beauty was destroyed by use. Apart from its memories, Barndale would not have sold that pipe except at some astounding figure, which n.o.body would ever have been likely to bid for it. The precious souvenir was in his pocket, snug in its case. In an evil hour he drew it out, tenderly filled it and lit it. He and Leland were riding at a walk, and there seemed no danger, when suddenly his horse shied violently, and with the shock crash went Barndale's teeth through the delicate amber, and the precious pipe fell to the roadway. Barndale was down in a second, and picked it up in two pieces. The stem was broken within an inch of the marvellous bowl. He lamented over it with a chastened grief which here and there a smoker and an enthusiast will understand. The pathos of the situation may be caviare to the general, but the true amateur in pipes will sympathise with him. I have an ugly old meerschaum of my own which cheered me through a whole campaign, and, poor as I am, I would not part with it or break it for the price of this story.

Barndale was displaying his mangled darling to Papa Leland in the salle a manger, when Demetri Agryopoulo came in with a friend and went out again after a stay of two or three minutes. Barndale did not notice him, but Jimmy met him point-blank at the door, and made way for him to pa.s.s.

The two friends crossed over to Stamboul and went to the bazaar with their dragoman, and there chaffered with a skilled old Turkish artificer who asked just ten times what he meant to take for the job, and finally took it at only twice his bottom price. A silver band was all it needed to restore it, and it was promised that the work should be done and the pipe ready to be called for at noon on the morrow. It chanced that as the friends left the bazaar they ran full against their Greek enemy, who raised his hat with well-dissembled rage, and stalked on. The Greek by ill hap pa.s.sed the stall of the man to whom the precious pipe had been entrusted. Barn-dale had smoked this remarkable pipe that morning in the Greek's view in the reading-room, and Demetri knew it again at a glance.

It lay there on the open stall in its open case. Now Demetri Agryopoulo was not a thief, and would have scorned theft under common circ.u.mstances. But, for revenge, and its sweet sake, there was no baseness to which he would not stoop. The stall's phlegmatic proprietor drowsed with the gla.s.s mouthpiece of his narghilly between his lips.

The opposite shops were empty. Not a soul observed. Demetri Agryopoulo put forth his hand and seized the pipe. The case closed with a little snap, the whole thing went like lightning into his breast pocket, and he sauntered on. He had heard Barndale's lament to Leland Senior: 'I wouldn't have done it,' said Barndale, 'for a hundred pounds--for five hundred. It was the most valued souvenir I have.' So Agryopoulo Bey marched off happy in his revengeful mind. There was quite a whirlwind of emotion in the old Turk's stall at noon on the following day. The precious wonderful pipe, souvenir of dead Antoletti, greatest of modern sculptors, had disappeared, none could say whither. The old Turk was had up before the British Consul; but his character for honesty, his known wealth, the benevolence of his character, his own good honest old face, all pleaded too strongly for him. He was ordered to pay the price set on the pipe; but Barndale refused to take a price for it, and the old artificer and tradesman thereupon thanked him with flowing and beautiful Oriental courtesy. It was settled that the pipe had been stolen from the stall by some pa.s.ser-by, but, as a matter of course, no suspicion fell upon the Greek. Why should it?

When the time came for the little party to leave Constantinople, and to take the boat for Smyrna, Barndale and his friend went first aboard with packages of Eastern produce bought for Lilian; and Lilian herself with her father and mother followed half-an-hour later, under the care of the faithful George, whom I delight to remember. The Greek was aboard when the two young Englishmen reached the boat. To their surprise he addressed them.

Lifting his hat formally he said, in admirable English:

'Gentlemen, our quarrel is not over, but it can wait for a little time.

We shall meet again.'

With that he bowed and turned away. Leland ran after him, and, uncovering, stood bareheaded before him.

'I owe you an apology,' he said. 'I am extremely sorry and very much ashamed of my part in the quarrel.'

'I care little for your shame,' said Demetri Agryopoulo, with his voice quite low and calm and his eyes ablaze. 'I do not care about your shame, but you shall live to be more sorry than you are.'

He went down the ladder by the side of the boat, and was pulled away in a caique. As he went he laughed to himself, and pulled out Barndale's pipe--remembrancer of his mean triumph, since repaired by his own hands.

He filled and lit it, smoking calmly as the st.u.r.dy caiquejee pulled him across the Golden Horn. Suddenly the caique fouled with another, and there came a volley of Turkish oaths and objurgations. The Greek looked up, and saw Miss Leland in the other boat. Her eyes were fixed upon him and the pipe. He pa.s.sed his hand lazily over the bowl and took the pipe indolently from his lips, and addressed himself to the caiquejee. The boats got clear of each other. Lilian, coming aboard the boat, could not get speech with Barndale until the steamer was well under way. By then, she had time to think the matter over, and had come to the conclusion that she would say nothing about it. For, womanlike, she was half jealous of the pipe, and she was altogether afraid of two things--first, that Barndale would leave her to go back to Constantinople; and next, that the Greek and he would enter on a deadly quarrel. For she had a general belief that all Orientals were bloodthirsty. But the meerschaum pipe was not yet done with, and it played its part in a tragedy before its tale was fully told.

CHAPTER III.

The English party reached London in the middle of July, and made haste out of it--Lilian and her elders to peaceful Suffolk, where they had a house they visited rarely; and her lover and her brother to Thames Ditton, where these two inseparables took a house-boat, aboard which they lived in Bohemian and barbaric ease, like rovers of the deep. Here they fished, and swam, and boated, and grew daily more and more mahogany coloured beneath the glorious summer sun. They cooked their own steaks, and ate with ravenous appet.i.tes, and enjoyed themselves like the two wholesome young giants they were, and grew and waxed in muscle, and appet.i.te, and ruddiness until a city clerk had gone wild with envy, beholding them. Their demands for beer amazed the landlord of the historic 'Swan,' and their absorption of steaks left the village butcher in astonishment.

But in the midst of all this a purpose came upon Barndale quite suddenly one day as he lay beneath the awning, intent on doing nothing. He had not always been a wealthy man. There had been a time when he had had to write for a living, or, at least, to eke a not over-plentiful living out. At this time his name was known to the editors of most magazines.

He had written a good deal of graceful verse, and one or two pretty idyllic stories, and there were people who looked very hopefully on him as a rising light of literature. His sudden accession to wealth had almost buried the poor taper of his genius when the hands of Love triumphant took it suddenly at the time of that lazy lounge beneath the awning, and gave it a chance once more. He was meditating, as lovers will, upon his own unworthiness and the all-worthy attributes of the divine Lilian. And it came to him to do something--such as in him lay--to be more worthy of her. 'I often used to say,' he said now within himself, 'that if I had time and money I would try to write a comedy. Well then, here goes. Not one of the flimsy Byron or Burnand frivolities, but a comedy with heart in it, and motive in it, and honest, patient labour.'

So, all on fire with this laudable ambition, he set to work at once. The plot had been laid long since, in the old impecunious hardworking days.

He revised it now and strengthened it. Day after day the pa.s.sers by upon the silent highway came in sight of this bronzed young giant under his awning, with a pipe in his mouth and a vast bottle by his side, and beheld him enthusiastically scrawling, or gazing with fixed eye at nothing in particular on the other side of the river. Once or twice being caught in the act of declaiming fragments of his dialogue, by easy-going scullers who pulled silently round the side of the houseboat, he dashed into the interior of that aquatic residence with much precipitation. At other times his meditations were broken in upon by the cheery invitations and restless invasions of a wild tribe of the youth of Twickenham and its neighbourhood who had a tent in a field hard by, and whose joy at morning, noon, and night, was beer. These savages had an accordion and a penny whistle and other instruments of music wherewith to make the night unbearable and the day a heavy burden.

They were known as 'The Tribe of the Scorchers,' and were a happy and a genial people, but their presence was inimical to the rising hopes of the drama. Nevertheless, Barndale worked, and the comedy grew little by little towards completion. James, outwardly cynical regarding it, was inwardly delighted. He believed in Barndale with a full and firm conviction; and he used to read his friend's work at night, or listen to it when Barndale read, with internal enthusiasm and an exterior of coolness. Barndale knew him through and through, and in one scene in the comedy had drawn the better part of him to the life. Hearing this scene read over, it occurred to the genial youth himself that he would like to play the part.

'Billy, old man,' said he, 'I think Sir What's-his-name there's about my style of man. Before you put that immortal work upon the public stage you'd better try an amateur performance carefully rehea.r.s.ed. You play George Rondel. I'll play Sir What's-his-name. Easily fill up the other characters. Ladies from London. Week's rehearsals. Bring it out at your own place at Christmas.'

Barndale caught at this idea so eagerly that he sat down that evening and wrote to a London manager requesting him to secure the services of three famous actresses, whom he named, for the first week of the next year. He stipulated also for the presence of a competent stage manager through the whole week, and promised instructions with respect to scenery, and so forth, later on. In his enthusiasm he drew up a list of critics and authors to invite, and he and Leland straightway began to study their respective parts. It was getting near the end of August now, and the evenings began to close in rapidly. The river was quite deserted as a rule by eight o'clock, and then the two friends used to rehea.r.s.e one especial scene. There was a quarrel in this scene which, but for the intervening hand of the deux ex machina, bade fair to be deadly. When, after repeated trials, they warmed to their work, and got hold of something like the pa.s.sion of their part, a listener might have acquitted them of all play-acting, and broken in himself to prevent bloodshed. For they both started from the a.s.sumption that the tones of the stage must be gradually built up into power from those used in ordinary speech, and so they avoided the least taint of staginess, and were on their way to become rather better actors than the best we have just now.

Leland's temperament was not of a nature to persuade him to perpetual effort in any direction; and so, whilst Barndale worked, the other amateur relieved vacuity with billiards. It got into a settled habit with him at last to leave Barndale nightly at his comedy, and to return to the house-boat at an hour little short of midnight. He would find Barndale still at work writing by the light of a lamp grown dim with incrustations of self-immolated insects. Moths fluttered to this light in incredible numbers, and literal thousands of lives were thus sacrificed nightly at the drama's shrine. It was nearly midnight, and as black as a wolfs mouth, when Leland sculled up from the 'Swan' to spend his last night but one aboard the house-boat.

'Billy, old man,' he cried, bursting in suddenly; 'look here! Ain't I in for it now? Read this!'

He handed to his friend a letter which Barndale read in silence.

'This is awkward,' the latter said after a long, grave pause.

Leland sat in constrained solemnity for awhile, but by-and-by a genial grin spread over his features, and he chuckled in deep enjoyment.

'It's a lark for all that, Billy. We shall have the n.o.ble Demetri here next, I suppose. Let's hire him for the great Christmas show. "Signor Demetri Agryopoulo will appear in his great stiletto trick, frustrated by Billy Barndale, the Bounding Brother of the Bosphorus."'

'What is to be done?' said Barndale, ignoring his companion's flippancies.

'Yes,' said Leland, sitting down and growing suddenly grave. 'What's to be done? Read the letter out, Billy, and let's consider the thing seriously.'

Barndale read aloud.

'My very dear Friend,--At what time you was at Constantinople, when trouble came, you made promise that you would not forget me if my poor Demetri should trouble about you. When you last wrote to me this was made again--the promise. My life for not one moment is safe. My aunt is dead and my possessions are now mine, but there is no friend in all the world. Demetri is mad. Of him I know not when I am safe. I fly then to London, where all is safe. But there it is not possible that I should be alone. If there is any lady in the circle of your knowledge who would be kind with me, and permit that I should live with her, it will have for ever my grat.i.tude. I shall go as of old to the Palace Hotel at Westminster. Two days beyond this letter I shall be there.

'Always your friend,

'Thecla Perzio.'

After the reading of this epistle, the friends sat in silence, regarding each other with grave looks. In the silence they could hear the river lapping against the bank, and the rustling of the boughs on the roof, and the moaning and sighing of the wind. But they could not hear the suppressed breathing of Demetri Agryopoulo where he stood knee-deep in water below the house-boat window, listening to their talk. Yet there he stood, not knowing that he was not on dry land; drunk with rage and jealousy; with murder plainly written in his heart and eyes, and all his blood on fire. He threw his soul into his ears, and listened.

'This letter has been a long time on its way, surely,' said Barndale, referring to the date. 'It can't take three weeks to bring a letter from Constantinople.'

'Where's the envelope?' asked. Leland. 'Look at that, and see what the London date is.'