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 appetites, and enjoyed themselves like the two
wholesome young giants they were, and grew and waxed in muscle, and
appetite, 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 passers 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 rehearsed. 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 rehearse
one especial scene. There was a quarrel in this scene which, but for the
intervening hand of the deux ex machinâ, bade fair to be deadly. When,
after repeated trials, they warmed to their work, and got hold of
something like the passion 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 assumption 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 noble 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 gratitude. 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.’
The home stamp made it clear that the letter had reached England ten
days back.
‘My man brought it down this afternoon, the lazy scamp!’ said Leland.
‘He has never been near those blessed chambers since I left till now. A
pile of letters came together, but I took no notice.’
‘Listen to me,’ said Barndale. ‘You have done harm enough in this matter
already, Jimmy, and you must do no more. You must keep clear of her. I
will send her down to my sister for a time. Sophy is a good girl, and
will be glad to have a companion whilst I am away. I will go up to town
to-morrow and see Miss Perzio. You stay here. I shall either wire to you
or come back in the evening.’
The weather had been hot and clear for weeks together, and the
traditions of English summer were preparing to enforce themselves by the
common thunderstorm. The wind moaned in swift and sudden gusts, and the
distant thunder rumbled threateningly. The listener outside misheard
this speech thus:
‘You will be glad of a companion whilst I am away. I will go up to town
to-morrow and see Miss Perzio.’
He ground his teeth, and clenched his hands, and held himself in
resolute silence, fighting against the instinct which prompted him to
cry aloud and dash in upon the two, and either slay them both, or sell
his own life, then and there. But reflecting on the certainty of defeat,
unarmed as he was, and dreading to declare himself too soon, and so put
his enemy upon his guard, he fought the instinct down. Yet so strong was
it upon him that he knew that sooner or later it would master him. He
waded to the shore and crept along the field in the thick darkness,
groping his way with both hands. Turning, he could see the dull gleam
of the river, and the house-boat bulking black against it. He stood
watching, whilst within and without the storm swept swiftly up. Dead
silence. Then a creeping whisper in the grass at his feet and in
the trees about him, but no wind. Then the slow dropping of heavy
rain--drop, drop, drop--like blood. Then a fierce and sudden howl from
the wind, like some hoarse demon’s signal, and the storm began. But
what a puny storm was that which raged outside could one have seen the
tempest in this murderous soul! Not all the tones of great material
nature’s diapason could find this tortured spirit voice enough. Yet to
find the very heavens in tune with his mood brought the Greek to a still
madder ecstasy of passion.
At such times the mind, fearful for herself, catches at phrases
and fancies, as drowning men catch at straws. So now, with terrible
irrelevance, his mind caught at the simple couplet:--
Nenni, nenni, vattienne, non me stà chiù’ à seccar
Sta rosa che pretienne non la sto manco à gardar!
There was nothing for the mind to hold to except that it was the last
song the runaway Thecla had sung to him. He did not remember this, and
had only a half consciousness of the words themselves. But in this mad
whirl of the spiritual elements the mind was glad to cling to anything,
and turned the refrain over, and over, and over,
Nenni, nenni, vattienne, non me stà chiù’ à seccar
Sta rosa che pretienne non la sto manco à gardar!
Rain, and wind, and thunder, and Lightning, had their time without and
within. Peace came to the summer heavens, and the pale stars took the
brief night with beauty. But to the firmament of his soul no star of
peace returned. There dwelt night and chaos. If his passion were blind,
the blindness was wilful. For he saw clearly the end of what he meant to
do, and chose it. Whatever his love might have been worth, he had been
robbed of it, and for him life ended there. He was but an automaton of
vengeance now.
So having set resolve before him, and having done with it, he went
his way. His plan was long since laid, and was simple enough. Demetri
Agryopoulo was not the man to perplex himself with details until the
time came for them to be useful. When that time came he could rely upon
himself for invention. And so his plan was simply to take James Leland
alone, and then and there to put an end to him. He had taken a room in
a river-side public-house near Kingston, and thither he walked. He
made some grim excuse for the lateness of the hour and his bedraggled
garments to the drowsy ostler who had sat up for him, and calmed the
drowsy ostler’s grumbles by a gift of half-a-crown. Then he drank a
glass of neat brandy, and went to bed and slept like an innocent child.
Next morning he was up early, ate a cheerful breakfast, delighted his
host with foreign affabilities, paid his bill, and went away by train
to London. Leaving his luggage in a cloak-room at the station, he took
a stroll about town, dropping into public-houses here and there, and
drinking terrible brandy. At home he drank _mastica_ as Englishmen drink
beer, and brandy was insipid as water to his palate, and had just now
almost as little effect upon his head. Demetri Agryopoulo had discovered
the one secret of the true dissembler, that he who controls his features
controls his mind. A man who can put a smile on his face while torments
rack him, can thereby calm the torments. The resolute will which arrests
the facial expression of grief or rage, allays the grief or rage. He
went about with an aspect of calm insouciance, and therefore with a
feeling of calm and ease within. Yet he was like one who walks with a
madman, knowing that if his own courage should for one instant seem to
waver, the maniac will be upon him. In his journey to town he had been
alone, and between one station and another he had opened his portmanteau
and taken therefrom a small breech-loading revolver and a stiletto. He
laid his hand upon these now and again, and smiled to himself.
The afternoon grew into evening. He took train to Wimbledon, and thence
struck across country in the direction of the houseboat. He skirted the
village with its straggling lights, and made his way across the fields
to the river side. Nearing the boat cautiously, he ensconced himself in
the bushes on the bank, and watched and listened. There were two voices
audible. Barndale and Leland were engaged in serious and indeed in angry
talk. There was a woman in the question apparently, and it would seem
that the friends were quarrelling concerning her. But the Greek soon
heard enough to convince him that this woman was not Thecla Perzio. The
voices grew louder, and some open breach of the peace seemed imminent.
The friends were rehearsing their own especial scene in Barndale’s
comedy.
It becomes necessary to this history at this point to set forth the fact
that one Hodges, resident in the village, had within an hour of this
time received intelligence of the straying of a cow. This man was a
yokel of no interest to us, apart from this one episode in his career.
He had supplied the inmates of the house-boat with new milk and fresh
butter from the time of their first coming. And it was he who had set
afloat a report, not unknown at the historic ‘Swan,’ to the effect that
for all so sweet as them two young gents did go about wi’ one another,
they was a naggin’ like blazes every night,’ He came by now, driving his
recovered cow before him, and passed within a foot of the Greek, who
lay as still as death in the brushwood. The quarrel, when at its height,
ceased suddenly, and the voices fell so low that neither Hodges nor
the Greek could hear anything more than a murmur. The amateurs were
criticising the dialogue and its rendering over pipes and beer.
‘Well,’ said Hodges, addressing vacancy, ‘if theer ain’t murder afore
long, it _is_ a pity.’
Then the bovine Hodges went his way. Events supplied him with an
excitement which lasted him for life; and the younger Hodges who has
succeeded to his father’s cows and remembrances, will not willingly let
die the story of his progenitor’s association with this tragic tale.
The Greek lay hidden in the bushes, and listened to the soft retreating
steps in the field and the murmur of voices in the boat. By-and-by the
door opened, and the friends appeared.
‘I shall not come back by the late train now, Jimmy,’ Barndale said, as
he placed a small portmanteau in the dingy. ‘You had better come down
with me to the “Swan” and scull up again.’
‘No,’ said Leland, unconscious of the impending fate, ‘I’ll walk down
for the boat tomorrow. If I get down there to-night I shall stay, and I
want to write some letters. Goodbye, old fellow. Send us a line in the
morning.’
‘All right,’ said Barndale. ‘Good-bye.’
The sculls dipped, and he shot into the darkness. For a few minutes we
follow Barndale. He pulled down stream rapidly, for the train by which
he intended to reach town was already nearly due. There was nobody
at the landing place. He fastened the boat, and seizing his small
portmanteau, dashed at full speed into the road, ran all the way to the
station, and threw himself into the train panting, and just in time. At
the bottom of the station steps he had spilt a countryman, to whom he
threw out a hurried apology. The countryman was Mr. Hodges.
The Greek listened until the measured beat of Barndale’s sculls had
lost itself in silence. Then he crept forward from the bushes, stepped
lightly to the margin of the stream, laid both hands on a sturdy branch
which drooped above the house-boat, and swung himself light as a feather
to the after deck The door of the rear room, which served the inmates
as a kitchen, was unsecured and open. He passed through, pistol in hand,
and trod the matted floor stealthily, drawn and guided by the tiny beam
of light which issued from the interstice between it and the doorway.
With the motion of the boat the door beat idly and noiselessly to and
fro, so that the beam was cut off at regular intervals, and at regular
intervals again shone forth, keeping time with the Greek’s noiseless
footsteps, and his beating heart and his bated breath, and altogether
taking to itself that importance and force which trifles always have in
moments of intense passion or suffering. Even yet he would not let the
madman within him loose. Even yet he would hold him back until he saw
the object of his hate and rage, and then----
The door swung to and fro gently, and the Greek approached it with
his hand, when suddenly the unconscious Leland from within banged it to
noisily and fixed the hasp. Then with one resolute action Demetri threw
it back and stepped into the doorway, pistol in hand. Leland rose
and turned. He saw the Greek, and read murder in his face, and dashed
himself upon him. But the murderous hand was quick and true. One shot
rang out, and Leland, with outcast arms, fell backwards. The Greek, with
a hand on the table, looked down upon him. Not a struggle or a groan
stirred the prone figure. Demetri threw the revolver through the open
window, and heard the splash with which it fell into the water. He drew
the stiletto from his bosom, and threw that after it. Then closing the
door lightly, and stepping still on tiptoe as though he feared to wake
that prone figure from its awful sleep, he swung himself on shore again.
‘Our rustic friend,’ he said to himself as he stood and looked upon
the boat, bulking black against the dull gleam of the river, like some
uncouth animal standing at the bank and peering landward with fiery
eyes, our rustic friend may not forget his prophecy.’
Therewith he went his way again, and the darkness shrouded him.