On a certain evening about a month later, the tropical rains had flooded the thoroughfares, until St. Charles Street needed but a Rialto and a little imagination to convert it into a watery highway of another Venice, while as for Canal Street, its name was as applicable as though it were spanned by a Bridge of Sighs. In the narrow streets the projecting eaves poured the water from the roof to the sidewalks, deluging the pedestrians. These minor thoroughfares were tributary to the main avenues and gushed their rippling currents into them, as streams supply a river, until the principal streets flowed swiftly with the dirty water that choked their gutters. The rain splashed and spattered on the sidewalks, fairly flooding out the fruit venders and street merchants who withstood the deluge for a time and then were forced to vanish with their portable stores. The cabby, phlegmatic to wind and weather, sat on his box, shedding the moisture from his oil-skin coat and facing a cloud of steam which presumably concealed a horse.

The dark night and the downpour made the cafÉs look brighter. Umbrellas flitted here and there, skilfully piloted beneath swinging signs and low balconies, evading awning posts and high hats as best they might. There were as many people out as usual, but they were hurrying to their destinations, even the languid creole beauty, all lace and alabaster, moved with the sprightliness of a maid of Gotham.

Straws, editor and rhymster, was seated on the semi-Oriental, semi-French gallery of the little cafÉ, called the Veranda, sipping his absinthe, smoking a cheroot and watching the rain drip from the roof of the balcony, spatter on the iron railing and form a shower bath for the pedestrians who ventured from beneath the protecting shelter. Before him was paper, partly covered with well-nigh illegible versification, and a bottle of ink, while a goose-quill, tool of the tuneful Nine, was expectantly poised in mid air.

“Confound it!” he said to himself. “I can’t write in the attic any more, since Celestina has gone, and apparently I can’t write away from it. Since she left, the dishes haven’t been washed; my work has run down at the heels, and everything is going to the dogs generally. And now this last thing has upset me quite. ‘In the twinkling of an eye,’ says the sacred Book. But I must stop thinking, or I’ll never complete this poem. Now to make my mind a blank; a fitting receptacle to receive inspiration!”

The bard’s figure swayed uncertainly on the stool. In the lively race through a sonnet, it was often, of 422 late, a matter of doubt with Straws, whether Bacchus or Calliope would prevail at the finish, and to-night the jocund god had had a perceptible start. “Was ever a poet so rhyme-fuddled?” muttered the impatient versifier. “An inebriating trade, this poetizing!”––and he reached for the absinthe. “If I am not careful, these rhymes will put me under the table!”

“Nappy, eh?” said a voice at his elbow, as a dripping figure approached, deposited his hat on one chair and himself in another. The newcomer had a long, Gothic face and a merry-wise expression.

The left hand of the poet waved mechanically, imposing silence; the quill dived suddenly to paper, trailed twice across it, and then was cast aside, as Straws looked up.

“Yes,” he replied to the other’s interrogation. “It’s all on account of Celestina’s leaving me. You ought to see my room. Even a poet’s soul revolts against it. So what can I do, save make my home amid convivial haunts?” The poet sighed. “And you, Phazma; how are you feeling?”

“Sober as a judge!”

“Then you shall judge of this last couplet,” exclaimed Straws quickly. “It has cost me much effort. The editor wanted it. It seemed almost too sad a subject for my halting muse. There are some things which should be sacred even from us, Phazma. But what is to be done when the editor-in-chief commands? 423 ‘Ours not to reason why!’ The poem is a monody on the tragedy at the theater.”

“At the St. Charles?” said Phazma, musingly. “As I passed, it was closed. It seemed early for the performance to be over. Yet the theater was dark; all the lights had gone out.”

“More than the lights went out,” answered Straws, gravely; “a life went out!”

“I don’t exactly––Oh, you refer to Miss Carew’s farewell?”

“No; to Barnes’!”

“Barnes’!” exclaimed his surprised listener.

“Yes; he is dead; gone out like the snuff of a candle! Died in harness, before the footlights!”

“During the performance!” cried the wondering Phazma. “Why, only this afternoon I met him, apparently hale and hearty, and now––you tell me he has paid the debt of nature?”

“As we must all pay it,” returned Straws. “He acted as if he were dazed while the play was in progress and I could not but notice it, standing in the wings. The prompter spoke of it to me. ‘I don’t know what is the matter with Mr. Barnes,’ he said, ‘I have had to keep throwing him his lines.’ Even Miss Carew rallied him gently between acts on his subdued manner.

“‘This is our last performance together,’ he said absently. She gave him a reproachful look and he added, quickly: ‘Do I appear gloomy, my dear? I never felt happier.’

“At the end of the second act he seemed to arouse himself, when she, as Isabella, said: ‘I’ll fit his mind to death, for his soul’s rest.’ He gazed at her long and earnestly, his look caressing her wherever she moved. Beginning the prison scene with spirit, he had proceeded to,

When suddenly he threw up his arms and fell upon the stage, his face toward the audience. With a cry I shall never forget, Miss Carew rushed to him and took his head in her arms, gazing at him wildly, and calling to him piteously. The curtain went down, but nothing could be done, and life quickly ebbed. Once, only, his lips moved: ‘Your mother––there!––where the play never ends!’ and it was over.”

“It is like a romance,” said Phazma, finally, at the conclusion of this narration.

“Say, rather, reality! The masque is over! In that final sleep Jack Pudding lies with Roscius; the tragedian does not disdain the mummer, and beautiful Columbine, all silver spangles and lace, is company for the clown. ’Tis the only true republic, Phazma; death’s Utopia!”

“But to think he should have died with those words of the poet on his lips?”

“A coincidence!” answered Straws. “No more notable than the death of Edmund Kean, who, when he 425 reached the passage ‘Farewell, Othello’s occupation’s gone!’ fell back unconscious; or that of John Palmer, who, after reciting ‘There is another and a better world,’ passed away without a pang.”

A silence fell between the two poets; around them shadows appeared and vanished. Phazma finished his syrup and arose.

“Don’t go,” said Straws. “My own thoughts are poor company. Recite some of your madrigals, that’s a good fellow! What a wretched night! These rain-drops are like the pattering feet of the invisible host. Some simple song, Phazma!”

“As many as you please!” cried his flattered brother-bard. “What shall it be?”

“One of your Rhymes for Children. Your ‘Boy’s Kingdom,’ beginning:

“Thou shalt have it, mon ami!”

And Phazma gaily caught up the refrain, while Straws beat time to the tinkling measures.

The last entry in the date-book, or diary, of Barnes seems curiously significant as indicating a knowledge that his end was near. For the first time in the volume he rambles on in a reminiscent mood about his boyhood days:

“The first bit of good fortune I ever enjoyed was 426 when as a lad in sweeping a crossing in the neighborhood of the Strand I found a bright, shining sovereign. How tightly I grasped it in my little fist that night when I slept in a doorway! I dared not trust it in my pocket. The next night I walked to the ticket-seller at Drury Lane, and demanded a seat down stairs. ‘Gallery seats sold around the corner,’ said this imposing gentleman with a prodigious frown, and, abashed, I slunk away. My dream of being near the grand people vanished and I climbed once more to my place directly under the roof.

“My next bit of good fortune happened in this wise. Sheridan, the playwright-orator, attracted my attention on Piccadilly one day, and, for the delight of gazing upon him, I followed. When he stopped, I stopped; when he advanced, I did likewise. I felt that I was treading in the footsteps of a king. Suddenly he paused, wheeled about and confronted me, a raw-boned, ragged, awkward lad of fourteen. ‘What one of my creditors has set you following me?’ he demanded. ‘None, sir,’ I stammered. ‘I only wanted to look at the author of “The Rivals.”’ He appeared much amused and said: ‘Egad! So you are a patron of the drama, my boy?’ I muttered something in the affirmative. He regarded my appearance critically. ‘I presume you would not be averse to genteel employment, my lad?’ he asked. With that he scribbled a moment and handed me a note to the property man of Drury Lane. My heart was too full; I had no words to thank him. The 427 tears were in my eyes, which, noting, he remarked, with an assumption of sternness: ‘Are you sure, boy, you are not a bailiff in disguise?’ At this I laughed and he left me. The note procured me an engagement as errand boy at the stage-door and later I rose to the dignity of scene-shifter. How truly typical of this man’s greatness, to help lift a homeless lad out of the gutters of London town!

“But I am rambling on as though writing an autobiography, to be read when I am gone––”

Here the entry ceases and the rest of the pages in the old date-book are blank.