Christopher read the songs through, and looked up.
‘To-morrow?’ he said.
‘So soon!’ said the other. ‘At what time to-morrow?’
‘Will midday suit you?’
‘Can you bring them to that address?’ ‘I will be there,’ responded Christopher.
His visitors left him and he sat down to think. He was weak, and the pains of hunger gnawed him, but as he sat over one of the songs the words built themselves into a tune almost without his knowledge or effort. Then he turned to write, and found that he had no music-paper. He laughed bitterly at this discovery, and looking round the bare apartment sighted his violin-case, and rising, took the violin and bow out of it, put on his hat, and, with the case under his arm, made for the pawnbroker’s. There he realised half-a-crown, one halfpenny of which was confiscated in payment for the pawn-ticket. He bought paper and pen and ink, and having taken them home, went out again and ate cold sausage at the bar of a public-house, and came back with a few pence still in his pockets. There was a nausea upon him, and he could not recall the air he wished to write. He had eaten nothing for three days and he felt at once sick and drowsy.
He was fain to lie down, and he fell asleep, to awake in two hours’ time a little strengthened and refreshed. The tune came back again, and he set it down, and then attacked the second one with like success.
Morning came, and after a meagre breakfast which finished his resources, he went weakly to the address the dramatist had given him. Mr. Holt had left behind him apologies for unavoidable absence. Would Mr. Stretton call again at three? He wandered desolately home, and; waited, and when the time drew near set out again. This time the dramatist was ready to: receive him.
‘The lady who will sing the songs is here,’ he said, ‘and with your permission I 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.