“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?”