“What, are you a critic now? ‘Strewth, you may as well be. You cannot write, you cannot act; clearly, you have all of the right qualifications. You even add a new one; you review my play before I have even written it. A brilliant innovation, I must say. Just think of all the time it saves.”
Smythe grimaced. “Never mind, go back to work if you are going to be so surly.”
“Well, now that you have muddled up my muse beyond all recognition, you may as well tell me what is on your mind, for clearly, something troubles you. I know that mien of yours when something preys upon your brain. The very air around you is turbid and oppressive. So, come on, give voice to it, or else neither of us shall have any peace upon this night.”
“To be truthful, I am not quite certain what the matter is,” Smythe said, with a grimace.
“Hmm. Twill be like pulling teeth, I see. Very well, then, what does it concern?”
“Not what so much as whom. Methinks ‘tis your new friend, Ben Dickens.”
“Ben? Why? He seems like an absolutely splendid fellow.”
“Oh, I grant you that,” Smythe replied. “He does seem like a decent sort, yet there is still something about him… something… I do not know what; I cannot quite put my finger on it.”
“You are not envious of him, surely?”
“I should not like to think so. I but bemoan my own shortcomings, as you know, and I admit them freely. Now that you mention it, however, I can see how others might well envy Ben his winning ways. To wit, those two apprentices, Jack and Bruce, his friends of old.”
“He would be better off without such friends, if you ask me,” said Shakespeare, disapprovingly.
“Oh, I quite agree,” said Smythe. “A thoroughly unpleasant pair, they were. You saw the way they looked at Molly?”
“Aye,” Shakespeare replied, with a grimace of distaste. “The way a hungry wolf looks upon a lamb. Especially that Bruce. And did you mark how she never once came near our table after those two came in?”
“So you noted that, as well. I thought you did.”
“I did, indeed. And from it I deduce that Molly is an excellent judge of character. But what has any of this to do with Ben?”
Smythe shook his head. “I cannot say.” He frowned. “And yet I feel a disquiet in my soul about him.”
“A disquiet in your soul?” Shakespeare grinned. “Odd’s blood, have you developed poetic sensibilities?”
Smythe snorted. “If so, then ‘tis entirely your fault, for you are a bad influence. The way you walk about, mumbling verses to yourself, ‘tis bound to rub off on one sooner or later.”
Shakespeare raised his eyebrows. “I mumble verses?”
“Constantly. Under your breath, sometimes even in your sleep.”
“Indeed? I had no earthly idea. In my sleep, you say?”
“Aye. Not all the time, but often enough that you wake me upon occasion.”
“Truly? How extraordinary. When I do so, would it trouble you to write it down?”
“Now there speaks a writer,” Smythe replied. “Not ‘I am sorry, Tuck, for troubling your sleep with my dreamful babble,’ but ‘Would it trouble you to write it down?’ Selfishness, thy name is poetry!”
“Oh, say, that is not bad at all! Wait, let me set it down…”
Smythe threw a pillow at him.
“Zounds! Watch out, for God’s sake! You will upset my inkwell!”
“If I do, then ‘twill be the first time that any ink was set down upon that page this night,” Smythe replied, dryly. “Sod off!”
“Sod off yourself. You are getting nowhere and you seek to blame it all on me, when in truth the fault lies entirely with you. I can see, you know. You sit there and stare off into the distance, as if your very gaze could penetrate the ceiling and look out upon the starry firmament, and your lips move as you mumble softly to yourself, and then you make a motion as if to set your pen to paper, but soft! You pause… your quill hovers as if in expectation, and then you set it down once more and stare off into the distance, and so it goes, with little variation, as it has gone so many nights of late, whether I have been plagued with restlessness or not.”
“You are a foul villain!”