“The right rider, half a line to the right. That should do it this time! Too much—bring it back! Faugh, out of all gear! Too much back now. Fie, fie, confusion upon my spinal cord—nerves, muscles, and the whole old fumbling fabric!”
Here, two hands, with unerring swoop like that of an alighting dove, came out of the dimness on each side of the bent figure, and with cool, determined touch gently withdrew the old man’s hot and shaking fingers from their futile task.
Master Simon’s ancient bones shook with a convulsive start; a look of intense amazement passed into his straining eye, then the faintest shade of a smile on his lips. But, characteristically, he never turned his head or otherwise moved: the business at hand was of too high import. He sat rigid, silently watching.
The interfering hands now became busy for a space with soft unhurried purpose. Beautiful hands they were, white as ivory outside and strawberry pink within, taper-fingered and almond-nailed; not too small, and capable in the least of their movements. Compared to those other hands that now lay, still trembling in pathetic supineness, where they had been placed, they were as young shoots, full of vital sap, to the barren and withered branch. A woman’s warm presence enfolded the student. A young bosom brushed by his bloodless cheek. A light breath fanned his temples. A scent as of lavender bushes in the sun, of bean fields in blossom, of meadowsweet among the new-mown hay; something indescribably fresh, an out-of-door breath as of English summer, spread around him, curiously different from the essences of his phials and stills. But Master Simon had no senses, no thought but for the work those busy hands were now performing.
“The right rider, to the right, just half a line?” said a voice, repeating his last words in a tranquil tone. “A line—those little streaks on the arms are lines?”
Master Simon assented briefly: “Yes.”
The fingers moved.
“Enough, enough!” ordered he. “Now back gently till the needle swings evenly.”
The pulse of the scales, hitherto leaping like that of a frightened heart, first steadied itself into regularity and then slowed down into stillness. The long needle pointed at last to nought. The white hands hovered a second.
“Not another touch!” faintly screamed the old man.