Mrs. Brande naturally expected that her niece would require at least a quarter of an hour’s incessant pressing; and, indeed, in spite of what the Hodsons had told her, this benighted old person was not at all sure that it was the correct thing for a woman to play the fiddle. “Would Mrs. Langrishe allow her girl to do it?” and visions of her own fat black butler, squatting outside the house in the cool of the day playing jigs and reels to a circle of enraptured syces and chuprassis, rose before her mind’s eye!
This vision was quickly dispelled by another. Honor longed for the sound of her beloved violin, her present audience were not formidable, and she was not the least nervous. Last time she had held her fiddle and bow it had been a dull wet afternoon at home—a type of the worst grey, sullen, English weather. She had played to them in the drawing-room Schubert’s “Adieu.” Yes, and her mother had wept. Now, what a different scene, and different listeners! Two men, almost strangers, prone on the grass, lazily expectant, and, as far as Captain Waring was concerned, condescendingly ready to be entertained; a stout lady sitting on a wine-case, with her napkin on her knee, and her topee quite at the back of her head; a distant group of scarlet-and-white clad servants; and all around a scene fit to encircle Orpheus himself. Range after range of purple-blue hills, rising out of rhododendron and oak forests, a rival across the valley in the shape of a cuckoo, otherwise a waiting, sympathetic silence.
As the girl took the violin out of its case, Captain Waring could see that it was in hands that loved it; and noted, moreover, that the said hands were beautiful—the wrists most daintily modelled. Soon the bow began to call forth heavenly sounds.
Honor stood up, leaning carelessly against the trunk of a tree, and seemed wholly unconscious of her audience; her face, which was turned towards the hills, gradually assumed a rapt exalted expression, and her playing was in keeping with her attitude and her eyes. The performance was a revelation—a mixture of great simplicity, with a distinct note of human passion in its strain. Surely the music was the voice of this girl’s sweet soul!
The servants boldly came near to hear this new “Miss Sahib” who drew such marvellous strains from the “sitar.” The very ponies pricked their ears, a rambling hill cow halted to listen, the competitive cuckoo was dumb.
The two young men gradually dropped their cigarettes. Mrs. Brande dropped her jaw. Why, her niece played as well as a man at a concert! Even better, in her opinion, for this was a tune that touched her, and that she could understand; those sweet wailing notes, resembling a human voice, penetrated her opaque sensibilities, and wafted her to the very gates of Paradise.
Captain Waring surveyed with unaffected curiosity this fair young musician, with his elbows dug into the grass, his chin resting on his hands. He knew something about music; the girl played with faultless taste and absolute purity of tone. He was listening to “linked sweetness long drawn out” rendered with truly expressive charm. Here was not the common or ordinary Indian spin, but a modern Saint Cecilia! He glanced at Mark, to see how this unexpected transformation had affected him; but Mark’s face was averted, and he gave no sign, though in reality he was enjoying a debauch of exquisite musical thoughts.
Presently the spell, a weird Russian air, died away in a long sobbing sigh, and, save for a murmur among the servants, there ensued quite a remarkable pause, broken at length by Mrs. Brande, who exclaimed as if she had suddenly awoke—
“Very pretty indeed! And how did you like it, Captain Waring?”
“Like it!” he echoed indignantly. “My dear madam, what a feeble and inadequate expression! Miss Gordon plays magnificently.”