It was wonderful really. This man had the inexplicable gift. He could have produced music out of a key, or a saucepan-lid, or an old shoe, like Paganini or some other. He seemed to think in it, and the appropriate words fitted themselves rhythmically to the sounds. It was all done without the least appearance of effort; and there was the woodpecker’s tap and the nightingale’s trill unmistakable in their context. Of course the verse given is an adaptation, and I daresay a bad one, of the original; but it supplies the sense.
Isabella was moved, as she could hardly fail to be. Certainly his voice was a beautiful one—she would grant him that. He had the right to be conceited about it—if he was conceited. But she felt all at once a doubt. He had sung so prettily and naturally, and solely for the children’s sake. Perhaps, after all, what she had thought the confident effrontery of his manner betokened no more than the conscious independence of a free spirit. He would not be overruled, she remembered, about his self-imposed title. That hardly looked like conceit. If she could only believe a little in his personal genuineness, she might excuse him more. It was something in his favour, at least, that he had undertaken a task so unwelcome as this must be from considerations of pure friendship. Yet had he done so? He was a soldier of fortune—he himself had declared it—and the lure he followed must always and necessarily be a golden one.
And straight, on the thought, the unwarranted meanness of the accusation so recoiled upon herself as to make her seem, in its silent utterance, the contemptible one. That momentary revulsion of feeling wrought its mood, penitent and characteristic. It was always this affectionate child’s instinct to propitiate where she thought she had hurt; and, if only in thought, thought none the less must plead for absolution.
The little Louise, leaning from her place, had caught the chevalier’s arm in both her own and was nestling her plump cheek against it. That was pretty and significant. It showed he was a man whom children naturally trusted and liked.
“Look,” said the little maid; “that is Lita’s own lily-pond down there. Lita loves lilies.”
He felt the inopportuneness of the allusion, and his lips twitched a trifle as he responded:
“Do you know what water-lilies are, ragazzina? No? They are the little washing basins of the nixies.”
“They do not hold water, monsieur.”
“Ah! we who live on land wash in water, you see; but those who live in the water wash in sunshine. If you look very carefully, you will see they are all full of it.”
A sweet voice spoke to him: