“Will you try over a song with me, then?”
(What! It was he who sang?)
“Certainly!”
This was not my subdued, Leadenhall Street office “Certainly.” It was the way in which I might have spoken to Sydney, or to Major Montresor, or the Somervilles, or any of the men who came to my father’s house in the old days, and for whom I played in the evening.
“Wait a minute. This gets in the way; clicks on the keys,” said I, glancing at those weighty diamonds that blazed on my finger. And I drew off his ring, pushing it with a careless little flick out of my way on the glassy black top of the piano. He had put up before me Schubert’s “Still wie die Nacht.”
Appropriate enough, for Still Waters! “Still as the night, deep as the sea——”
I took up the first chords.
Then came surprise again.
I had expected him to possess a big, bull-dog bass, full of sound and fury, and without a touch of feeling in it. To my amazement, his voice turned out to be a particularly sweet, true tenor. Shut your eyes, and you could imagine that it was the most sympathetic and delightful of men who was singing, instead of the Governor!