"For shame, Charles!" pronounced Clo. "How often have I bidden you never to waste a piece of string!"
She absolutely began upon those knots with her fingers. My own trembled so violently that they were useless. Meanwhile, for she was about ten minutes engaged in the neat operation,—I scanned the address. It was, as Fred had mentioned to me, as an adult and as an esquire, and the writing was bold, black, and backward. It seemed to have come a long way, and smelt of travelling; also, when the paper was at length unfolded, it smelt of tow, and something oblong was muffled in the tow.
"A box!" observed sapient Clotilda. I tore the tow out in handfuls. "Don't strew it upon the carpet, oh, my dearest Charles!"
Clo, I defy you! It was a box truly, but what sort of a box? It had a lid and a handle. It was also fastened with little hooks of brass. It was open, I don't know how. There it lay,—there lay a real violin in the velvet lining of its varnished case!
No, I could not bear it; it was of no use to try. I did not touch it, nor examine it. I flew away upstairs. I shut myself into the first room I came to, which happened to be Lydia's; but I did not care. I rushed up to the window and pressed my face against the cold glass. I sobbed; my head beat like a heart in my brain; I wept rivers. I don't suppose the same thing ever happened to any one else, therefore none can sympathize. It was mystery, it was passion, it was infinitude; it was to a soul like mine a romance so deep that it has never needed other. My violin was mine, and I was it, and the beauty of my romance was, in truth, an ideal charmer; for be it remembered that I knew no more how to handle it than I should have known how to conduct at the festival.
The first restoring fact I experienced was the thin yet rich vibration of that very violin. I heard its voice, somebody was trying it,—Davy, no doubt; and that marvellous quality of tone which I name a double oneness—resulting, no doubt, from the so often treated harmonics—reached and pierced me up the staircase and through the closed door. I could not endure to go down, and presently when I had begun to feel rather ghostly—for it was dead dark—I heard somebody come up and grope first here, then there, overhead and about, to find me. But I would not be found until all the places had been searched where I did not happen to be hidden. Then the person came to my door. It was Millicent; she drew me into the passage.
"Oh! I can't go down."
"Darling do, for my sake. They are all so pleased. Mr. Davy has been playing, and he says it is a real Amati."
"But don't let Fred touch it, please, Millicent!" For I had a vague idea it would not like to be touched by Fred.
"Why, no one can touch it but Mr. Davy,—not even you, Charles. Do come downstairs now and look at it."