Dr. Lister was a placid person to whom the consciousness of immortality was not ever present. He had had few personal griefs; he had had little Christian experience; he was not quite certain, indeed, that immortality was desirable. But now there swept into his heart, along with a passionate grief for this forgotten lad, a passionate demand that he should not be dead, but that he should have made up to him somewhere, somehow, his loss of the sunshine and the pleasant breeze and the chance to go on with what was unquestionably remarkable work.
He wished, though from quite another reason than Mrs. Lister's, that the stranger had not come. The search could lead nowhere; the boy was dead and all his unborn works had perished with him. The thought of him hurt, and in spite of his admonitions to his wife, Dr. Lister mourned him.
CHAPTER XI A DUET AND WHAT CAME OF IT
Richard Lister played with Eleanor Bent for the first time on the afternoon of Commencement Day, which was Thursday. He played with her also on Friday and Saturday and again on Monday and Tuesday. In the mornings he played with Thomasina, who was certain that she had never seen her beloved pupil so anxious for perfection. Never was there such gilding of the lily, such painstaking practice of trill and mordent. She would have opened her brown eyes to their greatest possible diameter could she have known that what he practiced with her in the mornings he played with Eleanor Bent in the afternoons, when he displayed all the fine shadings of expression, all the tricks of fingering which he had learned from her. With Eleanor's mistakes he was patient, to himself he allowed no mistakes.
As little as Thomasina suspected that his playing with her was for the time mere practicing for a more important audience, so little did Richard suspect that the young lady beside him neglected all other tasks in order to prepare as well as she could to support his treble.
On two evenings of the week, they read poetry together, sitting on the little porch facing the wide valley and each taking a turn. They looked at the beautiful prospect, then they read again. Each watched the other. When Eleanor's eyes were turned definitely toward the western mountains and her head away from him, Richard's eyes took their fill of her. When his eyes were upon his book, she learned by heart each line of his countenance. She had quite forgotten by now her uncertainties and fears. Within doors Mrs. Bent sat under her lamp, forever embroidering beautiful things.
Together the two read "Abt Vogler," together "A Toccata of Galuppi's." Thomasina, appealed to by Richard, produced "A Toccata of Galuppi's" and played it smilingly.
"Curious, isn't it? You've been reading Browning. Yes, take it with you."