“You, please, Philip,—you play the accompaniment,” said Lucy, “and then I can go on with my work. You will like to play, sha’n’t you?” she added, with a pretty, inquiring look, anxious, as usual, lest she should have proposed what was not pleasant to another; but with yearnings toward her unfinished embroidery.
Philip had brightened at the proposition, for there is no feeling, perhaps, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music,—that does not make a man sing or play the better; and Philip had an abundance of pent-up feeling at this moment, as complex as any trio or quartet that was ever meant to express love and jealousy and resignation and fierce suspicion, all at the same time.
“Oh, yes,” he said, seating himself at the piano, “it is a way of eking out one’s imperfect life and being three people at once,—to sing and make the piano sing, and hear them both all the while,—or else to sing and paint.”
“Ah, there you are an enviable fellow. I can do nothing with my hands,” said Stephen. “That has generally been observed in men of great administrative capacity, I believe,—a tendency to predominance of the reflective powers in me! Haven’t you observed that, Miss Tulliver?”
Stephen had fallen by mistake into his habit of playful appeal to Maggie, and she could not repress the answering flush and epigram.
“I have observed a tendency to predominance,” she said, smiling; and Philip at that moment devoutly hoped that she found the tendency disagreeable.
“Come, come,” said Lucy; “music, music! We will discuss each other’s qualities another time.”
Maggie always tried in vain to go on with her work when music began. She tried harder than ever to-day; for the thought that Stephen knew how much she cared for his singing was one that no longer roused a merely playful resistance; and she knew, too, that it was his habit always to stand so that he could look at her. But it was of no use; she soon threw her work down, and all her intentions were lost in the vague state of emotion produced by the inspiring duet,—emotion that seemed to make her at once strong and weak; strong for all enjoyment, weak for all resistance. When the strain passed into the minor, she half started from her seat with the sudden thrill of that change. Poor Maggie! She looked very beautiful when her soul was being played on in this way by the inexorable power of sound. You might have seen the slightest perceptible quivering through her whole frame as she leaned a little forward, clasping her hands as if to steady herself; while her eyes dilated and brightened into that wide-open, childish expression of wondering delight which always came back in her happiest moments. Lucy, who at other times had always been at the piano when Maggie was looking in this way, could not resist the impulse to steal up to her and kiss her. Philip, too, caught a glimpse of her now and then round the open book on the desk, and felt that he had never before seen her under so strong an influence.
“More, more!” said Lucy, when the duet had been encored. “Something spirited again. Maggie always says she likes a great rush of sound.”
“It must be ‘Let us take the road,’ then,” said Stephen,—“so suitable for a wet morning. But are you prepared to abandon the most sacred duties of life, and come and sing with us?”