Tom laid himself back a little in his chair, with the sheet of music in his hand, closed his eyes, and repeated as follows—he knew all his own verses by heart:
"Lovely lady, sweet disdain!
Prithee keep thy Love at home;
Bind him with a tressed chain;
Do not let the mischief roam.
"In the jewel-cave, thine eye,
In the tangles of thy hair,
It is well the imp should lie—
There his home, his heaven is there.
"But for pity's sake, forbid
Beauty's wasp at me to fly;
Sure the child should not be chid,
And his mother standing by.
"For if once the villain came
To my house, too well I know
He would set it all aflame—
To the winds its ashes blow.
"Prithee keep thy Love at home;
Net him up or he will start;
And if once the mischief roam,
Straight he'll wing him to my heart."
What there might be in verse like this to touch with faintest emotion, let him say who cultivates art for art's sake. Doubtless there is that in rhythm and rhyme and cadence which will touch the pericardium when the heart itself is not to be reached by divinest harmony; but, whether such women as Hesper feel this touch or only admire a song as they admire the church-prayers and Shakespeare, or whether, imagining in it some tour de force of which they are themselves incapable, they therefore look upon it as a mighty thing, I am at a loss to determine. All I know is that a gleam as from some far-off mirror of admiration did certainly, to Tom's great satisfaction, appear on Hesper's countenance. As, however, she said nothing, he, to waive aside a threatening awkwardness, lightly subjoined:
"Queen Anne is all the rage now, you see."
Mrs. Redmain knew that Queen-Anne houses were in fashion, and was even able to recognize one by its flush window-frames, while she had felt something odd, which might be old-fashioned, in the song; between the two, she was led to the conclusion that the fashion of Queen Anne's time had been revived in the making of verses also.
"Can you, then, make a song to any pattern you please?" she asked.
"I fancy so," answered Tom, indifferently, as if it were nothing to him to do whatever he chose to attempt. And in fact he could imitate almost anything—and well, too—the easier that he had nothing of his own pressing for utterance; for he had yet made no response to the first demand made on every man, the only demand for originality made on any man—that he should order his own way aright.
"How clever you must be!" drawled Hesper; and, notwithstanding the tone, the words were pleasant in the ears of goose Tom. He rose, opened the piano, and, with not a little cheap facility, began to accompany a sweet tenor voice in the song he had just read.
The door opened, and Mr. Redmain came in. He gave a glance at Tom as he sang, and went up to his wife where she still sat, with her face to the fire, and her back to the piano.
"New singing-master, eh?" he said.