Then the chink of glasses began to mingle with the buzz of voices.
“Taking wine,” muttered the listener; and he wondered whether it was Hock.
Pop!
“Champagne or Moselle,” he muttered; and the report of a second cork taking flight from the bottle followed, and then a third, while the music went on.
There was a row of iron railings in front of the windows, and Richard turned his back and rested it against them; for he was tired, and it was pleasant to listen to the music and feel himself close to a party of gentlemen just for a few minutes before he went back into the town to find out some place where he could get a meal and bed.
All at once, after a loud passage, the band wound up with a series of chords, leaving the principal flute-player sustaining one long note and then dropping to the octave below, from which he started upon a series of runs, paused, and commenced a solo full of florid passages introductory to a delicious melody—one of those plaintive airs which, once heard, cling evermore to the memory.
Dick was weary, faint, and in low spirits. The events of the past days seemed to fit themselves to the strain, till his brow wrinkled up, then grew full of knots, and he angrily muttered the word “Muff!” A few moments later he ejaculated “Duffer!” and then twisted himself suddenly round to look up at the open window from which, mingled with the loud conversation and rattle of plates, the music came.
“Oh, it’s murder!” muttered the lad. “The fellow ought to be kicked!” and, as he listened, his hand went involuntarily into his breast-pocket, pressed the button in the side of the morocco flute-case, and extracted the little silver-keyed piccolo from where it reposed in purple velvet beside the two pieces of his flute.
And all the while the solo was continued, the player slurring over passages, omitting a whole bar, and seeming to be increasing his pace so as to take the final roulades at a break-neck gallop, and get through, somehow, without further accident.
