The little audience listened with unfeigned delight as he sang of the handsome stranger who wooed the village beauty, only to desert her for "a lady proud and haughty" who had "houses, jewels, land, and gold at her command." The words moved his hearers. Had he not promised them to render the song in his friend's manner? They felt he was achieving this with rare art. Almost unconsciously, indeed, he sang the song in Ben's best manner, with a sob in the voice and even with Ben's strained, sad face as he reached the pitiful climax:
"While they were honeymooning in a mansion on the hill,
Kind friends were laying Nellie out behind the mill."
He moved quickly back to his chair almost before the first shouts of laughter dismayed him. He blushed and glanced appealingly from face to face as the applause was swelled by the groups in the rear room. He and Ben had considered this no song to be laughed at. It was too sad. Yet he saw that the applause was a friendly tribute to his performance. Piersoll was pounding him joyously between the shoulders and Chalmers was urging him to do Ben Crider singing the "Fatal Wedding" at their next club smoker. Baldwin demanded the last verse again, and Ewing sang it, from his chair this time, redoubling his efforts to bring out its pathos.
In the new applause that deafened him he felt reassured. At least they were not laughing at him. He joined weakly in the merriment. The gods had blessed him with a gift for silence at critical moments. He asked no questions.
As the mirth subsided voices were heard unctuously rehearsing choice lines from the song. A passion for the ballad pathetic had been aroused. Some one called on Chalmers.
"Chalmers has written a song himself—give it to us, Chalmers—the one you sang up at Needham's the other night." Chalmers took his place and bowed low as the accompanist poised eager hands above the key-board.
"Gentlemen, with your kind attention, I'll give you a little thing called 'Nothing but Mother'—words and music by a party that doesn't want his real name known because the folks back home might hear of it. Let her go, Professor!"
In a twangy, nasal voice, not unlike Ben's, enunciating his words with the fastidious and strained precision of the music-hall balladist, he began:
"The courtroom, it was crowded,
All the witnesses was there;
The Judge he sat a-frowning
In his highly cushioned chair.
They was trying a old lady
For the stealing of a horse;
They had hauled her to the station,
They had dragged her there by force!"
The last line had been achieved with intense, passionate emphasis. Ewing, listening intently, felt the pricking of a nameless suspicion. The song seemed right enough, and yet some queer, ulterior emotion stirred within him. The air continued in a stirring minor, adapted to the dramatic action: