“You have been a very long time,” said Janet.
“That’s scarcely a compliment to Mr. Gale,” said Morelli.
“Oh, but I haven’t found it so,” she answered quickly. “It has been enormously interesting. We have been discovering things. And now, father, play. Mr. Gale loves music, I know.”
That Morelli played was a little surprising. There was no piano in the room, and Maradick wondered what the instrument would be. They all sat down in a circle round the fireplace, and behind them, in the dusk of the room, Morelli produced a flute from his pocket. He had said nothing, and they were all of them suddenly silent.
The incident seemed to Maradick a key—a key to the house, to the man, and, above all, to the situation. This was not a feeling that he could in the least understand. It was only afterwards that he saw that his instinct had been a right one.
But the idea that he had of their all being children together—Tony, Janet, Morelli—was exactly represented by the flute. There was something absolutely irresponsible in the gay little tune piped mysteriously in the darkness, a little tune that had nothing in it at all except a pressing invitation to dance, and Maradick could see Tony’s feet going on the floor. It would not be at all impossible, he felt, for them suddenly to form a ring and dance riotously round the room; it was in the air.
He was a person of very slight imagination, but the tune gave him the long hillside, the white sails of the flying clouds, the shrill whistle of wind through a tossing forest of pines, white breakers against a black cliff, anything open and unfettered; and again he came back to that same word—irresponsible. The little tune was repeated again and again, with other little tunes that crept shyly into it for a moment and then out and away. The spell increased as the tune continued.
For Tony it was magical beyond all words. Nothing could have put so wonderful a seal on that wonderful evening as that music. His pulse was beating furiously and his cheeks were burning; he wanted now to fling himself on his knees, there on the floor, and say to her, “I love you! I love you!” like any foolish hero in a play. He moved his chair ever so slightly so that it should be nearer hers, and then suddenly, amazed at his daring, his heart stopped beating; she must have noticed. But she gazed in front of her, her hands folded in her lap, her eyes gravely bent towards the floor.
And this melancholy little tune, coming mysteriously from some unknown distance, seemed to give him permission to do what he would. “Yes, love,” it commanded. “Do what is natural. Come out on to the plain where all freedom is and there are winds and the clear sky and everything that is young and alive.”
He could almost fancy that Morelli himself was giving him permission, but at a thought so wild he pulled himself up. Of course Morelli didn’t know; he was going too fast.