He tried his hand with a half-forgotten impromptu of Schubert’s, and with each bar that he played the old spirit came back to him. He had not touched a note since the night he had sung to Sara Ford, at Trockenau. Did he remember it? It may be so, but if he did, he carefully abstained from giving any of the songs he had sung on that eventful night. Perhaps the present audience were not worthy. At first he did not sing at all, but wandered on through some strange, cobwebby melodies of Schumann and Chopin—strange melodies, such as had probably never before palpitated through that ancient room, since it was first built, for an abbot’s refectory. At first he thought he would not sing at all; but with the flow of sound, and the exercise of the beloved art, the old intoxication and exaltation stole gradually over him. He paused a moment, struck a couple of weirdly sounding minor chords, and sang the strangely suggestive lines beginning:
‘O Death, that makest life so sweet!
O Fear, with mirth before thy feet!
What have ye yet in store for us?
The conquerors, the glorious?’
If he wished to recall to Nita’s mind their perils of the afternoon, he succeeded most thoroughly in doing so. It all rushed over her mind again, overpoweringly, and the whole truth of it. She knew as she heard his voice that never, never had life been so sweet as when, the danger over, she had seen Jerome Wellfield standing at her side, and had heard his voice, though scarcely comprehending what he said.
So he sang on, song after song; each one with fresh verve and fresh pleasure—with a purer delight in the exercise of his power. Almost at haphazard, he sang the songs and the scenas which he best remembered, just as they came into his mind—Faust making love to Marguerite, and the Troubadour invoking Leonore; one little German love-song after another—‘Du bist wie eine stille Sternennacht’ made the tears rush blindingly to Nita’s eyes. John Leyburn still sat beside her couch: he leaned back in his chair, and the music wrought pleasant visions in his mind, together with a casual wonder whether Wellfield had never thought of going on the stage, where his voice would certainly have made him a fortune and brought him fame to boot. ‘But he would consider it degrading, I suppose,’ thought John. ‘I fear he is an out-and-out Tory.’ Miss Shuttleworth ceased to knit, folded her mittened hands one over the other upon her knee, and appeared at least to listen. The green and yellow cap-ribbons were portentously still, but no sign appeared upon her countenance of either approval or disapproval.
Mr. Bolton, who had at first scarce been conscious of what was going on, slowly and gradually emerged from an imaginary career over the arid plains of the Pampas, over which he had been in fancy galloping madly, hotly pursued by a number of vindictive South American savages, whose arrows threatened death in the rear, while before him was a deep and rapid river, through which his exhausted horse must swim, if he were to reach the territory of the nearest friendly tribe, alive. He gradually awoke to the consciousness that music of no common order was being made in his daughter’s drawing-room. He did not quite understand it all—suddenly he heard Italian words which he recognised—passionate, tragic words:
‘Per pietà non dirmi addiò!
Non dirmi addiò!