So went the winter weather, and so went Carew; for there was no denying that both had fallen into a very bad way. Yet another change came creeping over Carew all unaware.
Nick’s face had from the first attracted him; and now, living with the boy day after day, housed up, a prisoner, yet cheerful through it all, the master-player began to feel what in a better man had been the prick of conscience, but in him was only an indefinite uneasiness like a blunted cockle-bur. For the lad’s patient perseverance at his work, his delight in singing, and the tone of longing threaded through his voice, crept into the master-player’s heart in spite of him; and Nick’s gentle ways with Cicely touched him more than all the rest: for if there was one thing in all the world that Gaston Carew truly loved, it was his daughter Cicely. So for her sake, as well as for Nick’s own, the master-player came to love the lad. And this was shown in queer ways.
In the wainscot of the dining-hall there was a carven panel just above the Spanish chest. At night, when the house was still and all the rest asleep, Carew often came and stood before this panel, with a queer, hesitating look upon his hard, bold face; and stretching out his hand, would press upon the head of a cherub cut in the bevel edge. Whereupon the panel slipped away within the wainscot, leaving a little closet in the hollow of the wall, in which a few strange things were stowed: an empty flask, an inlaid rosewood box, a little slipper, and a dusty gittern with its strings all snapped and a faded ribbon tied about its neck.
The rosewood box he would take down, and with it open in his lap would sit beside the fire like a man within a dream, until the hearth grew white and cold, and the draught had blown the ashes out in streaks across the floor. In the box was a woman’s riding-glove and a miniature upon ivory, Cicely’s mother’s face, painted at Paris in other days.
One night, while they were sitting all together by the fire, Nick and Cicely snug in the chimney-seat, Carew spoke up suddenly out of a little silence which had fallen upon them all. “Nick,” said he, quite softly, with a look on his face as if he were thinking of other things, “I wonder if thou couldst play?”
“What, sir?” asked Nick; “a game?” and made the bellows whistle in his mouth.
“Nay, lad; a gittern.”
Nick and Cicely looked up, for his manner was very odd.
“Why, sir, I do na know. I could try. I ha’ heard one played, and it is passing sweet.” “Ay, Nick, ’tis passing sweet,” said Carew, quickly—and no more; but spoke of France, how the lilies grow in the ditches there, and the tall trees stand like soldiers by the road that runs to the land of sunny hills and wine; and of the radiant women there, with hair like night and eyes like the summer stars. Then all at once he stopped as if some one had clapped a hand upon his mouth, and sat and stared into the fire.