Anne watched him as he laid his fingers lovingly around it. For a moment or so he stood motionless. And then he began to play.
First Anne heard an ordinary little march, quite conventional, but sufficiently gay and lively. Then it broke into curious discords played in rapid succession. Next followed a minor passage, tense, constrained, as if the strange little air running through it were struggling for greater liberty of expression. Suddenly it found it, blending into a Te Deum, grand and glorious. All at once it stopped, breaking again into a succession of strange discords which hurt Anne to hear. There was an instant’s pause, as if the first half of his theme were finished. Then, played in the minor key, came a gay song with an under note of marching feet, and through it a wistful yearning as for something lost. The air changed to the major, and was repeated. Then came a little melody played quite separately and on its own account, a little rocking melody, not unlike [Pg 110]a cradle song. It ceased, and a new theme began quite unlike anything that had preceded it. Anne listened with suspended breath. She made no attempt to classify it as she had classified his previous themes. But above and beyond all the others it spoke directly to her heart.
Suddenly she was aware that the music had stopped, and that Peter was looking at her like a man who has just come out of a trance.
Anne’s eyes were full of tears.
“Thank you,” she said, and she held out her hand.
Peter came forward and took it. Then—it seemed that the action was almost involuntary—he raised it to his lips.
Miss Haldane fairly gasped, sitting upright and grasping the supports of the deck-chair with both hands. The effrontery! the audacity! the—the—she had no further word in her vocabulary with which to express her indignation.
Yet if Lady Anne were displeased she did not show it. She looked at Peter long and curiously, as if seeking for something she might find, something that escaped, eluded her.
“You will come and play to me again?” she asked.
“Perhaps,” said Peter thoughtfully. He seemed not yet fully recovered from what had appeared like a trance.