Plainly, the best thing to do was to begin at once before the situation grew more embarrassing, so Hope broke into the accompaniment of song number one, a simple but taking little production which had been published two years before. It was greeted with applause, so spontaneous and genuine that it could not fail to be inspiriting. Hope forgot to be nervous, and sang “Pack Clouds Away” in her best style, sweetly, smoothly, and with that distinctness of enunciation which is so rare a charm. More applause followed, more exclamations of appreciation, more queries as to how she did it, and then Uncle Loftus must needs begin humming again, and put in a request for “The sleepy one, you know—the one you wrote to order. That is the gem of the collection, in my opinion. We should like to hear the sleepy one, my dear.”
Now, as it happened, Hope was by no means anxious to grant this request, for the idea which Miss Caldecott had so slightly suggested had appealed very strongly to her sensitive nature, and she had put into it her best work, with the hope that when listening to it its hearers might feel something of the same thrill, the same earnestness, which she had experienced in its composition. She had never been able to go through it unmoved, and it seemed almost sacrilege to sing it in this room full of noisy strangers, who would miss its point, and at best pronounce it “sweetly pretty.” She tried to protest, to declare that she had already monopolised the piano too long, but it was of no avail. The more she hung back, the more eager became her audience. “The sooner begun, the sooner it’s done,” she said to herself, with a sigh of resignation, and began to sing forthwith.
Theo had clothed the idea in simple and touching words, and Hope had seconded her with something akin to inspiration; the last few lines, with their subtle change of key, containing an effect at once charming and pathetic. “So to us all comes the end of the day,” Bang Hope softly—so softly that the crackle of the firewood sounded loudly in the ears of the listeners:
“So to us all comes the end of the day.
When our playmates are lost, and our toys cast away;
Tired children of earth, when the shadows fall deep,
The Father in Heaven will grant to us - sleep!”
The pause before the last word gave to it an added emphasis, and Hope let her hands fall on her lap with a sigh of pent-up emotion. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears; but there were no signs of emotion in the audience.
“How sweetly pretty!” cried Truda in the very accents which the singer had heard in imagination.
“I say! Quite touching, isn’t it?” said the youth with the fair moustache.
There was a babel of “Thanks—thanks awfully!” and Aunt Loftus said graciously, “You must be tired, my dear. Come and sit down. We must really give you a rest.”
For five minutes afterwards Hope was the centre of an admiring throng, and tasted the bitter-sweet of an applause which failed to appreciate the true merit of her work. It was pleasant enough, so far as it went, but it left a disappointed ache behind, and she was not sorry when Truda asserted her rights, and by means of a trick with a lead pencil, a piece of paper, and a hand-glass succeeded once more in gathering the company round herself.
Hope remained on the outside of the circle, a little tired after her exertions, and thankful for a moment’s breathing-space. As she stood she became conscious of a steady gaze levelled upon her from the other end of the room. Mr Merrilies had not taken up a position with the other men, but was leaning against the mantelpiece, studying her face with a grave, intent questioning. For a moment each looked deep into the other’s eyes; the rest of the figures in the room seemed to fade away, and these two saw each other as they really were, shorn of all the pretence and artificiality of society.