The piano was at the far end of the room in the shade. My playing is really nothing. It was nothing to speak of then, it is nothing to speak of now: but it is soft and soothing; and some people like it. John could play a little himself, but it was too much exertion for him now. They had tried to teach Bill. He was kept hammering at it for half a year, and then the music master told Sir John that he’d rather teach a post. So Bill was released.
“The same thing that you played the evening before last, Johnny. Play that.”
“But I can’t. It was only some rubbish out of my own head, made up as I went along.”
“Make up some more then, old fellow.”
I had hardly sat down, when Lady Whitney came in, stirred the fire—if they kept up much, he felt the room too warm—and took one of the elbow-chairs in front of it.
“Go on, my dear,” she said. “It is very pleasant to hear you.”
But it was not so pleasant to play before her—not that, as I believed, her ears could distinguish the difference between an Irish Jig and the Dead March in Saul—and I soon left off. The playing or the fire had sent Lady Whitney into a doze. I crossed the room and sat down by John.
He was still looking at the sunset, which had not much changed. The hues were deeper, and streaks of gold shot upwards in the sky. Toward the north there was a broad horizon of green, fading into gold, and pale blue. Never was anything more beautiful. John’s eyes fixed on it.
“If it is so beautiful here, Johnny, what will it be there?” he breathed, scarcely above a whisper. “It makes one long to go.”
Sometimes, when he said these things, I hardly knew how to answer, and would let his words die off into silence.