My hat flew off and many of my most valuable ideas blew out through my ears, never to return, but Jocko, terrorised into death-like stillness, lay quietly inside my coat.
Somehow or other, I kept my seat, and thus we dashed into Uncle Antonio’s presence. When she saw the strange man, Hoop-La let go and slunk back into the woods, defeated and ashamed.
“Jocko!” screamed Uncle, in a passion of joy, as his long-lost pet flew into his arms. “Bambino! Cara mia!” Fine family feeling compels me to draw a veil over that affecting reunion.
Just at sunset, they left me, marching southward, Uncle’s blissful state of mind expressing itself in exultant strains from his organ. He read meanings into the music that the composer, in his wildest moments, could never have hoped to convey. It is a peculiarity of travelling musical geniuses, like my Uncle, that they always begin a journey at sunset, when the day goes.
Growing ever fainter, the compelling strains of triumph broke upon my listening ears, fortunately without doing any damage. Fortissimo, forte, decrescendo, piano, diminuendo, pianissimo, peace—thus the clear commanding notes died into silence, winding in a thread of silver melody around the base of the distant hill.
Night fell, but I dodged and it did not hit me. The quiet sweetness of the woods was like a plaster on a sore place, and I enjoyed it to the full. My conscience reproached me somewhat for betraying the trust the tawny mother had reposed in me, and I felt, intuitively, that I should never see her again.
I never did, though I am always expecting to meet her in the woods, and I never hear a faux pas without thinking it maybe Hoop-La or one of her children.
JENNY RAGTAIL
After my Uncle went away, the silence began to rasp on my nerves; it was so different from what I had been accustomed to. I had that curious, attenuated nervousness which is always expecting something unpleasant to happen. This was especially acute along about seven in the evening, at which time my talented relative was wont to begin his regular recital upon the instrument he so thoroughly understood.
From seven to eleven, the air would be full of faint, mysterious echoes which had no discernible source. Fragmentary, disorganised phrases from Bedelia, Could Ye Come Back to Me, Douglas, and the beautiful, though familiar melodies from Il Trovatore, came in from the woods around me and beat against the walls of my cabin. It seemed as though some of Uncle’s music had been canned and the cans were exploding. The effect was uncanny, to say the least.