A footman brought tea on a tray, and then there was the tinkle of cup and saucer, and more laughter. The lady in satin looked round at Koenig, and he began to play the organ. He played superbly, but nobody seemed to listen. When he finished there was a pause, and everybody said: “Oh, thank you; we're all—er——” and then the talk began again. The vocal soloist sang some ballad of Schumann, and as long as it lasted an old lady with an ear-trumpet sat at the foot of the piano, and a young girl spoke into it. When it was over, everybody said, “Ah, that dear old thing!” Then there was an outbreak of deeper voices from the stairs, with lustier laughter and heavier steps.
The gentlemen appeared, talking loudly as they entered. Koenig was back at the organ and playing as if he wished it were the 'cello and the drum and the whole brass band. Glory was watching everything; it was beginning to be very funny. Suddenly it ceased to be so. One of the gentlemen was saying, in a tired drawl: “Old Koenig again! How the old boy lasts! Seem to have been hearing—him since the Flood, don't you know.”
It was Lord Robert Ure. Glory caught one glimpse of him, then looked down at her slipper and pawed at the carpet. He put his glass in his eye, screwed up the left side of his face, and looked at her.
An elderly man with a leonine head came up to the organ and said: “Got anything comic, Mr. Koenig? All had the influenza last winter, you know, and lost our taste for the classical.”
“With pleasure, sir,” said Koenig, and then turning to Glory he touched her wrist. “How's de pulse? Ach Gott! beating same like a child's! Now is your turn.”
Glory made a step forward, and the talk grew louder as she was observed. She heard fragments of it. “Who is she?” “Is she a professional?” “Oh, no—a lady.” “Sing, does she, or is it whistling?” “No, she's a professional; we had her last year; she does conjuring.” And then the voice she had heard before said, “By Jove, old fellow, your young friend looks like a red standard rose!” She did not flinch. There was a nervous tremor of the lip, a scarcely perceptible curl of it, and then she began.
It was Mylecharaine, a Manx ballad in the Anglo-Manx, about a farmer who was a miser. His daughter was ashamed of him because he dressed shabbily and wore yellow stockings; but he answered that if he didn't the stocking wouldn't be yellow that would be forthcoming for her dowry.
She sang, recited, talked, acted, lived the old man, and there was not a sound until she finished, except laughter and the clapping of hands. Then there was a general taking of breath and a renewed outbreak of gossip. “Really, really! How—er—natural!” “Natural—that's it, natural. I never—er——” “Rather good, certainly; in fact, quite amusing.” “What dialect is it?” “Irish, of course.” “Of course, of course,” with many nods and looks of knowledge, and a buzz and a flutter of understanding. “Hope she'll do something else.” “Hush! she's beginning.”
It was Ny Kiree fo Niaghtey, a rugged old wail of how the sheep were lost on the mountains in a great snowstorm; but it was full of ineffable melancholy. The ladies dropped their lorgnettes, the men's glasses fell from their eyes and their faces straightened, the noisy old soul with the ear-trumpet sitting under Glory's arm was snuffling audibly, and at the next moment there was a chorus of admiring remarks. “'Pon my word, this is something new, don't you know!” “Fine girl too!” “Fine! Irish girls often run to it.” “That old miser—you could see him!”
“What's her next piece?—something funny, I hope.”