Dr Whitaker, however, remained in happy unconsciousness of Nora’s sudden change of attitude. He drew over a camp-stool from near the gunwale and seated himself upon it just in front of the little group in their folding ship-chairs. ‘I’m so glad you liked my playing, Miss Dupuy,’ he said quietly, turning towards Nora. ‘Music always sounds at its best on the water in the evening. And that’s such a lovely piece—my pet piece—so much feeling and pathos and delicate melody in it. Not like most of Spohr: a very unusual work for him; he’s so often wanting, you know, in the sense of melody.’
‘You play charmingly,’ Nora answered, in a languid chilly voice. ‘Your song and your playing have given us a great treat, I’m sure, Dr Whitaker.’
‘Where have you studied?’ Marian asked hastily, feeling that Nora was not showing so deep an interest in the subject as was naturally expected of her. ‘Have you taken lessons in Germany or Italy?’
‘A few,’ the mulatto doctor replied with a little sigh, ‘though not so many as I could have wished. My great ambition would have been to study regularly at the Conservatoire. But I never could gratify my wish in that respect, and I learned most of my fiddling by myself at Edinburgh.’
‘You’re an Edinburgh University man, I suppose?’ Edward put in.
‘Yes, an Edinburgh University man. The medical course there, you know, attracts so many men who would like better, in other respects, to go to one of the English universities.—You’re Cambridge yourself, I think, Mr Hawthorn, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, Cambridge.’
The mulatto sighed again. ‘A lovely place!’ he said—‘a most delicious place, Cambridge. I spent a charming week there once myself. The calm repose of those grand old avenues behind John’s and Trinity delighted me immensely.—A place to sit in and compose symphonies, Mrs Hawthorn. Nothing that I’ve seen in England so greatly impressed me with the idea of the grand antiquity of the country—the vast historical background of civilisation, century behind century, and generation behind generation—as that beautiful mingled picture of venerable elms, and mouldering architecture, and close-cropped greensward at the backs of the colleges. The very grass had a wonderful look of antique culture. I asked the gardener in one of the courts of Trinity how they ever got such velvety carpets for their smooth quadrangles, and the answer the fellow gave me was itself redolent of the traditions of the place. “We rolls ’em and mows ’em, sir,” he said, “and we mows ’em and rolls ’em, for a thousand years.”’
‘What a pity you couldn’t have stopped there and composed symphonies, as you liked it so much,’ Nora remarked, with hardly concealed sarcasm—‘only then, of course, we shouldn’t have had the pleasure of hearing you play your violin so beautifully on the Severn this evening.’
Dr Whitaker looked up at her quickly with a piercing look. ‘Yes,’ he replied; ‘it is a pity, for I should have dearly loved it. I’m bound up in music, almost; it’s one of my two great passions. But I had more than one reason for feeling that I ought, if possible, to go back to Trinidad. The first is, that I think every West Indian, and especially every man of my colour’—he said it out quite naturally, simply, and unaffectedly, without pausing or hesitating—‘who has been to Europe for his education, owes it to his country to come back again, and do his best in raising its social, intellectual, and artistic level.’