‘Has the man no feelings,’ Nora exclaimed with a shudder to Marian, outside, ‘that he can play his fiddle in this storm, like Nero or somebody when Rome was burning!’
‘I think,’ Marian said, with a little sigh, ‘he has some stronger overpowering feeling underneath, that makes him think nothing of the hurricane or anything else, but keeps him wrapped up entirely in its own circle.’
Next day, when the sea had gone down somewhat, and the passengers had begun to struggle up on deck one by one with pallid faces, Dr Whitaker made his appearance once more, clothed and in his right mind, and handed Nora a little roll of manuscript music. Nora took it and glanced carelessly at the first page. She started when she saw it was inscribed in a round and careful copper-plate hand—‘To Miss Dupuy.—Hurricane Symphony. By W. Clarkson Whitaker, M.B., Mus. Bac.’ Nora read hastily through the first few bars—the soughing and freshening of the wind in its earlier gusts, before the actual tempest had yet swept wildly over them—and murmured half aloud: ‘It looks very pretty—very fine, I mean. I should like some day to hear you play it.’
‘If you would permit me to prefix your name to the piece when it’s published in London,’ the mulatto doctor said with an anxious air—‘just as I’ve prefixed it there at the head of the title-page—I should be very deeply obliged and grateful to you.’
Nora hesitated a moment. A brown man! Her name on the first page of his printed music! What would people say in Trinidad? And yet, what excuse could she give for answering no? She pretended for a while to be catching back her veil, that the wind blew about her face and hair, to gain time for consideration; then she said with a smile of apology: ‘It would look so conceited of me, you know—wouldn’t it, Dr Whitaker? as if I were setting myself up to be some great one, to whom people were expected to dedicate music.’
The mulatto’s face fell a little with obvious disappointment; but he answered quietly: ‘As you will, Miss Dupuy. It was somewhat presumptuous of me, perhaps, to think you would accept a dedication from me on so short an acquaintance.’
Nora’s cheeks coloured quickly as she replied with a hasty voice: ‘O no, Dr Whitaker; I didn’t mean that—indeed, I didn’t. It’s very kind of you to think of putting my name to your beautiful music. If you look at it that way, I shall ask you as a personal favour to print that very dedication upon it when you get it published in London.’
Dr Whitaker’s eye lighted up with unexpected pleasure, and he answered, ‘Thank you,’ slowly and softly. But Nora said to herself in her own heart: ‘Goodness gracious, now, just out of politeness to this clever brown man, and because I hadn’t strength of mind to say no to him, I’ve gone and put my foot in it terribly. What on earth will papa say about it when he comes to hear of it! I must try and keep the piece away from him. This is the sort of thing that’s sure to happen to one when one once begins knowing brown people!’
(To be continued.)