Just at this moment the owner of the yacht poked his head out of the companionway.
“See here, Philip,” he said, “it’s our last night on board, you know, and we may all be excused, I think, for feeling a little sentimental: why can’t we have a little music in the cabin? Shall I tell Marvin to fetch your violin?”
“Oh, yes!” said Philip eagerly; “I will get it myself,” and he ran off to bring his beloved instrument from the bottom of its travelling box, in which it had been carefully packed to preserve it from the effects of the salt air.
“What shall I play?” he said, as he stood, bow in hand, under the swinging lamp in the luxurious cabin.
“Anything you like,” said their host, making himself comfortable in a corner of a sofa; “something of a soft and dreamy kind, you know;” and Philip began to play. He was always at his best when he could improvise and wander on at will, with no set programme to follow, and to-night he quite astonished his hearers with the brilliancy of his performance, playing on and on until the lamp burned low, and at last flickered and went out, and Lord Ashden sprang up, saying:
“By Jove! It must be getting rather late.”
“Ah,” said his friend, with a long sigh, “I could have listened all night—I never heard anything like it; but see here, Philip, come here a moment, my boy, and let me look at you. Are you the same Philip I heard laughing and shouting on the deck to-day? What do you know, a veritable baby like you, about the sorrow and anguish and pain of life? Your music to-night was full of it; but how did it get there, that’s what I want to know?”
“Was it so very sad, then?” asked the boy, with simple regret. “I am sorry. I did not mean to make it so, but I did feel it all for a little while—it was terrible,” and he raised his eyes, full of a distress which he did not understand himself, to his friend’s face.
“Why, my dear little man, this will never do. Come now, scamper off to bed, and don’t let me catch you lying awake thinking of solemn and disagreeable things, or I shall never let you come aboard my yacht again, never, do you understand?”
“There is something uncanny about that boy,” he muttered, as he went up on deck for a walk before turning in for the night. “I would not tell Ashden so, of course, but I am not so sure that his protégé will live to grow up and be the comfort and pleasure to him which he expects he is going to be. Poor Ashden!”