"Drives her husband to the devil and herself into the widows' compartment," interrupted the vicar's wife, with disgust in her voice. "Miss Holden, do you sing?"
"I have no music," I replied, "but may I 'say a piece' instead, as the village children put it?" I turned to the Cynic and made him a mock curtsey:
"Small blame is ours
For this unsexing of ourselves, and worse
Effeminising of the male. We were
Content, sir, till you starved us, heart and brain.
All we have done, or wise or otherwise
Traced to the root was done for love of you.
Let us taboo all vain comparisons,
And go forth as God meant us, hand in hand.
Companions, mates and comrades evermore;
Two parts of one divinely ordained whole."
"Bravo!" said the squire, and the vicar murmured, "Thank you," very politely. The Cynic laughed and rose from his chair.
"I will take it lying down," he said. "Mr. Evans, may I look in the cabinet and see if there is anything Miss Holden can sing?"
I had to do it, because the cabinet contained all the Scotch songs I love so well. I was my own accompanist, faute de mieux, but the Cynic turned the leaves, and contributed a couple of songs himself. He talks better than he sings. The squire wanted us to try a duet, and the vicar's wife was also very pressing, but one has to draw the line somewhere. The only pieces we both knew were so sentimental that my sense of humour would have tripped me up, I know, and I should have come a cropper.
Just as coffee was brought in the squire asked me if I would sing for him, "Oh wert thou in the cauld blast." I saw he really wanted it, so I found the music, though I had to choke back the lump in my throat. I had never sung it since that memorable evening when we sat together—dad and I—on the eve of his death, and he had begged for it with his eyes. "I know, dad, dear," I said; "I must close with your favourite," and he whispered, "For the last time, lassie." And so it had been.
The tears fell as I sang, and the Hall and its inmates faded from my view. The Cynic must have left my side, for when at length I ventured to look round he was across the room examining a curio. But the squire rose and thanked me in a very low voice, and his own eyes were bright with tears that did not fall.
Soon after, the vicar's carriage came, and the Cynic accepted the offer of a lift to the cross-roads. I left at the same time, but the squire insisted on accompanying me. Under cover of the darkness he remarked:
"That was my wife's song. It gave me much pleasure and some pain to hear it again; but it hurt you?"