Part 12 (1/2)

'My dear Robert,' said Lady Sarah, 'Dolly has got an aunt and a brother to take care of her; do you suppose that we would let her do anything that we thought might hurt her in other people's opinion? Dolly, here is Robert horrified at the examples to which you are exposed. He feels he ought to interfere.'

'You won't understand me,' said Robert, keeping his temper very good-naturedly. 'Of course I can't help taking an interest in my relations.'

'Thank you, Robert,' said Dolly, smiling and blus.h.i.+ng.

Their eyes met for an instant, and Robert looked better pleased. It was a bright delightful spring morning. All the windows were s.h.i.+ning in the old square, there was a holiday thrill in the air, a sound of life, dogs barking, people stirring and coming out of their hiding-places, animals and birds exulting.

Dolly used to get almost tipsy upon suns.h.i.+ne. The weather is as much part of some people's lives as the minor events which happen to them.

She walked along by the other two, diverging a little as they travelled along, the elder woman's bent figure beating time with quick fluttering footsteps to the young man's even stride. Dolly liked Robert to be nice to her aunt, and was not a little pleased when he approved of herself.

She was a little afraid of him. She felt that beneath that calm manner there were many secrets that she had not yet fathomed. She knew how good he was, how he never got into debt. Ah me! how she wished George would take pattern by him. Dolly and Rhoda had sometimes talked Robert over.

They gave him credit for great experience, a deep knowledge of the world (he dined out continually when he was in town), and they also gave him full credit for his handsome, thoughtful face, his tall commanding figure. You cannot but respect a man of six foot high.

So they reached the doorway at last. The ivy was all glistening in the suns.h.i.+ne, and as they rang the bell they heard the sound of Gumbo's bark in the garden, and then came some music, some brilliant pianoforte-playing, which sounded clear and ringing as it overflowed the garden-wall and streamed out into the lane.

'Listen! Who can that be playing?' cries Dolly, brightening up still brighter, and listening with her face against the ivy.

'George,' says Robert. 'Has George come up again?'

'It's the overture to the _Freischutz_,' says Dolly, conclusively; 'it _is_ George.'

And when old Sam shuffled up at last to open the door, he announced, grinning, that 'Mr. Garge had come, and was playing the peanner in the drawing-room.'

At the same moment, through the iron gate, they saw a figure advancing to meet them from the garden, with Gumbo caracolling in advance.

'Why there is Rhoda in the garden,' cries Dolly. 'Robert, you go to her.

I must go to George.'

CHAPTER XV.

GEORGE'S TUNES.

... Sing our fine songs that tell in artful phrase The secrets of our lives, and plead and pray For alms of memory with the after time.

--O. W. H.

There is George sitting at the old piano in the drawing-room. The window is wide open. The Venetian gla.s.s is dazzling over his head, of which the cauliflower shadow is thrown upon the wall. By daylight, the old damask paper looks all stained and discoloured, and the draperies hang fainting and turning grey and brown and to all sorts of strange autumnal hues in this bright spring suns.h.i.+ne.

The keys answer to George's vigorous fingers, while the shadow bobs in time from side to side. A pretty little pair of slim gloves and a prayer-book are lying on a chair by the piano; they are certainly not George's, nor Eliza Twells', who is ostensibly dusting the room, but who has stopped short to listen to the music. It has wandered from the _Freischutz_ overture to _Kennst Du das Land?_ which, for the moment, George imagines to be his own composition. How easily the chords fall into their places! how the melody flows loud and clear from his fingers!

(It's not only on the piano that people play tunes which they imagine to be their own.) As for Eliza, she had never heard anything so beautiful in all her life.

'Can it play hymn toones, sir?' says she, in a hoa.r.s.e voice.

Hymn tunes! George goes off into the Hundredth Psalm. The old piano shakes its cranky sides, the pedals groan and creak, the music echoes all round; then another shadow comes floating along the faded wall, two fair arms are round his neck, the music stops for an instant, and Eliza begins to rub up the leg of a table.

'How glad I am you have come; but _why_ have you come, George--oughtn't you to be reading?'

'Oh,' says George, airily, 'I have only come for the day. Look here: have you ever heard this Russian tune? I've been playing it to Miss Parnell; I met her coming from church.'