One afternoon Miss Janet had an inspiration.
"If I played the piano in the drawing-room with the windows open you
could hear it in the spare room quite plainly."
"If you think it would disturb Mr. Andrea," said Miss Ursula, "you
might shut the windows."
"I was proposing to offer him a distraction, dear," said Miss
Widdington. "These foreign gentlemen are generally fond of music."
Miss Ursula could raise no objection, but her heart sank. She could
not play the piano.
She took her seat cheerfully, however, by the bed, which had been
wheeled up to the window, so that the patient could look out on the
glory of sky and sea, took her knitting from a drawer and began to turn
the heel of one of the sacred socks. Andrea watched her lazily and
contentedly. Perhaps he had never seen two such soft-treaded,
soft-fingered ladies in lavender in his life. He often tried to give
some expression to his gratitude, and the hand-kissing had become a
thrice daily custom. For Miss Widdington he had written the word
"Engel," which the vocabulary at the end of Otto's German grammar
rendered as "Angel"; whereat she had blushed quite prettily. For Miss
Ursula he had drawn, very badly, but still unmistakably, the picture of
a winged denizen of Paradise, and she, too, had treasured the
compliment; she also treasured the drawing. Now, Miss Ursula held up
the knitting, which began distinctly to indicate the shape of a sock,
and smiled. Andrea smiled, too, and blew her a kiss with his fingers.
He had many graceful foreign gestures. The doctor, who was a plain,
bullet-headed Briton, disapproved of Andrea and expressed to Dorcas his
opinion that the next things to be washed ashore would be the young
man's monkey and organ. This was sheer prejudice, for Andrea's manners
were unexceptionable, and his smile, in the eyes of his hostesses, the
most attractive thing in the world.
"Heel," said Miss Ursula.
"'Eel," repeated Andrea.
"Wool," said Miss Ursula.
"Vool," said Andrea.
"No--wo-o," said Miss Ursula, puffing out her lips so as to accentuate
the "w."
"Wo-o," said Andrea, doing the same. And then they both burst out
laughing. They were enjoying themselves mightily.
Then, from the drawing-room below, came the tinkling sound of the old
untuned piano which had remained unopened for many years. It was the
"Spring Song" of Mendelssohn, played, schoolgirl fashion, with
uncertain fingers that now and then struck false notes. The light died
away from Andrea's face, and he looked inquiringly, if not wonderingly,
at Miss Ursula. She smiled encouragement, pointed first at the floor,
and then at him, thereby indicating that the music was for his benefit.
For awhile he remained quite patient. At last he clapped his hands on
his ears, and, his features distorted with pain, cried out:
"_Nein, nein, nein, das lieb' ich nicht! Es ist hässlich!_"
In eager pantomime he besought her to stop the entertainment. Miss
Ursula went downstairs, hating to hurt her sister's feelings, yet
unable to crush a wicked, unregenerate feeling of pleasure.
"I am so sorry, dear Janet," she said, laying her hand on her sister's
arm, "but he doesn't like music. It's astonishing, his dislike. It
makes him quite violent."
Miss Widdington ceased playing and accompanied her sister upstairs.
Andrea, with an expressive shrug of the shoulders, reached out his two
hands to the musician and, taking hers, kissed her finger-tips. Miss
Widdington consulted Otto.
"_Lieben Sie nicht Musik?_"
"_Ja wohl_," he cried, and, laughing, played an imaginary fiddle.
"He _does_ like music," cried Miss Widdington. "How can you make such
silly mistakes, Ursula? Only he prefers the violin."
Miss Ursula grew downcast for a moment; then she brightened. A
brilliant idea occurred to her.
"Adam Penruddocke. He has a fiddle. We can ask him to come up after
tea and play to us."
She reassured Andrea in her queer sign-language, and later in the
afternoon Adam Penruddocke, a sheepish giant of a fisherman, was shown
into the room. He bowed to the ladies, shook the long white hand
proffered him by the beautiful youth, tuned up, and played "The
Carnival of Venice" from start to finish. Andrea regarded him with
mischievous, laughing eyes, and at the end he applauded vigorously.
Miss Widdington turned to her sister.
"I knew he liked music," she said.
"Shall I play something else, sir?" asked Penruddocke.
Andrea, guessing his meaning, beckoned him to approach the bed, and
took the violin and bow from his hands. He looked at the instrument
critically, smiled to himself, tuned it afresh, and with an air of
intense happiness drew the bow across the strings.
"Why, he can play it!" cried Miss Ursula.
Andrea laughed and nodded, and played a bit of "The Carnival of Venice"
as it ought to be played, with gaiety and mischief. Then he broke off,
and after two or three tearing chords that made his hearers start,
plunged into a wild czardas. The ladies looked at him in open-mouthed
astonishment as the mad music such as they had never heard in their
lives before filled the little room with its riot and devilry.
Penruddocke stood and panted, his eyes staring out of his head. When
Andrea had finished there was a bewildered silence. He nodded
pleasantly at his audience, delighted at the effect he had produced.
Then, with an artist's malice, he went to the other extreme of emotion.
He played a sobbing folk-song, rending the heart with cries of woe and
desolation and broken hopes. It clutched at the heart-strings, turning
them into vibrating chords; it pierced the soul with its poignant
despair; it ended in a long-drawn-out note high up in the treble, whose
pain became intolerable; and the end was greeted with a sharp gasp of
relief. The white lips of the ruddy giant quivered. Tears streamed
down the cheeks of Miss Widdington and Miss Ursula. Again there was
silence, but this time it was broken by a clear, shrill voice outside.
"Encore! Encore!"
The sisters looked at one another. Who had dared intrude at such a
moment? Miss Widdington went to the window to see.
In the garden stood a young woman of independent bearing, with a
pallette and brushes in her hand. An easel was pitched a few yards
beyond the gate. Miss Widdington regarded this young woman with marked
disfavour. The girl calmly raised her eyes.
"I apologise for trespassing like this," she said, "but I simply
couldn't resist coming nearer to this marvellous violin-playing--and my
exclamation came out almost unconsciously."
"You are quite welcome to listen," said Miss Widdington stiffly.
"May I ask who is playing it?"
Miss Widdington almost gasped at the girl's impertinence. The latter
laughed frankly.
"I ask because it seems as if it could only be one of the big,
well-known people."
"It's a young friend who is staying with us," said Miss Widdington.
"I beg your pardon," said the girl. "But, you see my brother is Boris
Danilof, the violinist, so I've that excuse for being interested."
"I don't think Mr. Andrea can play any more to-day," said Miss Ursula
from her seat by the bed. "He's tired."
Miss Widdington repeated this information to Miss Danilof, who bade her
good afternoon and withdrew to her easel.
"A most forward, objectionable girl," exclaimed Miss Widdington. "And
who is Boris Danilof, I should like to know?"
If she had but understood German, Andrea could have told her. He
caught at the name of the world-famous violinist and bent eagerly
forward in great excitement.
"Boris Danilof? _Ist er unten_?"
"_Nicht_--I mean _Nein_," replied Miss Widdington, proud at not having
to consult Otto.
Andrea sank back disappointed, on his pillow.
V
However much Miss Widdington disapproved of the young woman, and
however little the sisters knew of Boris Danilof, it was obvious that
they were harbouring a remarkable violinist. That even the
bullet-headed doctor, who had played the double bass in his Hospital
Orchestral Society and was, therefore, an authority, freely admitted.
It gave the romantic youth a new and somewhat awe-inspiring value in
the eyes of the ladies. He was a genius, said Miss Ursula--and her
imagination became touched by the magic of the word. As he grew
stronger he played more. His fame spread through the village and he
gave recitals to crowded audiences--as many fisher-folk as could be
squeezed into the little bedroom, and more standing in the garden
below. Miss Danilof did not come again. The ladies learned that she
was staying in the next village, Polwern, two or three miles off. In
their joy at Andrea's recovery they forgot her existence.
Happy days came when he could rise from bed and hobble about on a
crutch, attired in the quaint garments of Captain Widdington, R.N., who
had died twenty years before, at the age of seventy-three. They added
to his romantic appearance, giving him the air of the _jeune premier_
in costume drama. There was a blue waistcoat with gilt buttons,
calculated to win any feminine approval. The ladies admired him
vastly. Conversation was still difficult, as Miss Ursula had succeeded
in teaching him very little English, and Miss Widdington, after a
desperate grapple with Otto on her own account, had given up the German
language in despair. But what matters the tongue when the heart
speaks? And the hearts of Miss Widdington and Miss Ursula spoke;
delicately, timidly, tremulously, in the whisper of an evening breeze,
in undertones, it is true--yet they spoke all the same. The first
walks on the heather of their cliff in the pure spring sunshine were
rare joys. As they had done with their watches by his bedside, they
took it in turns to walk with him; and each in her turn of solitude
felt little pricklings of jealousy. But as each had instituted with
him her own particular dainty relations and confidences--Miss
Widdington more maternal, Miss Ursula more sisterly--to which his
artistic nature responded involuntarily, each felt sure that she was
the one who had gained his especial affection.
Thus they wove their gossamer webs of romance in the secret recess of
their souls. What they hoped for was as dim and vague as their concept
of heaven, and as pure. They looked only at the near future--a circle
of light encompassed by mists; but in the circle stood ever the beloved
figure. They could not imagine him out of it. He would stay with
them, irradiating their lives with his youth and his gaiety, playing to
them his divine music, kissing their hands, until he grew quite strong
and well again. And that was a long, long way off. Meanwhile life was
a perpetual spring. Why should it ever end?
One afternoon they sat in the sunny garden, the ladies busy with
needlework, and Andrea playing snatches of dreamy things on the violin.
The dainty remains of tea stood on a table, and the young man's crutch
rested against it. Presently he began to play Tschaikowsky's "Chanson
Triste." Miss Ursula, looking up, saw a girl of plain face and
independent bearing standing by the gate.
"Who is that, Janet?" she whispered.
Miss Janet glanced round.
"It is the impertinent young woman who was listening the other day."
Andrea followed their glances, and, perceiving a third listener, half
consciously played to her. When the piece was finished the girl slowly
walked away.
"I know it's wrong and unchristianlike," said Miss Widdington, "but I
dislike that girl intensely."
"So do I," said Miss Ursula. Then she laughed. "She looks like the
wicked fairy in a story-book."