"I beg your pardon," Darrell stammered, somewhat dazed by his sudden
descent to the commonplace, "I ought not to have taken it; I never
thought,--I was so delighted to find the instrument and so carried away
with its tones,--it never occurred to me how it might seem to you!"
"Oh, that is all right," she interposed, quietly; "use it whenever you
like. Harry bought it two years ago, but he never had the patience to
learn it, so it has been used very little. I never heard such playing as
yours, and I stepped in to ask you to bring it downstairs and play for
us to-night. Mr. Britton will be delighted; he enjoys everything of that
sort."
Around the fireside that evening Darrell had an attentive audience,
though the appreciation of his auditors was manifested in a manner
characteristic of each. Mr. Underwood, after two or three futile
attempts to talk business with his partner, finding him very
uncommunicative, gave himself up to the enjoyment of his pipe and the
music in about equal proportions, indulging surreptitiously in
occasional brief naps, though always wide awake at the end of each
number and joining heartily in the applause.
Mrs. Dean sat gazing into the glowing embers, her face lighted with
quiet pleasure, but her knitting-needles twinkled and flashed in the
firelight with the same unceasing regularity, and she doubled and seamed
and "slipped and bound" her stitches with the same monotonous precision
as on other evenings.
Mr. Britton, in a comfortable reclining-chair, sat silent, motionless,
his head thrown back, his eyes nearly closed, but in the varying
expression of his mobile face Darrell found both inspiration and
compensation.
For more than three hours Darrell entertained his friends; quaint
medleys, dreamy waltzes, and bits of classical music following one after
another, with no effort, no hesitancy, on the part of the player. To
their eager inquiries, he could only answer,-"I don't know how I do it. They seem to come to me with the sweep of
the bow across the strings. I have no recollection of anything that I am
playing; it seems as though the instrument and I were simply drifting."
Late in the evening, when they were nearly ready to separate for the
night, Darrell sat idly strumming the violin, when an old familiar
strain floated sweetly forth, and his astonished listeners suddenly
heard him singing in a rich baritone an old love-song, forgotten until
then by every one present.
Mrs. Dean had already laid aside her work and sat with hands folded, a
smile of unusual tenderness hovering about her lips, while Mr. Britton's
face was quivering with emotion. At its conclusion he grasped Darrell's
hand silently.
"That is a very old song," said Mrs. Dean. "It seems queer to hear you
sing it. I used to hear it sung when I was a young girl, and that," she
added smiling, "was a great many years ago."