flatter me, Sir Gordon.”
“Not at all, sir,” said the newcomer shortly. “I never stoop to flatter any one, not even a lady. Miss Luttrell, do I?”
“You never flattered me,” said Millicent, smiling.
“Never. It is a form of insincerity I detest. My dear Mrs Luttrell, you should make your unworthy husband take that to heart.”
“Why, I never flatter,” said the doctor warmly.
“How dare you say so, sir, when you are always flattering your patients, and preaching peace when there is no peace? Ah, yes, I’ve heard of him,” he said in an undertone. “Introduce me.”
The formal introduction took place, and the last comer seated himself beside the new curate.
“I’m very glad to meet you, Mr Bayle. Glad to see you here, too, sir. Charming family this; doctor and his wife people to make friends. Eh! singing again? Hah! Miss Luttrell. Have you heard her sing?”
“No, she has not sung since I have been here.”
“Then prepare yourself for a treat, sir. I flatter myself I know what singing is. It is the singing of one of our prima donnas without the artificiality.”
“I think I heard Sir Gordon say he did not flatter,” said Bayle quietly.
“Thank you,” said the old beau, looking round sharply; “but I shall not take the rebuke. You have not heard her sing. Oh, I see,” he continued, raising his gold-rimmed eye-glass, “a duet.”
There was again silence, as after the prelude Millicent’s voice rose clear and thrilling in the opening of one of the simple old duets of the day; and as she sang with the effortless ease of one to whom song was a gift, Sir Gordon bent forward, swaying himself slightly to the music, but only to stop short and watch with gathering uneasiness in his expression, the rapt earnestness of Christie Bayle as he seemed to drink in like some intoxicating draught the notes that vibrated through the room. He drew a deep breath, and sat up rather stiffly as she ended, and Mr Hallam from the bank took up the second verse. If anything, his voice sounded richer and more full; and again the harmony was perfect when the two voices, soprano and baritone, blended, and rose and fell in impassioned strains, and then gradually died off in a soft, sweet, final chord, that the subdued notes of the piano, wiry though they were, failed to spoil.
“You are not fond of music?” said Sir Gordon, making Bayle, who had been still sitting back rather stiffly, and with his eyes closed, start, as he replied:
“Who? I? Oh, yes, I love it!” he replied hastily.
“Young! young!” said Sir Gordon to himself as he rose and crossed the room to congratulate Millicent on her performance – Hallam giving way as he approached – saying to himself: “I’m beginning to wish we had not engaged him, good a man as he is.”
“Yes, I’m very fond of that duet,” said Millicent. “Excuse me, Sir Gordon, here’s Miss Heathery.”
She crossed to the door to welcome a lady in a very tight evening dress of cream satin – tight, that is, in the body – and pinched in by a broad sash at the waist, but the sleeves were like two cream-coloured spheres, whose open mouths hung down as if trying to swallow the long crinkly gloves that the wearer kept drawing above her pointed elbows, and which then slipped down.
It is a disrespectful comparison, but it was impossible to look at Miss Heathery’s face without thinking of a white rabbit. One of Nature’s paradoxical mysteries, no doubt, for it was not very white, nor were her eyes pink, and the sausage-shaped, brown curls on either side of her forehead, backed by a great shovel-like, tortoise-shell comb, in no wise resembled ears; but still the fact remained, and even Christie Bayle, on being introduced to the elderly bashful lady, thought of the rabbit, and actually blushed.
“You are just in time to sing, Miss Heathery,” said Millicent.
Miss Heathery could not; but there was a good deal of pressing, during which the lady’s eyes rolled round pleadingly from speaker to speaker, as if saying, “Press me a little more, and I will.”
“You must sing, my dear,” said Mrs Luttrell in a whisper. “Make haste, and then Millicent’s going to ask Mr Bayle, and you must play the accompaniment.” Miss Heathery said, “Oh, really!” and Sir Gordon completed the form by offering his arm, and leading the little lady to the piano, taking from her hands her reticule, made in pale blue satin to resemble a butterfly; after that her gloves.
Then, after a good deal of arrangement of large medical folios upon a chair to make Miss Heathery the proper height, she raised her shoulders, the left becoming a support to her head as she lifted her chin and gazed into one corner of the room.
Christie Bayle was a lover of natural history, and he said to himself, “How could I be so rude as to think she looked like a white rabbit? She is exactly like a bird.”
It was only that a change that had come over the lady, who was now wonderfully bird-like, and, what was quite to the point, like a bird about to sing.
She sang.
It was a tippity-tippity little tinkling song, quite in accordance with the wiry, zither-like piano, all about “dewy twilight lingers,” and harps “touched by fairy fingers,” and appeals to some one to “meet me there, love,” and so on.
The French say we are not a polite nation. We may not be as to some little bits of outer polish, but at heart we are, and never more so than at a social gathering, when some terrible execution has taken place under the name of music. It was so here, for, moved by the feeling that the poor little woman had done her best, and would have been deeply wounded had she not been asked to sing, all warmly thanked Miss Heathery; and directly after, Christie Bayle, with his ears still burning from the effects of the performance, found himself beside the fair singer, trying to talk of King’s Castor and its surroundings.
“I would rather not ask him, mamma dear,” said Millicent at the other side of the room.
“But you had better, my dear. I know he is musical, and he might feel slighted.”
“Oh, yes, he’s a good fellow, my dear; I like him,” said the doctor bluffly. “Ask him.”
With a curious shrinking sensation that seemed somehow vaguely connected with Mr Hallam from the bank, and his eagerness earlier in the evening, Millicent crossed to where Bayle was seated, and asked him if he would sing.
“Oh, no,” he said hastily, “I have no voice!”
“But we hear that you are musical, Mr Bayle,” said Millicent in her sweet, calm way.
“Oh, yes, I am. Yes, I am a little musical.”
“Pray sing then,” she said, now that she had taken the step, forgetting the diffident feeling; “we are very simple people here, and so glad to have a fresh recruit in our narrow ranks.”
“Yes, pray sing, Mr Bayle; we should be so charmed.”
“I – er – I really – ”
“Oh, but do, Mr Bayle,” said Miss Heathery again sweetly.
“I think you will oblige us, Mr Bayle,” said Millicent smiling; and as their eyes met, if the request had been to perform the act of Marcus Curtius on foot, and with a reasonable chance
