You have so exactly suited to the 'cello the opening theme. And the flute passages!--they are exquisitely introduced. We will let Miss Clendenning decide when she hears it--" and he turned Unger's head in the direction of the advancing lady. "Here she comes now; you, of course, know the fine quality of Miss Clendenning's ear."
Herr Unger placed his five fat fingers over his waist-baud, bowed as low to Miss Lavinia as his great girth would permit, and said:
"Ah, yes, I know. Miss Clendenning not only haf de ear she haf de life in de end of de finger. De piano make de sound like de bird when she touch it."
The little lady thanked him in her sweetest voice, made a courtesy, and extended her hand to Max, who kissed it with much solemnity, and Richard, putting his arm around the 'cellist's fat shoulders, conducted him across the room, whereupon Nathan, with the assumed air of an old beau, offered his crooked elbow to Miss Clendenning as an apology for having reached the house before her. Then, seating her at the piano with a great flourish, he waved his hand to Oliver, who had drawn up a chair beside his mother, and with a laugh, cried:
"Here, you young love; come and turn the leaves for Miss Lavinia. It may keep you from running over other people in the dark, even if they are accused of hiding behind sun-dials."
With the beginning of the overture Mrs. Horn laid down her work, and drawing her white gossamer shawl about her shoulders gave herself up to the enjoyment of the music. The overture was one of her favorites--one she and Richard had often played together as a duet in their younger days.
Leaning back in her easy-chair with half-closed eyes, her clear-cut features in silhouette against the glow of the fire, her soft gray curls nestling in the filmy lace that fell about her temples, she expressed, in every line of her face and figure, that air of graceful repose which only comes to those highly favored women who have all their lives been nurtured in a home of loving hands, tender voices, and noiseless servants--lives of never-ending affection without care or sorrow.
And yet had you, even as she sat there, studied carefully this central figure of the Horn mansion --this practical, outspoken, gentle-voiced, tender wife and mother, tenacious of her opinions, yet big enough and courageous enough to acknowledge her mistakes; this woman, wise in counsel, sympathetic in sorrow, joyous with the young, restful with the old, you would have discovered certain lines about her white forehead which advancing years alone could not have accounted for.
These lines seemed all the deeper to-night. Only a few hours before, Richard had come to her, while Malachi was arranging his clothes, with the joyful news of a new device which he had developed during the day for his motor. He could hardly wait to tell her, he had said. The news was anything but joyful to her. She knew what it meant--she knew what sums had been wasted on the other devices, involving losses which at this time they could so little afford. She was glad, therefore, to free her mind for the moment from these anxieties; glad to sit alone and drink in the melodies that the quartette set free.
As she sat listening, beating time noiselessly with her thin, upraised hand, her head resting quietly, a clear, silvery note--clear as a bird's--leaped from Nathan's flute, soared higher and higher, trembled like a lark poised in air, and died away in tones of such exquisite sweetness that she turned her head in delight toward the group about the piano, fixing her gaze on Nathan. The old man's eyes were riveted on the score, his figure bent forward in the intensity of his absorption, his whole face illumined with the ecstasy that possessed him. Then she looked at Richard, standing. with his back to her, his violin tucked under his chin, his body swaying in rhythm with the music. Unger sat next to him, his instrument between his knees, his stolid, shiny face unruffled by the glorious harmonies of Beethoven.
Then her glance rested on Oliver. He was hanging over the piano whispering in Miss Clendenning's. ear, his face breaking into smiles at her playful chidings.
If the pathos of the melody had reached him he showed no sign of its effects.
Instantly there welled up in her heart a sudden gush of tenderness--one of those quick outbursts that often overwhelm a mother when her eyes rest on a son whose heart is her own--an outburst all the more intensified by the melody that thrilled her.
Why should her heart have been troubled? Here was her strong hope! Here was her chief reliance!
Here the hope of the future. How could she doubt or suffer when this promise of the coming day was before her in all the beauty and strength of his young manhood.
With the echoes of Nathan's flute still vibrating in her, and with her mind filled with the delight of these fresh hopes, she suddenly recalled the anxious look on her boy's face as he led Miss Clendenning into the library--a new look--one she had never seen before. Still under the quickening spell of the music she began to exaggerate its cause. What had troubled him? Why had he told Lavinia, and not her? Was there anything serious?--something he had kept from her to save her pain?
From this moment her mind became absorbed in her boy. With restless, impatient fingers she began thrumming on the arm of her chair. Oliver would tell her, she knew, before many hours, but she could not wait--she wanted to know at once.
With the ending of the first part of the overture, and before the two gentlemen had laid down their instruments to grasp Unger's hands, she called to Miss Clendenning, who sat at the piano alone, Oliver having slipped away unobserved.
Miss Clendenning raised her eyes in answer.
"Come over and sit by me, dear, while the gentlemen rest."
