The night nursery, as he knew, was just beyond his own room, which was opposite Mrs. Allbutt’s. She had turned into her sister’s bedroom on her way to her own to get a book, and so it happened that Hugh passed on to his room while she was still there. Just beyond was the door of the nursery, wide open, like its windows, for Lady Rye was of the open-window school, and Hugh, with a backward glance as if he were rather guilty, went into it. A night-light was burning, and dimly he saw a little night-shirted figure sitting straight as a grenadier up in bed, in performance of her vow. She hailed him with a little coo of delight.
“Oh, Hughie, have you come to sing?” she said. “How long you have been! And I am so sleepy!”
“Sitonim, you little brute,” said Hugh, “you really are too naughty! Why can’t you go to sleep properly like Chopimalive?”
“If you have come to scold me, like mummy,” announced Daisy, with dignity, “you needn’t have come at all I thought”—and her voice quivered a little with tired fretfulness—“I thought you had come to sing to me. I shall sit up just like this until you do, because I said so. And I am so sleepy!”
Mrs. Allbutt had found the book she wanted and was going to her room close by, when she heard the pipe of the childish treble. At that, though she was an honourable woman, she deliberately stopped and listened.
“But I’m sleepy too,” said Hugh.
A little suppressed sob was the answer.
“You’re not as sleepy as me,” said Daisy. “Nobody could be. And I must sit up because I said I would.”
The bed creaked, and Mrs. Allbutt guessed that Hugh had sat down on it.
“Won’t it do if I tell you a story?” he asked. “Or if I sit and wait here till you go to sleep? I’m tired too, and I don’t want to sing.”
“Then I shall go on sitting up,” said Daisy. “And I do so want to lie down!”
“Well, if I sing, will you promise to go to sleep properly every evening for—for ten years?” asked Hugh.
“Oh, yes—twenty!”
“Well, then, shall I shut the door? It might disturb mummy.”
“I don’t care,” said Daisy viciously. “Besides, she’s at the other end of the passage.”
“Well, then, lie down, and I’ll sing.”
Daisy gave a little chuckle of delight.
“Oh, Hughie, I do love you!” she said. “Now lie down by me and put your head on the pillow, same as if you were going to sleep. Oh, I told everybody—nurse, mummy, and everybody—that you would come. And they said you wouldn’t, and I said, ‘Oh, stuff!’”
“That wasn’t polite,” said Hugh.
“Well, they weren’t p’lite. Yes, put your head right down, like that. I’m afraid you’re too long for my bed, but it doesn’t matter. Oh, isn’t it comfortable? It was awful sitting up. You needn’t sing much you know, if you’re tired.”
“Thank you,” said Hugh.
“Now you’re horrid again. Oh, no, Hughie, you’re not! But I think being tired makes me cross.”
“And what’s it to be?” asked Hugh.
This roused Daisy again; her point was gained and her Hughie was going to sing, but at this she became an epicure.
“Oh, please, the—the ‘Shepherd’s Song’! Just the last verse. Because I don’t think I should be awake if you sing it all, and I like the last best.”
“How does it begin?” asked Hugh.
“Oh, you silly! ‘Sleep, baby, sleep.’ Though I’m not a baby.”
Mrs. Allbutt could not help it: she deliberately spied. There was a big chink in the hinge of the nursery door, and she looked through. Hugh was lying with his black head on the pillow, close to Daisy’s, but, as she had said, the bed was not big enough, and one foot was on the floor and the other leg thrown over it. Jim had not been awakened, it appeared, by Daisy’s deviltry, and the little yellow head on the pillow of his bed was sunk in sleep. Daisy had dropped the grenadier attitude and was lying down in her bed; her two pale little hands grasped one of Hugh’s.
“Just the last verse, then,” said Hugh—“‘Sleep, baby, sleep!’”
“Yes.”
Hugh turned a little, so that he could sing with the open throat, but softly. And he sang—
Sleep, baby, sleep,
Our Saviour watch doth keep:
He is the Lamb of God on high,
Who for our sake came down to die;
Sleep, baby, sleep.
The tune was exquisite and simple, simple and exquisite were the words. And Hugh sang, as the artist always sings, as if this particular song was the one that he had longed and lived to sing. There was the same perfection as he had shown downstairs, and there was no more perfection possible.
“And now you’ll go to sleep, Sitonim?” he said.
“I couldn’t help it,” said Daisy.
At that Mrs. Allbutt went swiftly and silently to her room, and closed the door craftily.
It was all this she thought over, expecting the hair-brushing visit from Peggy. She could have given no precise account of why it should have so taken possession of her mind, except in so far that to the musical soul the marvel of a beautiful voice is a wonder that is ever new. But it was not Hugh’s singing alone that had so stirred her; more than all it was this little vignette seen through the chink of the nursery door of this radiant youth, with his radiant voice, lying with his head on Daisy’s pillow, singing in order to free this very obstinate child from her vow of sitting up until he sang to her, while all the time he knew quite well that he ought not to sing at all, even if the Pope asked him to—nor probably in the latter case would he have done so. And, like an artist, he had not mumbled or whispered, though he was only singing to one small girl by the illumination of a night-light; he had sung as if all the world was listening, as if his career hung on each note. Yet the same boy had rather turned up his nose at the idea of singing Walter, Tristan, and Lohengrin at Covent Garden; it appeared to be much better worth while, even in defiance of his master’s orders, to sing Daisy to sleep.
Peggy followed soon after, having peeped in at the nursery door and seen that Daisy was already fast asleep.
“Nurse doesn’t know how to manage that child,” she said, with an air of extreme superiority. “I went up and just said she had to go to sleep, and that there was no question of Hugh coming to sing to her. It’s what they call suggestion.”
Edith could not help laughing.
“But he did go and sing to her,” said she. “I heard and saw him.”
“Oh! The suggestion plan rather falls to the ground then. He oughtn’t to have done it, but it’s quite exactly like him. He wouldn’t sing any more for us, but Daisy is a different matter. He can sing fairly well, can’t he?”
“I feel rather the reverse of Daisy,” said Edith. “I feel as if I shan’t go to sleep because he sang. Oh, Peggy, if you have any influence with him, do use it and make him go on the stage! I really think that there is a moral duty attaching to a gift like that, just as there is a moral duty attaching to great wealth. Mr. Grainger can’t have been given that just to sing to you and me and Daisy.”
“I know, but the worst of it is that that is just the argument one cannot use to Hugh. It would make me blush purple to say that to him.”
“But