Mr. Inverarity pondered over the songs for a few seconds and then said, "If you would be so kind, Miss Thomson, as to accompany me, I might try this."
"All right," said Jessie, as she removed her jangling bangles and laid them on the top of the piano. "I'll do my best, but I'm not an awfully good accompanist." She gave the piano-stool a twirl, seated herself, and struck some rather uncertain chords, while Mr. Inverarity cleared his throat, stared gloomily at the carpet, and then lustily announced that it was his Wedding Morn Ding Dong.
There was a commendable silence during the performance, and in the chorus of "Thank yous" and "Lovelys" that followed Jessie led the singer to a girl with an "artistic" gown and prominent teeth, whom she introduced as "Miss Waterston, awfully fond of music."
"Pleased to meet you," said Mr. Inverarity. "No," as Miss Waterston tried to make room for him, "I wouldn't think of crowding you. I'll just sit on this wee stool, if nobody has any objections."
Miss Waterston giggled. "That was a lovely song of yours, Mr. Inverarity," she said. "I did enjoy it."
"Thank you, Miss Waterston. D'you sing yourself?"
"Oh, well," said Miss Waterston, smiling coyly at the toe of her slipper, "just a little. In fact," with a burst of confidence, "I've got a part in this year's production of the Sappho Club. Well, of course, I'm only in the chorus, but it's something to be even in the chorus of such a high-class Club. Don't you think so?"
"And what," asked Mr. Inverarity, "is the piece to be produced?"
"Oh! It's the Gondoliers, a kind of old-fashioned thing, of course. I would rather have done something more up to date, like The Chocolate Box Girl, it's lovely."
"It is," Mr. Inverarity agreed, "very tuney; but d'you know, of all these things my wee favourite's The Convent Girl."
"Fency!" said Miss Waterston, "I've never seen it. I think, don't you, that music's awfully inspiring? When I hear good music I just feel as if I could—as if I—well, you know what I mean."
"I've just the same feeling myself, Miss Waterston," Mr. Inverarity assured her—"something like what's expressed in the words 'Had I the wings of a dove I would flee,' eh? Is that it?" and Mr. Inverarity nudged Miss Waterston with his elbow.
The room was getting very hot, Mr. Thomson in his nervousness having inadvertently heaped the fire with coals.
A very small man recited "Lasca" on the hearth-rug, and melted visibly between heat and emotion.
"I say," said Mr. Stevenson to Miss Gertrude Simpson, "he looks like Casabianca. By the way, was Casabianca the name of the boy on the ship?"
"I couldn't say, I'm sure," she replied, looking profoundly uninterested.
"Do you go much to the theatre?" he asked her sister.
"We go when there's anything good on," she said.
"Such as——?"
"Oh! I don't know——" She looked vaguely round the room. "Something amusing, you know, but quite nice too."
"I see. D'you care for the Repertory?"
"Oh, well," said Miss Muriel, "they're not bad, but they do such dull things. You remember, Gertrude," leaning across to her sister, "yon awful silly thing we saw? What was it called? Yes, Prunella. And that same night some friends asked us to go to Baby Mine—everyone says it's killing—but Papa had taken the seats and he made us use them. It was too bad. We felt awfully 'had.'"
"I think," said Miss Gertrude, "that the Repertory people are very amateurish."
Mr. Stewart Stevenson was stung.
"My dear young lady," he said severely, "one or two of the Repertory people are as good as anyone on the London stage and a long sight better than most."
"Fency," said Miss Gertrude coldly.
Stewart Stevenson looked about for a way of escape, but he was hemmed round by living walls and without doing violence he could not leave his seat. Mrs. Thomson sat before him in a creaking cane chair listening to praise of her drawing-room from Jessie's dowdy friend, Miss Hendry.
"My! Mrs. Thomson, it's lovely! Whit a carpet—pile near up to your knees!"
"D'ye like the colouring, Miss Hendry?" asked Mrs. Thomson.
Miss Hendry looked round at the yellow walls and bright gilt picture frames shining in the strong incandescent light.
"Mrs. Thomson," she said solemnly, "it's chaste!"
Mrs. Thomson sighed as if the burden of her magnificence irked her, then: "How d'ye think the evening's goin'?" she whispered.
"Very pleasant," Miss Hendry whispered back, "What about a game?"
"I don't know," said poor Mrs. Thomson. "I would say it would be the very thing, but mebbe Jessie wouldn't think it genteel."
A girl stood up beside the piano with her violin, and somebody said "Hush!" loudly, so Mrs. Thomson at once subsided, in so far as a very stout person can subside in an inadequate cane chair, and composed herself to listen to Scots airs very well played. The familiar tunes cheered the company wonderfully; in fact, they so raised Mr. Taylor's spirits that, to Jessie's great disgust, and in spite of the raised eyebrows of the Simpsons, he pranced in the limited space left in the middle of the room and invited anyone who liked to take a turn with him.
"Jolly thing a fiddle," said Stewart Stevenson cheerily to Miss Muriel Simpson.
"The violin is always nice," primly replied Miss Muriel, "but I don't care for Scotch airs—they're so common. We like high-class music."
"Perhaps you play yourself?" Mr. Stevenson suggested.
"Oh no," said Miss Muriel in a surprised tone.
"Do you care for reading?" he asked her sister.
"Oh, I like it well enough, but it's an awful waste of time."
"Are you so very busy, then?"
"Well, what with calling, and going into town, and the evenings so taken up with dances and bridge parties, it's quite a rush."
"It must be," said Mr. Stevenson.
"And besides," said Miss Gertrude, "we do quite a lot of fency work."
"But still, Gertrude," her sister reminded her, "we nearly always read on Sunday afternoons."
"That's so," said Gertrude; "but people have got such a way of dropping in to tea. By the way, Mr. Stevenson, we'll hope to see you, if you should happen to be in our direction any Sunday."
"That is very kind of you," said Mr. Stevenson.
"There!" cried Mrs. Thomson, bounding in her chair, "Miss Elizabeth's going to sing. That's fine!"
Stewart Stevenson looked over his shoulder and saw a girl standing at the piano. She was slight and straight and tall—more than common tall—grey-eyed and golden-haired, and looked, he thought, as little in keeping with the company gathered in the drawing-room of Jeanieville as a Romney would have looked among the bright gilt-framed pictures on the wall.
She spoke to her accompanist, then, clasping her hands behind her, she threw back her head with a funny little gesture and sang.
"Jock the Piper steps ahead,
Taps his fingers on the reed:
His the tune to wake the dead,
Wile the salmon from the Tweed,
Cut the peats and reap the corn,
Kirn the milk and fold the flock—
Never bairn that yet was born
Could be