Fortunately for herself and her friends, Margot was gifted with
sufficient insight to grasp the poetry behind the prose, and it gave her
patience to persevere. Solution came at last, in the shape of the
wheezy old piano in the corner, opened in a moment of aimless wandering
to and fro. Margot was no great performer, but what she could play she
played by heart, and Nature had provided her with a sweet, thrush-like
voice, with that true musical thrill which no teaching can impart. At
the first few bars of a Chopin nocturne Mr Macalister's newspaper
wavered, and fell to his knee. Margot heard the rustle of it, slid
gradually into a simpler melody, and was conscious of a heavy hand
waving steadily to and fro.
"Ha-ha!" murmured Mr Macalister, at the end of the strain. "Hum-hum!
The piano wants tuning, I'm thinking!" It was foreign to his nature to
express any gratification, but that he had deigned to speak at all was a
distinct advance, and equal to a whole volume of compliments from
another man.
"Maybe," he added, after a pause, "if ye were to sing us a ballad it
would be less obsearved!"
So Margot sang, and, finding a book of Scotch selections, could gratify
the old man by selecting his favourite airs, and providing him with an
excuse to hum a gentle accompaniment. Music, it appeared, was Mr
Macalister's passion in life. As a young man he had been quite a
celebrated performer at Penny Readings and Church Soirees, and had been
told by a lady who had heard Sims Reeves that she preferred his
rendering of "Tom Bowling" to that of the famous tenor. This anecdote
was proudly related by his wife, and though Mr Macalister cried,
"Hoots!" and rustled his paper in protest, it was easy to see that he
was gratified by the remembrance.
Margot essayed one Scotch air after another, and was instructed in the
proper pronunciation of the words; feigning, it is to be feared, an
extra amount of incapacity to pronounce the soft "ch," for the sake of
giving her patient a better opportunity of displaying his superior
adroitness.
Comparatively speaking, Mr Macalister became quite genial and agreeable
in the course of that musical hour, and when Margot finished her
performance by singing "The Oak and the Ash," he waxed, for him,
positively enthusiastic.
"It's a small organ," he pronounced judicially, "a ve-ry small organ.
Ye would make a poor show on a concert platform, but for all that, I'm
not saying that it might not have been worse. Ye can keep in tune, and
that's a mearcy!"
"Indeed, Alexander, I call it a bonnie voice! There's no call for
squallings and squakings in a bit of a room like this. I love to hear a
lassie's voice sound sweet and clear, and happy like herself, and that's
just the truth about Miss Vane's singing. Thank ye, my dear. It's been
a treat to hear you."