Then he went and stood near the fire, the red light flashing on him, and
played.
The first thing, plainly for Tommy, was a Norman cradle-song, very slow
and monotonous, and full of strange harmonies. When it was over, Tommy
quietly withdrew. To-morrow was to be his day.
Brigit Mead had stayed at the house in Golden Square for a full week,
and during that week she had heard her future father-in-law play a dozen
times or more.
He had played in the crimson velvet dressing-gown, in morning clothes,
in evening dress, once even in the fur-lined coat. Yet it seemed to her,
as she watched and listened now, in the great hall of the house of her
fathers, that she had never heard quite this same man play.
At home he had been "Beau-papa," noisy and demonstrative, or solemn with
artistic responsibility and reverence, but always the oldish man playing
to his family. Now, in some way, he was metamorphosed. He was now
"Joyselle"; he was, as she listened and watched, an unusually handsome,
not yet middle-aged gentleman, playing the violin as an artist, but
indisputably a gentleman.
She recalled, with a shudder, his awful lack of taste displayed the day
Pontefract called; she remembered her amusement on his insisting on
wearing a pale blue satin tie one day when he was lunching at a club to
meet a great pianist, and Theo's subsequent search among his belongings
for other similar horrors.
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