"You must gom and blay to me at Schlachsenberg," said the kindly-faced
Landgraf, whom the world adored and thwarted in about equal proportions.
"At Christmas, yes, that will be a good time. We still keep the Christ-
Fest at Schlachsenberg, though the 'Sozi' keep telling our schoolchildren
that it is only a Christ myth. Never mind, I will have the
Vice-President of our Landtag to listen to you; he is 'Sozi' but we are
good friends outside the Parliament House; you shall blay to him, my
young friendt, and gonfince him that there is a Got in Heaven. You will
gom? Yes?"
"It was beautiful," said the Grafin simply; "it made me cry. Go back to
the piano again, please, at once."
Perhaps the near neighbourhood of the Canon inspired this command, but
the Grafin had been genuinely charmed. She adored good music and she was
unaffectedly fond of good-looking boys.
Ronnie went back to the piano and tasted the matured pleasure of a
repeated success. Any measure of nervousness that he may have felt at
first had completely passed away. He was sure of his audience and he
played as though they did not exist. A renewed clamour of excited
approval attended the conclusion of his performance.
"It is a triumph, a perfectly glorious triumph," exclaimed the Duchess of
Dreyshire, turning to Yeovil, who sat silent among his wife's guests;
"isn't it just glorious?" she demanded, with a heavy insistent intonation
of the word.
"Is it?" said Yeovil.
"Well, isn't it?" she cried, with a rising inflection, "isn't it just
perfectly glorious?"
"I don't know," confessed Yeovil; "you see glory hasn't come very much my
way lately." Then, before he exactly realised what he was doing, he
raised his voice and quoted loudly for the benefit of half the room:
"'Other Romans shall arise,
Heedless of a soldier's name,
Sounds, not deeds, shall win the prize,
Harmony the path to fame.'"
There was a sort of shiver of surprised silence at Yeovil's end of the
room.
"Hell!"
The word rang out in a strong young voice.
"Hell! And it's true, that's the worst of it. It's damned true!"
Yeovil turned, with some dozen others, to see who was responsible for
this vigorously expressed statement.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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