The yellow book: an illustrated quarterly (1.1894)

192 A Lost Masterpiece

a thin-toned violin, and his companion thrums an accompaniment
on a harp.

I don't know what they play, some tuneful thing with an under-
note of sadness and sentiment running through its commonplace—
likely a music-hall ditty ; for a lad with a cheap silk hat, and the
hateful expression of knowingness that makes him a type of his
kind, grins appreciatively and hums the words.

I turn from him to the harp. It is the wreck of a handsome
instrument, its gold is tarnished, its white is smirched, its stucco
rose-wreaths sadly battered. It has the air of an antique beauty
in dirty ball finery ; and is it fancy, or does not a shamed wail lurk
in the tone of its strings ?

The whimsical idea occurs to me that it has once belonged to
a lady with drooping ringlets and an embroidered spencer ; and that
she touched its chords to the words of a song by Thomas Haynes
Baily, and that Miss La Creevy transferred them both to ivory.

The youth played mechanically, without a trace of emotion ;
whilst the harpist, whose nose is a study in purples and whose
bloodshot eyes have the glassy brightness of drink, feit every touch
of beauty in the poor little tune, and drew it tenderly forth.

They added the musical note to my joyous mood ; the poetry of
the city dovetailed harmoniously with country scenes too recent to
be treated as memories—and I stepped off the boat with the melody
vibrating through the city sounds.

I swung from place to place in happy, lightsome mood, glad as
a fairy prince in quest of adventures. The air of the city was
exhilarating ether—and all mankind my brethren—in fact I feit
effusively affectionate.

I smiled at a pretty anaemic city girl, and only remembered that
she was a stranger when she flashed back an indignant Iook of
a£fected affront.

But