'Haud yer tongue!' he would say in a hoarse whisper, when Robert
sought to attract his attention; 'haud yer tongue, man, and hearken.
Gin yon bonny leddy 'at yer grannie keeps lockit up i' the aumry
war to tak to the piano, that's jist hoo she wad play. Lord, man!
pit yer sowl i' yer lugs, an' hearken.'
The soutar was all wrong in this; for if old Mr. Falconer's violin
had taken woman-shape, it would have been that of a slight, worn,
swarthy creature, with wild black eyes, great and restless, a voice
like a bird's, and thin fingers that clawed the music out of the
wires like the quills of the old harpsichord; not that of Mary St.
John, who was tall, and could not help being stately, was large and
well-fashioned, as full of repose as Handel's music, with a
contralto voice to make you weep, and eyes that would have seemed
but for their maidenliness to be always ready to fold you in their
lucid gray depths.
Robert stared at the soutar, doubting at first whether he had not
been drinking. But the intoxication of music produces such a
different expression from that of drink, that Robert saw at once
that if he had indeed been drinking, at least the music had got
above the drink. As long as the playing went on, Elshender was not
to be moved from the window.
But to many of the people of Rothieden the music did not recommend
the musician; for every sort of music, except the most unmusical of
psalm-singing, was in their minds of a piece with 'dancin' an'
play-actin', an' ither warldly vainities an' abominations.
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