Harker listened: 'The girl I left behind me'
filled him with despair; 'The Soldier's Joy' carried him beyond jealousy
into generous enthusiasm.
'Turn about,' said the military gentleman, offering the pipe.
'O, not after you!' cried Harker; 'you're a professional.'
'No,' said his companion; 'an amatyure like yourself. That's one style
of play, yours is the other, and I like it best. But I began when I was
a boy, you see, before my taste was formed. When you're my age you'll
play that thing like a cornet-a-piston. Give us that air again; how does
it go?' and he affected to endeavour to recall 'The Ploughboy'.
A timid, insane hope sprang in the breast of Harker. Was it possible?
Was there something in his playing? It had, indeed, seemed to him at
times as if he got a kind of a richness out of it. Was he a genius?
Meantime the military gentleman stumbled over the air.
'No,' said the unhappy Harker, 'that's not quite it. It goes this
way--just to show you.'
And, taking the pipe between his lips, he sealed his doom. When he had
played the air, and then a second time, and a third; when the military
gentleman had tried it once more, and once more failed; when it became
clear to Harker that he, the blushing debutant, was actually giving a
lesson to this full-grown flutist--and the flutist under his care was
not very brilliantly progressing--how am I to tell what floods of glory
brightened the autumnal countryside; how, unless the reader were an
amateur himself, describe the heights of idiotic vanity to which
the carrier climbed? One significant fact shall paint the situation:
thenceforth it was Harker who played, and the military gentleman
listened and approved.
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