Page:The Specimen Case.djvu/65

56 voyaging across from Vectis" (his glance indicated the single gleaming shoulder that the Isle of Wight raised above the thin sea mist), "and in my tent, pitched in yon meadow just beyond the stream, I composed at nights the march that was on your lips."

"A march—on my lips just now?" I stammered.

"Assuredly, or I should not have spoken you. You know the music of it? Nay, then listen."

I listened, and very faintly in the distance I heard the refrain of the melody that had so impressed me. Possibly I had been humming it, as he said, but quite unconsciously.

"It lacks the plaintive quality of flutes," he remarked critically as we listened. "But that is an instrument for which our martial bands made no provision."

"You are a musician then?" I said.

"An amateur," he admitted carelessly. "Still, one who as a mere proconsul turned his back on a despot, rather than endure his discords, may be allowed to claim an ear."

My knowledge of music—or of despots—did not enable me to identify the particular ruler he alluded to. I sought enlightenment obliquely.

"Was he indeed so very poor a player?"

"He was not only that. After making due allowance for his exalted rank, he was, I would assert, the very worst player who has ever ventured to confront an audience. Moreover, he was partial to the fiddle, of all instruments, and prone to resort to it at inopportune moments."

"Your own composition" I ventured.

He waved his hand in deprecation.

"I do not seek comparison," he said. "In my opinion the arts are scarcely the fit attribute of a soldier, except perchance, as in the case of the first Cæsar, to record his