Again Constance’s golden tones rose and fell, adding to the enchantment of the night. Marjorie’s instant of resentment took swift wing as she listened to the wistful German words for which the great composer had found such a perfect setting. She was glad she loved music and moonlight and poetry and all the beautiful bits of life. She did not wish life to mean the kind of romance Hal meant. Her idea of romance meant the glory of work and the stir of noble deeds.
“Now it’s your turn, Hal. It’s not fair to make me do all the singing. Jerry claims she can’t sing, and she won’t let Danny sing. Laurie makes me do his share of it. Marjorie can sing, but she thinks she can’t. That leaves only you, and you haven’t a ghost of an excuse. Go ahead now. Be nice and sing the Boat Song.” Constance ended coaxingly.
“All right, Connie. Instruct your husband to play a few bars of it strictly in tune and I’ll see what I can do.” Hal straightened up suddenly on the bench with an air of pretended importance.
“See to it that your singing’s strictly in tune,” Laurie advised. “I can be trusted to do the rest.” Already his musician’s fingers were finding the rhythmic introduction to Tosti’s “Boat Song.”
“The night wind sighs, Our vessel flies, Across the dark lagoon.”
Hal took up the swinging measures of the song in his clear, sweet tenor and sent it ringing across the water. Tonight he came into a new and sombre understanding of the song. Never before had he realized the undercurrent of doubt it contained. Perhaps Tosti had composed the song out of his own lover’s hopes and fears. Unconsciously Hal’s weight of troubled doubt went into an impassioned rendering.
Laurie and Constance understood perfectly his unintentional betrayal of his feelings. Danny, razor keen of perception, also grasped the situation. This time he had nothing to say.
“And here am I, To live or die; As you prove hard or kind; Prove hard or kind.”
Jerry sat looking unduly solemn as Hal tunefully voiced the sentimental, worshipping lines and took up the echoing refrain. When the song ended an odd silence fell which no one of them seemed willing to shatter. Connie and Laurie were frankly holding hands, their young faces touched with a romance born of music and moonlight. Danny was staring intently at Jerry as though absorbed in her management of the wheel.