Moll Davis by Bernard Capes — Read

And so the musician and the dying boy were made friends -- a quaint, brief intimacy which the former could never recall in after-years without a pang, half pitiful, half humorous, for its oddity. Its relation here is purely in the nature of an interlude, and may be wholly skipped, without hurt to the main narrative, by those who have an unconquerable repugnance of sentiment. But for those others -- whether the majority or not I do not know -- who like to warm their hearts now and then at the little fire of compassion, the episode, as constituting an odd chapter in the life of a famous executant, may possess a transitory charm. It is for them it is narrated.

From that poignant midnight, Bannister, both by day and evening, was often in the sick boy's room. By nature tender-hearted, how, indeed, could he deny to suffering that wonderful new emollient discovered in his art? His music succeeded where all dietetics, therapeutics, pharmaceutics, lenitives, palliatives, analeptics, galenics, and other such "ics" and "ives" as appertain to orthodox leechcraft, had failed, however fondly applied, to give relief. It was an anodyne under which peace and resignation came gradually to be substituted for the weary fretfulness which long, fruitless devotion had only helped to aggravate. The father saw, and sighed, and was sadly grateful. Often he would come and listen to the throbbing strains, sitting quite quietly apart, and watching, with a furtive wistfulness, the rapt face, on which all his ministering love had never been able to draw such lines of restful content.