Twelve months previously he had said: ‘With six hours’ practice a day for two years I shall recover what I have lost.’
He had succeeded beyond his hopes.
‘Are you writing in that book?’ he inquired carelessly as he threw down the cigarette and turned away.
‘I have just finished something,’ I replied.
‘Oh!’ he said, ‘I’m glad you aren’t idle. It’s so boring.’
He returned to the piano, perfectly incurious about what I did, self-absorbed as a god. And I was alone in the garden, with the semicircle of trees behind me, and the façade of the old house and its terrace in front. And lying on the lawn, just under the terrace, was the white end of the cigarette which he had abandoned; it breathed upwards a thin spiral of blue smoke through the morning sunshine, and then it ceased to breathe. And the music recommenced, on a different plane, more brilliantly than before. It was as though, till then, he had been laboriously building the bases of a tremendous triumphal arch, and that now the two wings met, dazzlingly, soaringly, in highest heaven, and the completed arch became a rainbow glittering in the face of the infinite. He played two of his great concert pieces, and their intricate melodies—brocaded, embroidered, festooned—poured themselves through the windows into the garden in a procession majestic and impassioned, perturbing the intent soul of the solitary listener, swathing her in intoxicating sound. It was the unique virtuoso born again, proudly displaying the ultimate sublime end of all those slow-moving exercises to which he had subdued his fingers. Not for ten years had I heard him play so.
When we first came into the house I had said bravely to myself: ‘His presence shall not deter me from practising as I have always done.’ And one afternoon I had sat down to the piano full of determination to practise without fear of him, without self-consciousness. But before my hands had touched the keys shame took me, unreasoning, terror-struck shame, and I knew in an instant that while he lived I should never more play the piano. He laughed lightly when I told him, and I called myself silly. Yet now, as I sat in the garden, I saw how right I had been. And I wondered that I should ever have had the audacity even to dream of playing in his house; the idea was grotesque. And he did not ask me to play, save when there arrived new orchestral music arranged for four hands. Then I steeled myself to the ordeal of playing with him, because he wished to try over the music. And he would thank me, and say that pianoforte duets were always very enjoyable. But he did not pretend that I was not an amateur, and he never—thank God!—suggested that we should attempt Tristan again....
At last he finished. And I heard distantly the bell which he had rung for his glass of milk. And, remembering that I was not ready for the ride, I ran with guilty haste into the house and upstairs.
The two bay horses were waiting, our English groom at their heads, when I came out to the porch. Diaz was impatiently tapping his boot with his whip. He was not in the least a sporting man, but he loved the sensation of riding, and the groom would admit that he rode passably; but he loved more to strut in breeches, and to imitate in little ways the sporting man. I had learnt to ride in order to please him.
‘Come along,’ he exclaimed.