“Why did you cry this afternoon, Musa?”
Musa made no reply.
Audrey was lighting the big lamp in the Moncreiff-Ingate studio. It made exactly the same moon as it had made on the night in the previous autumn when Audrey had first seen it. She had brought Musa to the studio because she did not care to take him to his own lodgings. (As a fact, nobody that she knew, except Musa, had ever seen Musa’s lodgings.) This was almost the first moment they had had to themselves since the visit of the little American doctor from the Rue Servandoni. The rumour of Musa’s misfortune had spread through the Quarter like the smell of a fire, and various persons of both sexes had called to inspect, to sympathise, and to take tea, which Audrey was continually making throughout the late afternoon. Musa had had an egg for his tea, and more than one girl had helped to spread the yolk and the white on pieces of bread-and-butter, for the victim of destiny had his right arm in a sling. Audrey had let them do it, as a mother patronisingly lets her friends amuse her baby.
In the end they had all gone; Tommy had enigmatically looked in and gone, and Miss Ingate had gone to dine at the favourite restaurant of the hour in the Rue Léopold Robert. Audrey had refused to go, asserting that which was not true; namely, that she had had an enormous tea, including far too many petits fours. Miss Ingate in departing had given a glance at her sketch (fixed on the easel), and another at Audrey, and another at Musa, all equally ironic and kindly.
Musa also had declined dinner, but he had done nothing to indicate that he meant to leave. He sat mournful and passive in a basket chair, his sling making a patch of white in the gloom. The truth was that he suffered from a disability not uncommon among certain natures: he did not know how to go. He could arrive with ease, but he was no expert at vanishing. Audrey was troubled. As suited her age and condition, she was apt to feel the responsibility of the whole universe. She knew that she was responsible for Musa’s accident, and now she was beginning to be aware that she was responsible for his future as well. She was sure that he needed encouragement and guidance. She pictured him with his fiddle under his chin, masterful, confident, miraculous, throwing a spell over everyone within earshot. But actually she saw him listless and vanquished in the basket chair, and she perceived that only a strongly influential and determined woman, such as herself, could save him from disaster. No man could do it. His tears had shaken her. She was willing to make allowances for a foreigner, but she had never seen a man cry before, and the spectacle was very disturbing. It inspired her with a fear that even she could not be the salvation of Musa.
“I demanded something of you,” she said, after lowering the wick of the lamp to exactly the right point, and staring at it for a greater length of time than was necessary or even seemly. She spoke French, and as she listened to her French accent she heard that it was good.
“I am done for!” came the mournful voice of Musa out of the obscurity behind the lamp.
“What! You are done for? But you know what the doctor said. He said no bone was broken. Only a little strain, and the pain from your——” Admirable though her French accent was, she could not think of the French word for “funny-bone.” Indeed she had never learnt it. So she said it in English. Musa knew not what she meant, and thus a slight chasm was opened between them which neither could bridge. She finished: “In one week you are going to be able to play again.”
Musa shook his head.
Relieved as she was to discover that Musa had cried because he was done for, and not because he was hurt, she was still worried by his want of elasticity, of resiliency. Nevertheless she was agreeably worried. The doctor had disappointed her by his light optimism, but he could not smile away Musa’s moral indisposition. The large vagueness of the studio, the very faint twilight still showing through the great window, the silence and intimacy, the sounds of the French language, the gleam of the white sling, all combined to permeate her with delicious melancholy. And not for everlasting bliss would she have had Musa strong, obstinate, and certain of success.