Now it happened one day that, as the pupil walked in a wood, music came to him; and he hastened back to his house in order that he might sit down at the piano and play it. For although, being a musician, he knew quite well how the music would sound, he yet wished to hear it. And as he was on his way, though it was a calm day, the great limb of a treacherous elm fell upon him and crushed him so that he died. And in his music-room his piano waited in vain.
Upon his death all bitterness passed away from the heart of his master. Rivalry died with the rival. There came back to him old recollections of the boy and of the esteem and affection in which he had then held him. There was now no one who spoke of the dead musician with more generous praise than his master. In his own music-room the master placed the piano on which his pupil had been used to play. It had been specially bequeathed to him. It was the dead man's gift.
But now the old man became himself conscious that he was not as he had been. The fountains were dried up. Melody had ceased to come. He was arid and unproductive. His fear that his power was leaving him tended the more to diminish it. There were many long days and nights when he could do nothing; and at such seasons he would not enter his music-room upstairs, but sat in the room below it, trying sometimes to divert his mind by reading, and at other times cursing the wretchedness into which the course of nature had brought him.
After a long while it happened that one night when he sat late alone, his wretchedness seemed to him more than he could bear. In a few weeks he was to play before the King and there would be many great musicians in the audience. On such occasions it had always been his custom to produce some new work. Now he had nothing to give them. He would have to fall back on the compositions of his younger days. He could picture in his mind the meaning looks which the musicians would interchange. He could hear their polite applause, and it was like a torture. The King, himself no mean musician, might ask some question. He could not go into that company and thus fail. It was not possible. It could not be asked of him thus to debase himself. And there seemed to him but one alternative—a little more than usual of that laudanum in which he had lately sought inspiration.
But as he raised the glass to his lips he heard something so unexpected that the glass crashed to the floor. In the music-room overhead someone was playing the piano. Who could it be? No servant of his had that skill, and besides, hours before his servants had gone to sleep. It was divine music, entrancing, uplifting.
For a moment he hesitated, and then the desire to know overcame his fears. He went up the stairs, and in the passage outside the music-room he noted that a light showed under the door. Someone had switched the light on then. Was it the carelessness of a servant? "Quite possibly," he said to himself. "Quite possibly."
He opened the door and entered, and his eyes flew to the piano. No one was seated there, but the notes moved and the touch was human. He shrank back from the piano and stood in the farthest corner of the room, listening intently. When at last the music ceased, he had a great desire to say something, and yet could choose no words. And, as he hesitated, there was a sudden click and the lights were switched off. He fled from the darkness down the stairs to the brightly lit room below. For a while he was too overcome to be able to do anything; and then, for he had a musician's memory, he took paper and wrote down the music that he had heard.
A few days later it chanced that a great lady asked him what new music he would play before the King.
"I have decided," said the master, "to play a composition of mine that—if one must give these things names—I shall call 'The Sylvan Sonata'."
"Sylvan? How delightful. It represents scenes in the wood then."