Karl Rusoff nodded his great grey head up and down once or twice.
“Ah, my dear friend,” he said, “I usually think it very clever to unearth a genius. But with your genius it needed no cleverness. Shall I tell you what will happen? We,—the pianists, I mean,—with our nimble professional fingers will in a year’s time be fighting each other for seats at his concerts, if he is kind enough to give any. Let him give one, however, just to show us, to—yes, I mean it—to let us weep over our own deficiencies. Fire, my God, what fire! But I hope he won’t give many. He ought—I only say he ought—to be too busy with his own work. As regards his piano-playing, of course you were right. Who has taught him? Nobody, I tell you. How can you teach that? Will I teach him? Certainly I will, as Molière’s housemaid taught her master. He does a hundred things quite wrong. But—ah, a big but!”
Martin had risen and bowed his thanks to the storm of applause, but his eye sought the corner where Karl Rusoff sat, with his great grey, leonine head and his grey eyes gleaming through his spectacles. The latter rose and came up the gangway between the chairs and the wall towards him and shook hands with him.
“Mr. Challoner,” he said, “that was a great treat to me. Thank you. You can play what is really difficult, magnificently. Now, my dear young man, I want to ask you a great favour. Attempt something much more difficult,—that is to say, something where the notes are quite easy, but where the rest, which is everything, must be a poem. Play, if you happen to know it—really know it, I mean—Chopin’s fifteenth prelude, the rain on the roof.”
Martin looked round the room, but nobody had moved from his seat, except Frank, who had followed Monsieur Rusoff.
“Yes, I know it,” he said. “But are you sure you really want me to play again?” he asked, with the charming horror that a nice boy has of being a bore. “Are you sure they aren’t sick of me?”
“No, do play again, Martin, if you will,” said Frank, who had followed Karl. “We can really stand a little more.”
“I have asked him to play the fifteenth prelude,” said Rusoff.
“Ah, yes, do,” said Frank.
So the rain beat, the gutter choked, the chariots of God thundered overhead, one ray of sunlight gleamed, and again the rain, pitiless and slow, spoke of an alien land. And at the end, in the moment’s silence, more appreciative than any applause, which followed, Martin’s glance again sought the great pianist, and with a sudden spasm of joy, so keen that for a moment he thought he must shout or laugh, he saw that Karl Rusoff had taken off his spectacles and was wiping his eyes.