Margaret, who was bored to the verge of collapse on the off-days, thought him much nicer than he had formerly been, and she liked his perfect simplicity.
'Stand anywhere you like,' she said, 'but let me hear the tune.'
Van Torp rose and went to the window and she looked quietly at his square figure and his massive, sandy head and his strong neck. Presently he began to whistle, very softly and perfectly in tune. Many a street-boy could do as well, no doubt, and Mrs. Rushmore would have called it a vulgar accomplishment, but the magnificent Primadonna was too true a musician, as well as a singer, not to take pleasure in a sweet sound, even if it were produced by a street-boy.
But as Mr. Van Torp went on, she opened her eyes very wide and held her breath. There was no mistake about it; he was whistling long pieces from Parsifal, as far as it was possible to convey an idea of such music by such means. Margaret had studied it before [{140}] coming to Bayreuth, in order to understand it better; she had now already heard it once, and had felt the greatest musical emotion of her life—one that had stirred other emotions, too, strange ones quite new to her.
She held her breath and listened, and her eyes that had been wide open in astonishment, slowly closed again in pleasure, and presently, when he reached the 'Good Friday' music, her own matchless voice floated out with her unconscious breath, in such perfect octaves with his high whistling that at first he did not understand; but when he did, the rough hard man shivered suddenly and steadied himself against the window-sill, and Margaret's voice went on alone, with faintly breathed words and then without them, following the instrumentation to the end of the scene, beyond what he had ever heard.
Then there was silence in the room, and neither of the two moved for some moments, but at last Van Torp turned, and came back.
'Thank you,' he said, in a low voice.
Margaret smiled and passed her hand over her eyes quickly, as if to dispel a vision she had seen. Then she spoke.
'Do you really not know what that music is?' she asked. 'Really, really?'
'Oh, quite honestly I don't!'