“And then,” I went on, “that I should have spoken to you, a strange lady, and that you should have answered!”
“It seemed perfectly natural for me to answer; I had done so before I stopped to think. But afterward I was ashamed; I was afraid you might think it indelicate. But, somehow, the words spoke themselves. I am glad of it now.”
“I do believe God’s hand was in it! I do believe it was all pre-ordained in heaven. I believe that our Guardian Angel prompted me to speak and you to answer. It can’t be that we, who were made for each other, were left to find it out by a mere perilous chance—it isn’t credible.”
“But nobody except myself—not even you, can understand how like a miracle it all is to me, because nobody else can know how much I needed you. Nobody else can know how dreary and empty my life was before you came, or how completely you have filled it and gladdened it.”
Here we stopped talking for a while.
By and by she resumed, “I think that music differs from the other arts. I think the musician instinctively needs a companion worker. I know that in the old days when I would play or sing, my heart seemed to cry out continually for some one to come and share its feeling. Perhaps this was because music is the most emotional of the arts, the most sympathetic. Really, sometimes I could not bear to touch the piano, the pain of being alone was so acute. Of course I had my uncle, a most thorough musician; but I wanted somebody who would feel precisely as I did, and he did not. He always analyzed and criticised, never allowed himself to be carried away, never forgot the intellectual side of the things I would play. But now—now that you are with me, my music is a constant source of joy. And then, the thought that we are going to work together all our lives, the thought of the music we are going to make together—oh, it is too great, it takes my breath away! I don’t dare to believe it. I am afraid all the time that something will happen to prevent it coming true.”
Again for a while we did not speak.
Again by and by she resumed, “And then you can not know how lonely I was in other ways, how I longed for a little affection, a little tenderness. Of course uncle is very good, has always been very good to me; but do you think it was ungrateful for me to want a little more affection than he gave me? I mean a little more manifest affection; because I know that in the bottom of his heart he loves me very warmly. But I longed for somebody to show a little care for me, and uncle is very undemonstrative—he is so absorbed in his symphony, and then sometimes he is exceedingly severe. When I would get home at night it was so dreary not to have any one to speak to about the trials of the day—not to have any one who would sympathize and understand. You see, other girls have their mothers or their brothers and sisters and friends: but I had nobody except my uncle; and he was so much older, and regarded things so differently, that I do not think it was unnatural for me to wish for some one else. Besides, I had so much responsibility; I felt so weak and helpless. I thought, what if something should happen to my uncle! or what if I should get sick and be unable to teach! Oh, the rest and security that you brought to me!”
What I replied—a mass of broken sentences—was too incoherent to bear recording.
“And then, the mere physical fatigue—day after day, work, work, work, and never any respite. Of course, every body has to work, but almost every body has a holiday now and then; and I never had a single day that I could call all my own. In winter it was hardest. No matter how tired I was, I had to be up and off giving lessons even if the snow was ankle deep. And the ice in the river made it such hard work getting to Hoboken, made the journey so very long. I had to do the housework too, you know. We couldn’t afford to keep a servant, on account of the money we had to send abroad. When I would come home all fagged out I had to clean the rooms and cook the dinner; though I am afraid that sometimes I did not more than half do my duty. Sometimes I would let the dust lie for a week on the mantle-piece. And every day was just the same as the day that had gone before. It was like traveling in a circle. When I would go to bed at night my weariness would be all the harder because of the thought, ‘To-morrow will be just the same, the same round of lessons, the same dead fatigue, the same monotonous drudgery from beginning to end.’ And as I saw no promise of change, as I thought it would be the same all my life, I could not help asking what the use was of having been born. Wasn’t I a dreadful grumbler? Yet, what could I do? I think it is natural when one is young to long for something to look forward to, for just a little pleasure and just a little companionship. But then you came, and every thing was altered. Do you remember in the Creation the wonderful awakening one feels when they sing, ‘And the Lord said, Let there be light,’ very low, and then with a mighty burst of sound, ‘And there was LIGHT?’ Do you remember how one’s heart leaps and seems to grow big in one’s breast? It was like that when you came to me. I used to wonder why I had ever felt unhappy or discontented. The mere prospect of seeing you at the week’s end made my heart sing from morning to night. It gave a motive, an object, to my life—made me feel that I was working to a purpose, that I should have my reward. I had been growing hard and indifferent, even indifferent to music. But now I began to love my music more than ever: and no matter how tired I might be, when I had a moment of leisure I would sit down and practice so as to be able to play well for you. Music seemed to express all the unutterable feeling that you inspired me with. One day I had sung the Ave Maria of Cherubini to you, and you said, ‘It is so religious—it expresses precisely the emotions one experiences in a church.’ But for me it expressed rather the emotions a woman has when she is in the presence of the man she loves. All the time I had no idea that you would ever feel in the same way toward me.”