“I’m sure we appreciate your sympathy,” she said. “Ruth, play a little for Mr. Ripley.”
Was this intended as a reward of merit? Contrariwise to the gentleman in Punch, Arthur would so much rather have heard her talk than play.
“Shall I?” she asked.
“Oh, I should be delighted,” he assented.
She played the Pathetic Sonata. Before she had got beyond the first dozen bars, Arthur had been caught up and borne away on the strong current of the music. She played with wonderful execution and perfect feeling. I suppose Arthur had heard the Pathetic Sonata a score of times before. He had never begun to appreciate it till now. It seemed to him that in a language of superhuman clearness and directness, the subtlest and most sacred mysteries of the soul were being explained to him. Every emotion, every passion, that the heart can feel, he seemed to hear expressed by the miraculous voice that Mrs. Lehmyl was calling into being; and his own heart vibrated in unison. Deep melancholy, breathless terror, keen, quivering anguish, blank despair; flashes of short-lived joy, instants of hope speedily ingulfed in an eternity of despond; tremulous desire, the delirium of enjoyment, the bitter awakening to a sense of satiety and self-deception; intervals of quiet reflection, broken in upon by the turbulent cries of a hundred malicious spirits; weird glimpses into a world of phantom shapes, exaltation into the seventh heaven of delight, descent into the bottom pit of darkness; these were a few of the strange and vague, but none the less intense, emotional experiences through which Mrs. Lehmyl led him. When she returned to her chair, opposite his own, he could only look upon her face and wonder; he could not speak. A delicate flush had overspread her cheeks, and her eyes shone even more brightly than their wont. She evidently misunderstood his silence.
“Ah,” she said, with frank disappointment, “it did not please you.”
“Please me?” he cried. “No, indeed, it did not please me. It was like Dante’s journey through the three realms of the dead. It was like seeing a miracle performed. It overpowered me. I suppose I am too susceptible—weak, if you will, and womanish. But such music as that—I could no more have withstood its spell, than I could withstand the influence of strong wine.”
“Speaking of strong wine,” said Mrs. Hart, “what if you should try a little mild wine?” And she pointed to a servant who had crossed the threshold in the midst of Arthur’s rhapsody, and who bore a tray with glasses and a decanter.
“In spite of this anti-climax,” he said, sipping his wine, “what I said was the truth.”
“It is the fault, no doubt, of your French blood, Monsieur,” said Mrs. Lehmyl. “But I confess that, perhaps in a moderated degree, music has much the same effect upon me. When I first heard La Damnation de Faust, I had to hold on to the arms of my chair, to keep from being carried bodily away. You remember that dreadful ride into perdition—toward the end? I really felt that if I let go my anchorage, I should be swept off along with Faust and Mephistopheles.”