“You know that you did not,” said I, in a low voice.
“No,” he answered, almost in the same tone. “It was thinking of that which led me to introduce poor old Karl to you. I thought, perhaps, that you would accept it as a sign—will you?”
“A sign of what?”
“That I feel myself to have been in the wrong throughout—and forgive.”
As I sat, amazed and a little awed at this almost literal fulfillment of my dream, the others returned.
Karl contributed the tones of his mellowest of instruments, which he played with a certain pleasant breadth and brightness of coloring, and my dream came ever truer and truer. The symphony was as spring-like as possible. We tried it nearly all through; the hymn-like and yet fairy-like first movement; the second, that song of universal love, joy, and thanksgiving, with Beethoven’s masculine hand evident throughout. To the notes there seemed to fall a sunshine into the room, and we could see the fields casting their covering of snow, and withered trees bursting into bloom; brooks swollen with warm rain, birds busy at nest-making; clumps of primroses on velvet leaves, and the subtle scent of violets; youths and maidens with love in their eyes; and even a hint of later warmth, when hedges should be white with hawthorn, and the woodland slopes look, with their sheets of hyacinths, as if some of heaven’s blue had been spilled upon earth’s grass.
As the last strong, melodious modulations ceased, Courvoisier pointed to one of the windows.
“Friedhelm, you wretched unbeliever, behold the refutation of your theories. The symphony has brought the sun out.”
“For the first time,” said Friedhelm, as he turned his earnest young face with its fringe of loose brown hair toward the sneaking sun-ray, which was certainly looking shyly in. “As a rule the very heavens weep at the performance. Don’t you remember the last time we tried it, it began to rain instantly?”
“Miss Wedderburn’s co-operation must have secured its success then on this occasion,” said Eugen, gravely, glancing at me for a moment.