The “Y” hut was empty and dark; through the grimy windowpanes could be seen fields and a leaden sky full of heavy ocherous light, in which the leafless trees and the fields full of stubble were different shades of dead, greyish brown. Andrews sat at the piano without playing. He was thinking how once he had thought to express all the cramped boredom of this life; the thwarted limbs regimented together, lashed into straight lines, the monotony of servitude. Unconsciously as he thought of it, the fingers of one hand sought a chord, which jangled in the badly-tuned piano. “God, how silly!” he muttered aloud, pulling his hands away. Suddenly he began to play snatches of things he knew, distorting them, willfully mutilating the rhythm, mixing into them snatches of ragtime. The piano jangled under his hands, filling the empty hut with clamor. He stopped suddenly, letting his fingers slide from bass to treble, and began to play in earnest.
There was a cough behind him that had an artificial, discreet ring to it. He went on playing without turning round. Then a voice said:
“Beautiful, beautiful.”
Andrews turned to find himself staring into a face of vaguely triangular shape with a wide forehead and prominent eyelids over protruding brown eyes. The man wore a Y. M. C. A. uniform which was very tight for him, so that there were creases running from each button across the front of his tunic.
“Oh, do go on playing. It's years since I heard any Debussy.”
“It wasn't Debussy.”
“Oh, wasn't it? Anyway it was just lovely. Do go on. I'll just stand here and listen.”
Andrews went on playing for a moment, made a mistake, started over, made the same mistake, banged on the keys with his fist and turned round again.
“I can't play,” he said peevishly.
“Oh, you can, my boy, you can.... Where did you learn? I would give a million dollars to play like that, if I had it.”