The people took it very nicely. They cleared the floor, and the younger ones danced and the older ones talked, and the manager sent over ices and coffee, and it turned out the affair of the season. And they were all very grateful to my brother-in-law and his friend, and quite forgot about the strange artist.
Whether he ever fully realised what the evening had been we never knew, because when they went in the next morning to see how he was, they found him dead. The doctor said that the excitement, the terror, the sudden cutting off of liquor, with the sudden wild drinking, were too much for an overstrained heart, and that he had probably died soon after he was carried to his room.
It seemed to me a little sad that while they were dancing, the man whom they had come to see——. But my brother-in-law says that I turn to the morbid view of things, and that that was the very blessing of the whole affair—that the crowd should have been so pleased, and that the horrible situation should have ended so smoothly. Because such a man is better dead, he says. And of course he is right. Life would be horrible to him, one can see.
But I have noticed that the Nice Boy and the girl who heard him play do not feel so sure that his death was best. For myself, I shall always feel that the world has lost its musical master. I have heard the music-makers of two generations, and not one of them has excelled his exquisite lightness and force of touch, and that wonderful singing stress—oh! I could cry to think of it! And when we go abroad next I shall find out the name of the man who played in Leipsic and Paris and Vienna—for he must have played there once; he said he had played to thousands—and see if any one there has heard of his secret, his wonderful singing through the keys.
For, though my brother-in-law says that the musical temperament in combination with a Bohemian tendency gives an emotional basis which is absolutely unsafe and therefore untrustworthy in its reports of actual facts, I know that the most glorious music of my life gained nothing from my imagination. For there were three of us who saw the spring come over the hills that night. Three of us heard the triumph-song of love incarnate, and thrilled to it. Three of us knew for once a peace that passed our understanding, and had the comfort of little children in their mother's arms.
And though it is not true, as my brother-in-law insinuates, that a man need only be able to play my soul away in order to be ranked by me among the angels, I shall continue to insist that somewhere, somehow, the beautiful sounds he made are accounted to him for just a little righteousness!