Whom the Gods Destroyed

by Josephine Daskam Bacon

So we tip-toed up to the benches, and looked at the platform where the Steinway stood. Twirling on the stool sat a girl of seventeen or so, peering out into the gloom at us. It was very startling. Now I felt that the strain was yet to come. As I sank into one of the chairs a man rose slowly from a seat under the platform. It was the stranger. He nodded jauntily at us.

"Good thing you come," he announced cheerfully. "I don't know how long I could stand that girl. I guess she's related to the other," and he shambled up the steps. His unsteady walk, his shaking hand, as he clumsily pushed the chairs out of the way, told their disagreeable story. He walked straight up to the girl, and looking beyond her, said easily, "Excuse me, miss, but I'm goin' to play a little for some friends o' mine, an' I'll have to ask you to quit for a while." The girl looked undecidedly from him to us, but we had nothing to say.

"Come, come," he added impatiently, "you can bang all you want in a few minutes, with nobody to disturb you. Jus' now I'm goin' to do my own turn."

His assurance was so perfect, his intention to command obedience so evident, that the child got up and went slowly down the stairs, more curious than angry. The man swept the music from the rack, and lifted the top of the piano to its full height. Then with an impatient twitch he spun the music-stool a few inches lower, and pulled it out. The Nice Boy leaned over to me.

"The preparations are imposing, anyhow," he whispered. But I did not laugh. I felt nervous. To be disappointed again would be too cruel! I watched the soiled, untidy figure collapse onto the stool. Then I shut my eyes, to hear without prejudice of sight the opening triple-octave scale of the professional pianist. For with such assurance as he showed he should at least be able to play the scales.

The hall seemed so large and dim, I was so alone—I was glad of the Nice Boy. Suppose it should all be a horrible plot, and the tramp should rush down with a revolver? Suppose—and then I stopped thinking. For from far-away somewhere came the softest, sweetest song. A woman was singing. Nearer and nearer she came, over the hills, in the lovely early morning; louder and louder she sang—and it was the "Spring Song"! Now she was with us—young, clear-eyed, happy, bursting into delicious flights of laughter between the bars. Her eyes, I know, were grey. She did not run or leap—she came steadily on, with a swift, strong, swaying, lilting motion. She was all odorous of the morning, all vocal with the spring. Her voice laughed even while she sang, and the perfect, smooth succession of the separate sounds was unlike any effect I have ever heard. Now she passed—she was gone by. Softer, fainter, ah, she was gone! No, she turned her head, tossed us flowers, and sang again, turned, and singing, left us. One moment of soft echo—and then it was still.

I breathed—for the first time since I heard her, I thought. I opened my eyes. It was all black before them, they had been closed so long. I did not dare look at the Nice Boy. There was absolutely nothing for him to say, but I was afraid he would try to say it. He was staring at the platform. His mouth was open, his eyes very large. Without turning his face towards me, he said solemnly, "And I gave him ten cents for a sandwich! Ten cents for a sandwich!"

Suddenly I heard sobs—heavy, awkward sobs. I looked behind me. The girl had dropped forward on to the chair in front and was hysterically chattering into her handkerchief.

"I played that! I played that!" she wailed. "Oh, he heard me! he did, he did!" I felt horribly ashamed for her. How she must feel! A child can suffer so.

But the man at the piano gave a little chuckle of satisfaction, and ran his hands up and down the keys in a delirium of scales and arpeggios. Then he hit heavily a deep, low note. It was like a great, bass trumpet. A crashing chord: and then the love-song of Germany and musicians caught me up to heaven, or wherever people go who love that tune—perhaps it is to Germany—and I heard a great, magnificent man singing in a great, magnificent baritone, the song that won Clara Schumann's heart.