Schubert sang sweetly, wonderfully. I cry like a baby when one sings the Serenade even fairly well. And dear Franz Abt has made most loving melodies. But they were musicians singing, this was a man. "Du meine Liebe, du!"—that was no piano; it was a voice. And yet no human voice could be at once so limpid and so rich, so thrilling and so clear. And now it crashed out in chords—heavy, broken harmony. All the rapture of possession, the very absolute of human joy were there—but these are words, and that was love and music.
I don't in the least know how long it lasted. There was no time for me. The god at the piano repeated it again and again, I think, as it is never repeated in the singing, and always should be. I know that the tears rolled over my cheeks and dropped into my lap. I have a vague remembrance of the Nice Boy's enthusiastically and brokenly begging me to marry him to-night and go to Venice with him to-morrow, and my ecstatically consenting to that or anything else. I am sure he held my hand during that period, for the rings cut in so the next day. And I think—indeed I am quite certain—but why consider one's self responsible for such things? At any rate, it has never happened since.
And when it was over we went up hand in hand, and the Nice Boy said, "What—what is your—your name?" And I stared at him, expecting to see his dirty clothes drop off, and his trailing clouds of glory wrap him 'round before he vanished from our eyes. His heavy eyebrows bent together. His knees shook the piano-stool. He was labouring under an intense excitement. But I think he was pleased at our faces.
"What—what the devil does it matter to you what I'm named?" he said roughly.
"Oh, it doesn't matter at all, not at all," I said meekly; "only we wanted, we wanted——" And then, like that chit of seventeen, I cried, too. I am such a fool about music.
"Now you know what I mean when I say I can play," he growled savagely. He seemed really terribly excited, even angry. "I'll play one thing more. Then you go home. When I think o' what I might have done, great God, I can't die till I've shown 'em! Can I? Can I die? You hear me! You see"—his face was livid. His eyes gleamed like coals. I ought to have been afraid, but I wasn't.
"You shall show them!" I gasped. "You shall! Will you play for the hotel? We can fill this place for you. We can——"
"Oh, you shut up!" he snarled. "You! I've played to thousands, I have. You don't know anything about it. It's this devil's drink that's killin' me. It ruined me in Vienna. It spoiled the whole thing in Paris. It's goin' to kill me." His voice rose to a shriek. He dropped from the stool, and from his pocket fell a bottle. The Nice Boy gave a queer little sob.
"Oh, it's dreadful, dreadful!" he whispered to himself. He jumped up on the platform and seized the man's shoulder.