“I could have sworn that you were she. No music, thanks; I have never listened to it since she died. Your mother played beautifully, children; she played and she sang. I liked her songs; I hate the twaddle of the present day. Now I am returning to my Virgil. My renderings of the original text become more and more full of light. I shall secure a vast reputation. Music! I hate music. Don’t disturb me, any of you.”
When Mr. Dale reached his study he sank into his accustomed chair. His lamp was already lit; it burned brightly, for Miss Tredgold herself trimmed it each morning. His piles of books of reference lay in confusion by his side. An open manuscript was in front of him. He took up his pen. Very soon he would be absorbed by the strong fascination of his studies; the door into another world would open and shut him in. He would be impervious then to this present century, to his present life, to his children, to the home in which he lived.
“I could have sworn,” he muttered to himself, “that Alice had come back. As Sophia stood in the twilight I should scarcely have known them apart. She is not Alice. Alice was the only woman I ever loved—the only woman I could tolerate in my house. My children, my girls, are none of them women yet, thank the Almighty. When they are they will have to go. I could not stand any other woman but Alice to live always in the house. But now to forget her. This knotty point must be cleared up before I go to bed.”
The doors of the ancient world were slowly opening. But before they could shut Mr. Dale within their portals there came a sound that caused the scholar to start. The soft strains of music entered through the door which Verena had on purpose left open. The music was sweet and yet masterly. It came with a merry sound and a certain quick rhythm that seemed to awaken the echoes of the house. Impossible as it may appear, Mr. Dale forgot the ancient classics and the dim world of the past. He lay back in his chair; his lips moved; he beat time with his knuckles on the arms of his chair; and with his feet on the floor. So perfect was his ear that the faintest wrong note, or harmony out of tune, would be detected by him. The least jarring sound would cause him agony. But there was no jarring note; the melody was correct; the time was perfect.
“I might have known that Alice——” he began; but then he remembered that Alice had never played exactly like that, and he ceased to think of her, or of any woman, and became absorbed in those ringing notes that stole along the passage and entered by the open door and surrounded him like lightsome fairies. Into his right ear they poured their charm; in his left ear they completed their work. Virgil was forgotten; old Homer might never have existed.
Mr. Dale rose. He got up softly; he walked across the room and opened the door wide. There was a very bright light streaming down the passage. In the old days this passage was always dark; no one ever thought of lighting the lobbies and passages at The Dales. The master of the house wondered dimly at the light; but at the same time it gave him a sense of comfort.
Suddenly a voice began to sing:
| “I know a bank whereon the wild thyme grows.” |
The voice was sweet, pure, and high. It floated towards him. Suddenly he stretched out his arms.
“I am coming, Alice,” he said aloud. “Yes, I am coming. Don’t call me with such insistence. I come, I tell you; I come.”