“Oh,” said he, “you intend to give us the sonata before the waltz?”
“Yes,” said Anna, “that is best I think;” and then she continued softly, “I know that sonata so perfectly that I can go on talking while I am playing it by heart.”
She sat down to the instrument, van Nerekool standing close by her side ready to turn over the leaves for her.
Anna struck the first notes of Beethoven’s magnificent work while she continued: “As I was telling you, Ardjan had to be taken to the hospital in consequence of the brutal treatment he had received. But that is not what made me write to you.”
“What was it then?” whispered van Nerekool eagerly. “I am all ears, Miss Anna.”
“Well then,” said she, “pay attention to me.”
And while the nimble fingers of the talented girl ran over the keys, while she rendered in most masterly style the lovely reveries of the inspired musician—strains which full of sweetness yet here and there seem clouded by the great gloom which was impending over the author’s future life—she told the young man the whole story of Dalima’s abduction, of her rescue by Ardjan, in what wretched plight the poor Javanese had been found, and she told him also that close by the place where they found him a considerable quantity of smuggled opium had been discovered, and had been delivered into the custody of the chief inspector of police.
Van Nerekool had not for a single instant turned his eye from the music, he had never once made a mistake in turning over the pages; but yet he had been listening so attentively that not a single word had escaped his ears. At the ill-omened word opium his countenance fell. The young girl noticed the change of expression though she did not allow her emotion to influence her play. Indeed she executed the final movement of the sonata—that brilliant movement in which a very flood of fancies all seem to unite in conveying the idea of perfect bliss—in so faultless and spirited a manner, that the card-players in the outer gallery, pausing for a few moments in their game to listen, broke out in a loud chorus of applause.
“But do you know for certain, Miss Anna,” said van Nerekool, under cover of the noise, “that it was opium?”
“How should I know?” replied she before the clamour had subsided.