“Where is it? Let me go.”
“No!—sit down, and listen! Let me listen with you. I’ve not heard it before! Mr. Falloden and I have been preparing it for months. Isn’t it wonderful? Oh, dear Otto!—if you only like it!” He sat down trembling, and hand in hand they listened.
The “Fantasia” ran on, dealing with song after song, now simply, now with rich embroidery and caprice.
“Who is it playing?” said Otto, in a whisper.
“It was Paderewski!” said Constance between laughing and crying. “Oh, Otto, everybody’s been at work for it!—everybody was so marvellously keen!”
“In Paris?”
“Yes—all your old friends—your teachers—and many others.”
She ran through the names. Otto choked. He knew them all, and some of them were among the most illustrious in French music.
But while Connie was speaking, the stream of sound in the distance sank into gentleness, and in the silence a small voice arose, naïvely, pastorally sweet, like the Shepherd’s Song in “Tristan.” Otto buried his face in his hands. It was the “Heynal,” the watchman’s horn-song from the towers of Panna Marya. Once given, a magician caught it, played with it, pursued it, juggled with it, through a series of variations till, finally, a grave and beautiful modulation led back to the noble dirge of the beginning.
“I know who wrote that!—who must have written it!” said Otto, looking up. He named a French name. “I worked with him at the Conservatoire for a year.”