'Look how the sun has come out. I can see the sparkle of the brass on the cannon down yonder at Neusatz. We had better go now. I must see my sick people and then leave as soon as I can. The yacht must take me to Mohacs; from there I will send her back to you.'
'Do as you will. I can have no greater happiness than to obey you.'
'I am sure that I thank you in the way that you like best, when I say that I believe you.'
She said the words in a very low tone, but so calmly that the calmness of them checked any other words he might have uttered. It was a royal acceptance of a loyal service; nothing more. The boat took them back to the fortress. Whilst she was occupied in her farewell to the sick people, and her instructions to those who attended on them, he, left to himself in the apartment she had made her own, instinctively went to an old harpsichord that stood there and touched the keys. It had a beautiful case, rich with the varnish of the Martins. He played with it awhile for its external beauty, and then let his fingers stray over its limited keyboard. It had still sweetness in it, like the spinet of Hohenszalras. It suited certain pathetic quaint old German airs he knew, and which he half unconsciously reproduced upon it, singing them as he did so in a low tone. The melody, very soft and subdued, suited to the place where death had been so busy and nature so unsparing, and where a resigned exhaustion had now succeeded to the madness of terror, reached the ears of the sick women in the Rittersaal and of Wanda von Szalras seated beside their beds.
'It is like the saints in Heaven sighing in pity for us here,' said one of the women who was very feeble and old, and she smiled as she heard. The notes, tremulous from age but penetrating in their sweetness, came in slow calm movements of harmony through the stillness of the chamber; his voice, very low also, but clear, ascended with them. Wanda sat quite still, and listened with a strange pleasure. 'He alone,' she thought, 'can make the dumb strings speak.
It was almost dusk when she descended to the room which she had made her own. In the passages of the castle oil wicks were lighted in the iron lamps and wall sconces, but here it was without any light, and in the gloom she saw the dim outline of his form as he sat by the harpsichord. He had ceased playing; his head was bent down and rested on the instrument; he was lost in thought, and his whole attitude was dejected. He did not hear her approach, and she looked at him some moments, herself unseen. A great tenderness came over her: he was unhappy, and he had been very brave, very generous, very loyal: she felt almost ashamed. She went nearer, and he raised himself abruptly.
'I am going,' she said to him. 'Will you come with me to the yacht?'
He rose, and though it was dusk, and in this chamber so dark that his face was indistinct to her, she was sure that tears had been in his eyes.
'Your old harpsichord has the vernis Martin,' he said, with effort. 'You should not leave it buried here. It has a melody in it too, faint and simple and full of the past, like the smell of dead rose-leaves. Yes, I will have the honour to come with you. I wish there were a full moon. It will be a dark night on the Danube.'
'My men know the soundings of the river well. As for the harpsichord, you alone have found its voice. It shall go to your rooms in Paris.'