“Have you any music?” asked Langly.
“No, we haven’t. She plays by ear.”
“Will you allow me to go up-stairs and bring some sheet music?”
This was a little too transparent.
“Now, by God!” cried Braunt, bringing his fist down on the table. “Stand there chattering another minute, and I’ll break thy neck down the stair. Sit thee down, Jessie, an’ don’t interfere. The man plays or he doesn’t. I knew he was a liar, an’ he quakes there because it’s to be proven. Now, coward, the organ or the stairs—make thy choice quickly.”
The driven musician reluctantly took the chair before the instrument. He had played on the harmonium in his early days, and knew it was harsh and reedy at the best. But under his gentle touch the spirit of all the harmonies seemed to rise from it, and fill the squalid room. Braunt stood for a moment with fallen jaw, his hands hanging limply by his sides; then he sank into his arm-chair. Jessie gazed steadfastly, with large pathetic eyes, at their guest, who seemed himself transformed, all the lines of dismay and apprehension smoothed away from his face, replaced by an absorbed ecstacy, oblivious to every surrounding. He played harmony after harmony, one apparently suggesting and melting into another, until at last a minor chord carried the music into the solemn rhythm of Chopin’s march; then the organ, like a sentient creature, began to sob and wail for the dead. The girl’s eyes, never moving from the wizard of the keys, filled with unshed tears, and her father buried his face in his hands.
When at last the organist’s magic fingers slipped from the keys, and the exultant light faded from his face as the dying music merged into silence, Braunt sprang to his feet.
“Curse me for a brutish clown!” he cried. “To think that I mishandled thee, lad, an’ thou playest like an angel. I never heard music before.”
He laid his huge hand on the other’s shoulder gently and kindly, although the youth, hardly yet awake from his dream, timidly shrank from the touch. “Forgive me, lad? I misdoubt I hurt thee.”
“No, no; it is all nothing. So you like the music?”