So when Sunday came, with it came full knowledge that most members of the congregation were to hear Kenyon Adams’ new composition, which had been rather widely advertised by his friends; and Rev. John Dexter, feeling himself a fifth wheel, discarded his sermon and in humility and contrition submitted some extemporaneous remarks on the passion for humanity of “Christ and him crucified.”
A little boy was Kenyon Adams–a slim, great-eyed, serious faced, little boy in an Eton jacket and knickerbockers–not so much larger than his violin that he carried under his arm. His little hand shook, but Grant caught his gaze and with a tender, earnest reassurance put sinews into the small arms, and stilled an unsteady jaw. The organ was playing the prelude, when the little hand with the bow went out in a wide, sure, strong curve, and when the bow touched the strings, they sang from a soul depth that no child’s experience could know.
It was the first public rendering of the now famous Adagio in C minor, known sometimes as “The Prairie Wind,” or perhaps better as the Intermezzo between the second and third acts of the opera that made Kenyon Adams’ fame in Europe before he was twenty. It has been changed but little since that first hearing there in John Dexter’s church with the Sands Memorial organ, built in the early eighties for Elizabeth Page Sands, mother of Anne of that tribe. The composition is simplicity itself–save for the mystical questioning that runs through it in the sustained sevenths–a theme which Captain Morton said always reminded him of a meadow lark’s evening song, but which repeats itself over and over plaintively and sadly as the stately music swells to its crescendo and dies with that unanswered cry of heartbreak echoing in the last faint notes of the closing bar.
When it was finished, those who had ears heard and understood and those who had not said, “Well,” and waited for public opinion, unless they were fools, in which case they said they would have preferred something to whistle. But 287because the thing impressed itself upon hundreds of hearts that hour, many in the congregation came forward to greet the child.
Among these, was a tall, stately young woman in pure white with a rose upon her hat so deeply red that it seemed guilty of a shame. But her lips were as red as the red of the rose and her eyes glistened and her face was wrought upon by a great storm in her heart. Behind her walked a proud gentleman, a lordly gentleman who elbowed his way through the throng as one who touches the unclean. The pale child stood by Grant Adams as they came. Kenyon did not see the beautiful woman; the child’s eyes were upon the man. He knew the man; Lila had poured out her soul to the boy about the man and in his child’s heart he feared and abhorred the man for he knew not what. The man and woman kept coming closer. They were abreast as they stepped into the pulpit where the child stood. By his own music, his soul had been stirred and riven and he was nervous and excited. As the woman beside the man stretched out her arms, with her face tense from some inner turmoil, the child saw only the proud man beside her and shrank back with a wild cry and hid in his father’s breast. The eyes of Grant and Margaret met, but the child only cuddled into the broad breast before him and wept, crying, “No–no–no–”
Then the proud man turned back, spurned but not knowing it, and the beautiful woman with red shame in her soul followed him with downcast face. In the church porch she lifted up her face as she said with her fair, false mouth: “Tom, isn’t it funny how those kind of people sometimes have talent–just like the lower animals seem to have intelligence. Dear me, but that child’s music has upset me!”
The man’s heart was full of pride and hate and the woman’s heart was full of pride and jealousy. Still the air was sweet for them, the birds sang for them, and the sun shone tenderly upon them. They even laughed, as they went their high Jovian way, at the vanities of the world on its lower plane. But their very laughter was the crackling of thorns under a pot wherein their hearts were burning.
288CHAPTER XXVII
IN WHICH WE SEE SOMETHING COME INTO THIS STORY OUTSIDE OF THE MATERIAL WORLD
“Life,” writes Mr. Left, using the pseudonym of the Peachblow philosopher, “disheartens us because we expect the wrong things of it. We expect material rewards for spiritual virtues, material punishments for spiritual transgressions; when even in the material world, material rewards and punishments do not always follow the acts which seem to require them. Yet the only sure thing in the world is that our spiritual lapses bring spiritual punishments, and our spiritual virtues have their spiritual rewards.”